Why?
Because I just watched four forces converge that will churn Clay’s customer base into butter. . .
Clay raised prices significantly over the last few weeks. When you’re already expensive and then get more expensive, customers start looking for alternatives.
This alone wouldn’t kill Clay. But combined with the other three forces, it’s accelerating the timeline.
Competitors are launching Clay clones at lower price points. The moat was “we’re better at enrichment and have more integrations.” That moat is shrinking fast.
Databar, Cargo, Bitscale, Freckle, Apollo, oh my!
They’re all eating Clay’s lunch on price while closing the feature gap.
Claygencies were Clay’s power users. They were the ones building complex workflows, paying for multiple seats, and evangelizing the product to their clients.
As Claygencies get displaced by AI (see: #NoMoreGTME), Clay loses its most valuable users.
Fewer Claygencies = fewer Clay users.
This is the big one.
I just recreated Clay’s core functionality using Claude Code.
Cost comparison for enriching 50,000 rows over 3 months
That’s a 91% cost reduction.
I’m not talking about using Claude to write better prompts inside Clay. I’m talking about replacing Clay entirely with a Python script that calls Claude’s API directly.
I built this for a client who was paying $920/month to Clay ($720 subscription + ~$200 in monthly credits).
Their original workflow was:
Export list from Apollo
Upload to Clay
Run enrichment to classify website CTAs and find hiring signals
Export enriched data
Upload to email sequencing tool
Total time: ~30 minutes of clicking around Clay’s interface.
Total cost: $920/month.
I replaced this entire workflow with a Python script that does the exact same thing for ~$30/month in API costs.
The replacement workflow is simple:
1. Visits each company’s website and identifies signals
Clay charges $0.01 - $ 0.03 per row to do this using their “Visit Website” enrichment.
Claude API charges ~$0.003 per row to do the exact same thing.
2. Cross-references hiring data to find companies actively hiring
The script scrapes job boards (Indeed, LinkedIn, Google) for companies posting roles that could indicate intent.
If a company is hiring for these roles, they’re likely experiencing growth or capacity issues. That’s a possible intent signal.
Clay doesn’t do this natively. You’d need to integrate with a third-party job data provider (more $$$).
3. Scores and sorts every company & lead into priority tiers
The script combines the signals to create priority tiers:
This is the insight Clay workflows try to create, but you have to manually configure all the conditional logic and formulas.
The script does it automatically and exports separate CSV files for each tier.
If you’re currently paying for Clay:
You have three options:
Keep paying and accept you’re overpaying by 10-20X for a prettier interface
Switch to a competitor (Databar, Cargo, Apollo) and save ~30-50%
Build your own with Claude and save ~91%
Option 3 takes ~15 minutes to set up. No coding required.
I’m a non-technical person, and I did it!
If you’re a Claygency:
Your clients are starting to realize they don’t need you.
The $6-12K/month Claygency retainer is competing against $20/month for Claude Pro.
You’re being compressed from above (Clay adding AI features and raising pricing for agencies) and below (Claude replacing Clay entirely).
Networks (warm intros, referrals, customer base, audience, etc)
Unique datasets
Almost everything else can be built with AI tools at near-zero marginal cost.
Enrichment tools, Clay tables, outbound sequences, and email copy. All commoditized.
Invest in the things AI can’t replace. Defund the things it can.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1zNlJOkViJy6GURgAh3SPgE6EYXF5TEEl2JSqzbREQ48/edit?tab=t.0
BTW - This isn’t a 💩 post. I have nothing to gain. No lead magnets. Just a POV from a GTM operator who’s been doing this for 13 years.
Can you prove me wrong?
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