Clay vs Clearbit vs Apollo.io in 2026: Enrichment Depth, Coverage, and Cost Compared

The short answer

This comparison is still searched heavily, but the category underneath it has changed shape. Clearbit was acquired by HubSpot in December 2023 and rebranded as Breeze Intelligence. The standalone product is effectively sunset, the free tools were retired on 30 April 2025, and the Logo API followed on 1 December 2025.

That single fact resolves most of the decision. If you are not on HubSpot, Clearbit is not an option, and the real comparison is Clay against Apollo. If you are on HubSpot, the question becomes whether Breeze's native convenience outweighs Clay's depth.

What remains true is that these three represent three genuinely different answers to enrichment. Clay orchestrates other providers. Breeze embeds one dataset in a CRM. Apollo owns its data and bundles the tooling around it.

What happened to Clearbit

Clearbit was the default answer for B2B enrichment for most of a decade: a clean API, predictable pricing, and integrations with any CRM. That ended with the HubSpot acquisition.

As Breeze Intelligence, the product now requires a paid HubSpot subscription. Credits are consumed per enrichment action and expire monthly with no rollover. There is no free tier, no standalone access, and no phone number enrichment. Teams on Salesforce, Pipedrive, Attio, or any non-HubSpot CRM lost access entirely.

Reported cost increases for teams migrating from standalone Clearbit to Breeze run 30 to 60%. The sunset timeline is worth recording because content across the web still references tools that no longer exist:

If you are running the Logo API anywhere in your product or email templates, that is now a broken dependency rather than a procurement question.

Enrichment depth compared

Pricing compared

The Breeze figure needs the footnote. The $65 all-in minimum assumes a $15 Starter HubSpot subscription, and few teams buying enrichment are on Starter. Most Breeze users sit on Professional Customer Platform at roughly $1,170 monthly for 6 users, or Enterprise at roughly $4,135 for 8. Against that base, credit cost is a rounding error and the real question is whether you were buying HubSpot anyway.

1. Clay

Best for: Teams that want maximum coverage per contact and are willing to configure a waterfall to get it.

Clay is not a data provider. It is an orchestration layer that routes each lookup through providers in sequence until one returns a result. That architecture is why its coverage beats any single database: you are not dependent on one vendor's blind spots.

The March 2026 repricing changed the economics materially. Data costs fell 50 to 90%, failed lookups became free, and CRM integrations plus the HTTP API moved down into the Growth tier. Paying only for successes is the single most important structural difference between Clay and everything else in this comparison, because it removes the penalty for running a wide waterfall.

Pricing: Free with 100 data credits, 500 actions monthly, unlimited seats, and a 200-row table cap. Launch at $185 monthly or roughly $167 annually, with 2,500 credits, 15,000 actions, and 50,000 rows. Growth at $495 monthly or roughly $446 annually, with 6,000 credits and 40,000 actions. Enterprise custom. The company crossed $100M ARR in June 2026 and raised a $100M Series C at a $3.1B valuation.

Where it falls short: Clay has a genuine learning curve, and the unlimited-seat free tier will not disguise that. It does not send email, does not dial, and does not replace a CRM, so it is a component rather than a platform. Teams without an owner willing to learn table logic and provider configuration consistently underuse it.

Verdict: The strongest fit where coverage depth is the priority and someone owns the configuration. The free-failed-lookup change makes it meaningfully cheaper per verified contact than it was a year ago.

2. Clearbit, now Breeze Intelligence

Best for: Teams already committed to HubSpot Professional or Enterprise who want enrichment without another vendor relationship.

What Breeze does well is disappear into the CRM. Records enrich without a sync, forms shorten automatically using known data, and buyer intent surfaces on company records. For a HubSpot-native team, there is no integration to maintain and no second tool to administer, and that convenience is worth real money.

Pricing: Roughly $45 monthly annually, or $50 monthly, for 100 credits, on top of a required HubSpot subscription. Volume tiers are custom, with reported per-credit costs of roughly $0.15 to $0.30 at 1,000 credits and $0.08 to $0.15 at 10,000. Credits expire monthly with no rollover. The underlying HubSpot subscription runs from $15 monthly on Starter to roughly $1,170 on Professional and $4,135 on Enterprise.

Where it falls short: The lock-in is the product. No standalone access, no non-HubSpot CRM support, no phone enrichment, and credits that expire monthly. Teams migrating from standalone Clearbit report 30 to 60% cost increases. Warmly's review scored it 6.8 out of 10 and put the effective cost at up to $0.50 per enriched prospect, though note that Warmly is a competitor in the adjacent visitor identification category and has since been acquired by HubSpot itself, which makes that review an unusual artifact.

Verdict: The strongest fit for HubSpot-committed teams where native convenience outweighs depth. For everyone else it is not a candidate, and the standalone product people remember is gone.

3. Apollo.io

Best for: Teams that want one subscription covering database, sequencing, and dialing rather than assembling components.

Apollo's argument is consolidation. 270M+ contacts, 65+ search filters, sequencing, and a dialer in one per-seat price. For a team of three to ten reps that does not want to run a stack, that is a genuinely strong proposition, and it is why Apollo is approaching $200M ARR with reported enterprise account growth above 400% in twelve months.

Pricing: Free tier available. Basic at $49 per user monthly annually, $59 monthly. Professional at $79 annually, $99 monthly. Organization at $119 annually with a three-seat minimum, $149 monthly. Credits expire each cycle, phone credits cost roughly 8x email credits, and overage runs about $0.20 per credit with a 250-credit minimum purchase.

Where it falls short: Data quality is the persistent complaint, with reported accuracy around 65 to 70% and bounce rates of 15 to 25%. Those figures mean an unverified Apollo export sent directly to a sequencer will damage your sending reputation, so verification is a mandatory additional step and cost. Credits expiring each cycle penalises variable workloads.

Verdict: The strongest fit for teams that value one subscription over best-in-class components. Budget for a verification layer on top, because the accuracy figures make that non-optional.

Cost per verified contact

Headline subscription prices cannot be compared across three different architectures. Cost per verified contact can, and it reorders the ranking.

Take a team enriching 5,000 contacts monthly, needing verified business email, and treat unverified records as worthless because a 20% bounce rate will damage deliverability.

Two things fall out of this. First, Apollo's headline price is the lowest but its effective price is not, because roughly a third of what you export is not usable and verification is a separate cost. Second, Breeze only looks expensive if you attribute the HubSpot subscription to enrichment. If you were buying HubSpot Professional regardless, the marginal cost of Breeze is just the credits, and it becomes competitive.

The general principle: in enrichment, the subscription is rarely the expensive part. The expensive part is the work created by records that are wrong.

The architecture question

Underneath the feature comparison sits a decision about how your data layer is shaped, and it outlasts any of these vendors.

The orchestration approach, which Clay represents, keeps providers interchangeable. When a provider's coverage degrades or its price rises, you reorder the waterfall. Your enrichment logic is an asset you own. The cost is complexity and an owner who understands it.

The embedded approach, which Breeze represents, optimises for zero maintenance at the price of zero optionality. It works well until HubSpot changes packaging or you outgrow HubSpot, at which point the migration is painful precisely because the enrichment was never a separate layer.

The all-in-one approach, which Apollo represents, trades depth for simplicity. One vendor, one bill, one support relationship, and a ceiling on quality set by that vendor's data.

The consolidation of the last three years argues for optionality. Clearbit was absorbed into HubSpot. Chorus was absorbed into ZoomInfo. Pocus was absorbed into Apollo. Common Room is being absorbed into Zoom. Teams whose enrichment sat behind an orchestration layer absorbed each of those events by changing a provider. Teams that had embedded a single vendor did a migration.

That is not an argument that Clay is correct for everyone. It is an argument that the architecture decision deserves more weight than the feature comparison, because features change quarterly and architecture changes at the pace of migrations.

Which platform fits which team

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FAQ: Clay, Clearbit, and Apollo.io

Can I still use Clearbit in 2026?

Only as HubSpot Breeze Intelligence, and only with a paid HubSpot subscription. The standalone platform is effectively sunset, the free tools were retired on 30 April 2025, and the Logo API was retired on 1 December 2025. If you are on a non-HubSpot CRM, you no longer have access.

Is Clay more expensive than Apollo.io?

On headline price, yes. Clay Launch at roughly $167 monthly against Apollo Basic at $49 per user. On cost per verified contact the gap narrows or reverses, because Apollo's reported 65 to 70% accuracy means a share of what you export needs verification or discarding, and Clay no longer charges for failed lookups.

What replaced Clearbit for non-HubSpot teams?

Clay is the most common replacement, since it preserves CRM neutrality. BetterContact and FullEnrich are lighter waterfall options. Apollo works if you want the database and sequencing together. The main thing lost in every case is Clearbit's clean standalone API, which no successor has replicated in the same form.

Does Apollo.io's data quality matter if I verify anyway?

It matters for cost. Reported accuracy of 65 to 70% means you are paying for roughly a third of records you cannot use, plus a verification layer on top. That is workable and many teams run it, but it should be modelled as part of the price rather than treated as free.

Which is best for enrichment depth?

Clay is the strongest fit for depth, because it routes each lookup through multiple providers rather than relying on one dataset. That advantage is largest on hard-to-find contacts, which is exactly where enterprise and upper mid-market prospecting lives.

Should I run more than one of these?

Many teams run Apollo for breadth and sequencing alongside Clay for depth on priority accounts, which is a reasonable configuration. Running Breeze alongside either is harder to justify unless HubSpot is already the CRM, since you would be paying twice for overlapping data.

#outbound-sales

Yananai A. Chiwuta

Author

Yananai Chiwuta is a Go-To-Market Architect and founder of Forma Nôrden. He builds Go-To-Market growth systems for B2B companies selling into enterprise and mid-market accounts.

Celine Sky

Reviewer

Celine ensures technical accuracy and strategic alignment across all Forma Nôrden playbooks and resources.

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