Clay is a data workbench: you build tables of companies and people, enrich them from many data providers in a waterfall, run AI research on each row with its Claygent agent and push the results into your CRM or sequencer. Outvori is an AI growth team for small businesses: it finds companies in official registers from a scan of your website, researches each one, drafts the emails for you to approve, sends them, and also writes your articles and posts.
This page is written by the Outvori team. Clay's facts come from its pricing page, checked on 2 November 2026.
The short answer
Choose Clay if you have a growth or RevOps person who enjoys building workflows and needs the deepest, most customizable data. Choose Outvori if you want the result (companies, emails, content) without building the machine yourself.
Side by side
| Outvori | Clay | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | AI growth team: prospecting, cold email, SEO articles, social, community posts, inbox and CRM | Data enrichment and AI research platform for GTM teams |
| Data sources | Official business registers (about 11 million companies) plus each company's own website | Waterfall enrichment across 150+ data providers |
| AI research | Agents read each company's site and summarize what it does | Claygent, configurable per column |
| Setup | Paste your website; profile and matching companies in about a minute | Build tables, prompts and workflows |
| Sending cold email | Included, from warmed mailboxes with daily caps | Clay Sequencer, or push to a sending tool |
| SEO articles, social, communities | Included | Not part of the product |
| Seats | Users per plan (1 on Start, up to 10 on Agency) | Unlimited seats |
| Lowest paid price as listed | Find customers module $29; Start plan $99 | Launch $167 per month headline price; the FAQ on the same page said $185 for monthly billing |
| Free plan | Free brand scan | Free plan: 500 actions and 100 data credits a month |
Depth versus done-for-you
Clay's strength is flexibility. If you can describe a signal, such as companies that just raised money, hired a head of sales and use a certain tool, you can probably build it in Clay. That power has a cost in time: someone has to design the table, choose providers, write prompts and watch credit use. Clay's own pricing describes plans in actions and data credits, so a heavy enrichment workflow can use a plan up quickly.
Outvori makes those decisions for you. The brand scan turns your website into an offer and ideal buyers, Outvori matches them against register data by industry code and region, and agents research each company. You get fewer knobs, and you do not have to be a data engineer to get a list worth emailing. For the method behind register data, read how to find B2B leads in US and UK business registries.
After the list
Clay is mostly about the list. Its Sequencer and integrations send the data onwards, but deliverability, warm-up and copy are separate jobs. Outvori keeps going after the list: it drafts each email from your brand profile, sends from warmed mailboxes capped at 30 cold emails per mailbox per day, sorts replies into an inbox and pipeline, and runs your SEO articles and social posts from the same profile. Those caps exist because Gmail and Yahoo ask bulk senders to keep spam complaints under 0.3% (Google, Yahoo), however good the list is. See the cold email deliverability checklist.
When Clay is the better choice
- You need very specific signals or data that only a combination of providers can give.
- You have someone who will own and maintain the workflows.
- You need unlimited seats for a larger team.
If you are weighing several tools, our Apollo alternatives for small businesses guide covers Clay alongside lemlist, Instantly, Hunter and Snov.io.
Frequently asked questions
Is Clay good for small businesses?
It can be, if someone on the team will learn it. Clay is powerful but takes setup, and its pricing is based on actions and credits, so costs depend on how much you enrich.
Does Outvori do waterfall enrichment like Clay?
No. Outvori uses official register data and each company's own website, not a chain of paid data providers.
Can Outvori send emails to a list I built in Clay?
Yes. You can import a CSV, and Outvori checks the addresses before it sends from your warmed mailboxes.
Which is faster to get started with?
Outvori: the free brand scan shows your profile and 25 matching companies in about a minute, without an account. Compare plans on the pricing page.
