At a glance
Clay details are based on publicly available information as of September 2026. Always verify current details on their website.
Feature by feature
Read as of September 2026 from both products’ own documentation, line by line. A dash means we could not find it published, which is not the same as it being absent.
The record
CRM record for contacts, companies and deals
Outsales
Clay
Sends from your own mailbox
Outsales
Clay
Runs on top of an existing CRM
Outsales
Clay
Payments and revenue on the contact
Outsales
Clay
Product usage signals on the contact
Outsales
Clay
Finding and reaching people
Built-in contact database
Outsales
Clay
AI research on each account
Outsales
Clay
Multi-step sequences
Outsales
Clay
Every email written for the person receiving it
Outsales
Clay
The autonomy layer
Decides who to act on, contact by contact
Outsales
Clay
A decision log in plain English, with the reason
Outsales
Clay
Autonomy you can dial down
Outsales
Clay
Lead scoring
Outsales
Clay
Replies read, classified and routed
Outsales
Clay
Calls and meetings recorded and summarised
Outsales
Clay
Commercials
Free plan with no end date
Outsales
Clay
Priced per seat
Outsales
Clay
Pricing, side by side
Outsales
- Manual: free forever, one seat, 2,000 contacts and 300 emails a month
- Autonomous: $99 a month with 200 credits, around 45 to 50 contacts run end to end
- No per-seat fee: adding people does not change the price
- Every product and every integration included in both plans
- 50 AI credits once, with no card, to test the autonomous half
Clay
- Free: 500 actions and 100 data credits a month, unlimited seats
- Launch: $167 a month, 15,000 actions and 3,000 data credits
- Growth: $446 a month, 40,000 actions and 6,000 data credits
- Enterprise: custom, from 200,000 actions and 100,000 data credits
- Seats are never charged; you pay for actions and data
Clay pricing as published on their own pricing page in September 2026. Plans change, so check it before you decide.
What switching from Clay takes
Clay sits before the conversation and Outsales sits during it, so replacement is rarely the question. If you are consolidating, the move is an export of the enriched table and a mailbox connection.
Effort: Low
Enriched contacts
ImportsExport the table as CSV; enriched columns become custom fields
Audiences and segments
ImportsArrive as lists with their fields intact
Enrichment waterfalls
RebuildNot documented here; most teams keep this side in Clay
Claygent research prompts
RebuildNo equivalent published here, so research stays where it is
Sequences
RebuildSteps and timing are quick to recreate
Outsales vs Clay in depth
Best fit
Clay is for the team whose problem is the input: who exists, what is true about them, and which of them is worth a message. Outsales is for the team whose problem is the output: which of the people already in the system deserves an action today, and who writes it.
How the pricing behaves
Clay charges for actions and data credits with unlimited seats, so cost tracks how much enrichment and orchestration you run. Outsales charges for contacts run end to end by the AI, with the manual half free forever. Both avoid per-seat licensing, which is unusual in this category and worth noticing.
Where the intelligence sits
Clay's intelligence points outward: Claygents research the web and waterfalls resolve a data point across many providers. The intelligence here points inward: it reads the signals you already own, email, calendar, billing and support, and decides what to do about them.
Building versus running
Clay is a builder's product. Tables, formulas and workflows reward somebody who enjoys assembling a system, which is exactly why operators love it. Outsales has no builder to configure, which is a feature for a founder without an ops person and a limitation for a team that wants to design its own logic.
Running both
The natural stack: Clay finds and enriches, pushes the result into the CRM, and Outsales works the people it produced, writes the follow-ups and reads the replies.
Where Clay is the better answer
If your bottleneck is data coverage, custom research or list building at scale, Clay does things no CRM does and this product does not try to.
What Outsales does
- An Orchestrator reads what came in and decides which worker or skill should run, without a workflow builder
- Every decision it takes is written down in plain English, with the reason, so you can read its work before you trust it
- AI Workers that do a job end to end: follow-ups written and sent, meetings joined and summarised, a Slack message to you when a client writes
- Skills the Orchestrator can reach for: score buy intent, enrich a lead, update the CRM, mark a company lost or customer, ask you when it is unsure
- Lead scoring from 0 to 100 on your own signals: email, Stripe, Intercom, calendar and product usage, with deterministic floors so the number is a policy, not a guess
- Outbound, AI follow-up, lead scoring and an AI writer in one place, sharing one contact record
- Runs on top of Pipedrive, HubSpot, Salesforce or ActiveCampaign, or as your CRM if you do not have one
- Sends from your own inbox (Gmail, Outlook, SendGrid, Resend, SMTP) with daily caps, and stops the sequence the moment someone replies
- Every email written from scratch for the person receiving it, under the brand rules you write in plain English, and never sent with a placeholder still in it
- You set how far each worker can go: full autonomy, approval on the ones that matter, or approval on everything
- Priced on credits, not licences: the CRM, inbox sync and sequences are free forever, and $99/month covers around 45 to 50 contacts run end to end by the AI, with no per-seat fees
Where Clay is strong
- Waterfall enrichment across 75+ data providers for high match rates
- Flexible, spreadsheet-style workflow builder for custom plays
- Free plan and usage-based pricing to start small
Best for: Teams that want best-in-class data enrichment and to build their own custom GTM plays.
The main difference
Clay is a data-and-enrichment workbench you use to build plays and feed other tools. Outsales is an end-to-end platform that writes, sends, follows up and manages the CRM autonomously. They're complementary: many teams enrich with a tool like Clay and execute with a platform like Outsales.
Choose Outsales if…
- You want one autonomous system for outbound, follow-up, CRM and intent
- You'd rather pay for the work done than for seats and add-ons
- You want to keep your CRM and send from your own inbox
Choose Clay if…
Teams that want best-in-class data enrichment and to build their own custom GTM plays.
Trusted by salespeople who work at these companies
The system
Not a bundle of tools. One machine.
An Orchestrator reads what came in and decides who should act. Workers do a job from start to finish. Skills are what they reach for on the way. Everything writes to the same contact record, so what one of them learns the rest already know.
The Orchestrator
Every email, payment, chat and meeting goes through it. It decides which worker or skill should run, and writes down why, in plain English. There is no workflow builder to maintain.
Follow-up Worker
Reads the thread, works out when the next one is due, writes it and sends it from your inbox.
Meeting Notetaker
Joins Meet, Zoom and Teams. Records, transcribes and writes the summary onto the contact.
Personal Assistant
Messages you on Slack when a client writes. Reply, translate or archive without leaving it.
Seven skills
Where you work
Cold Email Software
Every message written from scratch for the person receiving it, then sent from your own inbox with daily caps and reply detection.
Sales Follow-up Software
Keep the CRM you have, or run without one. It decides when the next follow-up is due, writes it, and stops the second someone replies.
AI CRM
Contacts, notes and stages kept current by the workers, with every decision written down so you can read its work before you trust it.
Lead Scoring
Every contact scored 0 to 100 from your own emails, payments, chats and meetings, with the reason behind every move.
AI Email Writer
Teach it your brand, your products and the phrases you never want used. Nothing leaves with a placeholder still in it.
Switch one worker on
Connect what you already use and read what it decided by Friday. Start free, no credit card.