# FullEnrich vs Clay for Waterfall Enrichment

By [Florian Martens](https://pipe0.com/authors/florian-martens) · Published Aug 10, 2026

Source: https://pipe0.com/blog/fullenrich-vs-clay

> Clay and FullEnrich are two of the most popular meta providers in data enrichment. A verified work email costs $0.055 on FullEnrich, flat. On Clay it costs somewhere between $0.06 and $0.25.



FullEnrich and Clay come up in most conversations about data enrichment.
Both find email addresses and phone numbers, and both are *meta providers*.

## What is a meta provider? [#what-is-a-meta-provider]

To find phone numbers and email addresses, you need access to a large
database of contacts. There are two ways to get that access: own the
database, or resell access to someone else's. Traditional data providers
sell their own data; meta providers resell access.

## Why meta providers [#why-meta-providers]

Being a meta provider comes with several advantages. The biggest is the
ability to chain multiple datasets into waterfalls. Waterfalls increase
coverage without meaningfully increasing cost, because you are normally
billed only for successfully resolved requests.

A waterfall tries provider 1 first. If provider 1 does not have the
result, the request moves to provider 2, and so on until a provider
returns a result.

![Waterfall enrichment flow: a lookup falls through provider 1 and
provider 2 without results and without cost, provider 3 returns a result
and is the only provider billed, and the result then passes a
verification step where it is kept or discarded](/media/blog/20260810-1.svg)

The motion has another advantage. Even when a provider returns a result,
you can add a verification step on top. You can validate the email
address with a provider like ZeroBounce, or check a phone number for
common markers of a false entry.

If validation fails, the result is discarded.

Clay and FullEnrich both use this exact strategy to find contact data. In
fact, FullEnrich is one of Clay's listed providers. If you purchase a
Clay license, you get access to FullEnrich too.

## Comparing on cost [#comparing-on-cost]

A phone number through FullEnrich-inside-Clay costs roughly 95¢.
The same number directly from FullEnrich costs an average of 55¢
(👉🏽 a phone number on [pipe0](https://pipe0.com) costs an average
of 8¢).

Don't expect the FullEnrich you reach through Clay to match the native
product 1:1, either. FullEnrich's own platform runs 20+ providers per
waterfall. Clay's native waterfall runs roughly 14 providers, of which
FullEnrich is only one. It is common practice to sell meta providers
like Clay a slimmer version of your waterfall.

Even reaching FullEnrich on Clay with your own API key now incurs
costs, after Clay's 2026 pricing change that
[introduced actions](https://university.clay.com/docs/actions-data-credits).

Here is how the list prices break down, using each vendor's published
plans and per-enrichment rates:

|                           | FullEnrich            | Clay                                         | pipe0                   |
| ------------------------- | --------------------- | -------------------------------------------- | ----------------------- |
| Entry plan                | $29/mo, 500 credits   | $167/mo, 3,000 data credits + 15,000 actions | $49/mo, 1,600 credits   |
| Top self-serve plan       | $55/mo, 1,000 credits | $446/mo, 6,000 data credits + 40,000 actions | $999/mo, 34,000 credits |
| Price per credit          | 5.5–5.8¢              | from 5¢, plus actions                        | 2.9–3.1¢                |
| Work email, on success    | 1 credit ≈ 5.5¢       | \~2–5 credits ≈ 10–25¢                       | 0.5 credits ≈ 1.6¢      |
| Mobile number, on success | 10 credits ≈ 55¢      | ≈ 95¢ via FullEnrich-inside-Clay             | 3 credits ≈ 9¢          |

Prices come from each vendor's pricing page and docs as of August 2026.
Clay publishes no flat rate card; costs display in-product, and Clay's
own waterfall guide prices individual provider lookups at 20¢ to $1.00.
The pipe0 numbers are pipe-catalog list prices; high-volume billing
lowers them further. On this math, pipe0 comes out roughly 7x as cost
effective. All three tools have free tiers, so run the same 50 rows
through each and check.

## Stacking margins [#stacking-margins]

The chain of providers now looks roughly like this:

1. B2B data provider
2. Meta provider
3. A meta provider inside a meta provider (FullEnrich inside Clay)

This is the triple-margin pattern, and it bloats the cost per
enrichment. With meta providers, you generally trade cost for coverage.
Maintaining a large waterfall yourself is a genuinely annoying problem
that carries a cost category of its own. Purchasing many individual
providers, stitching them together, and working with rate limits and
various provider credit balances is hard and expensive.

Meta providers know this and charge accordingly.

## Clay goes beyond enrichment [#clay-goes-beyond-enrichment]

Clay is more than a meta provider. It is a full automation framework
that lets you perform actions like sending emails or Slack messages and
lets you define logic around the data you retrieve.

## Should you use either? [#should-you-use-either]

At [pipe0](https://pipe0.com) we spend a lot of time benchmarking
enrichment providers, comparing their performance, and discussing rates.
We have also built enrichment systems at companies like Cursor and
Cloudflare.

We find it difficult to recommend either platform. The margin charged
per enrichment is still 4-5x where it should be.

That said, for low-volume enrichment where accuracy matters, you can
consider FullEnrich. If your use case goes beyond retrieving email
addresses and phone numbers, consider Clay.

We also want to encourage you to try pipe0: a fairer margin profile and higher
coverage and accuracy.