6 Clay Alternatives For Indie Hackers Trying to Build Lead Lists

Clay's powerful, but the pricing is brutal. I burned $700 in phone credits in two weeks, with $200 wasted on bad data. No refunds for mistakes or failed API calls.

So I tested every major alternative. Here's what I found.

1. Freckle.io – Custom AI Enrichments Done Right

What it does: Enrichment platform with native HubSpot sync and AI research agents.

My experience: The UI feels like Clay but cleaner and faster. The killer feature is custom AI columns – I asked it to identify which companies had security trust centers, and it nailed 100 rows in minutes. Their lookalike list builder from 3 seed companies returned surprisingly accurate results.

HubSpot users will love the auto-sync. Everything flows back to your CRM automatically.

The onboarding actually impressed me – clear checklist with credit incentives for completing steps. Rare to see that level of polish.

Pricing: Free tier with 500 credits. $99/month for 2,500 credits (phone = 5 credits). They'll match your remaining Clay credits 1:1.

Limitations: Far fewer integrations than Clay (no BuiltWith, no Bloomberry, no Crunchbase, etc.). You'll rely heavily on AI enrichments, which can miss. When I asked it to detect HRIS systems, it came up empty even for companies I knew used one. HubSpot-only for CRM sync.

Best for: HubSpot users who need custom research without Clay's complexity.

2. Airscale.io – Best Value Per Credit

What it does: List building and enrichment with waterfall contact data.

My experience: Simple UI (not pretty, but functional). Excels at building lists from scratch – Sales Navigator exports, LinkedIn post scrapers, Google Maps scraping all worked smoothly. I scraped financial advisors from Google Maps and got solid results.

The pricing is insane: $49/month for 4,000 credits ($0.01225 per credit) vs Clay's $149/month for 2,000 credits ($0.0745 per credit). That's 6x more credits per dollar.

Decent integration library (BuiltWith, Crunchbase, Similarweb). Waterfall enrichment only charges when they find valid data.

Pricing: $49/month for 4,000 credits. Phone numbers from $0.20.

Limitations: Some features don't work – the job posting search returned "Marketplace Manager" when I searched for "GTM Engineer." Free trial is severely limited (can't enrich a single contact without paying). No CRM integrations visible.

Best for: Solo founders building lists on a budget.

3. Persana.ai – Autopilot for Signal-Based Outreach

What it does: GTM orchestration platform with 75+ built-in signals and automated workflows.

My experience: This is for people who find Clay too manual. Persana tracks job changes, hiring trends, funding, website visits automatically – no manual column setup needed. The Autopilot feature watches for triggers and sends outreach or Slack alerts when timing is right.

I imported LinkedIn URLs and used "Enrich Full Person Profile." It generated career highlights, intro lines, personality-based selling tips, and icebreakers. Genuinely useful for crafting personalized outreach.

The signal tracking (job changes, hiring expansion, new
s/funding, technographics) is comprehensive.

Pricing: Free (50 credits, 50 emails, 5 phones), $68/month (24k credits/year), $151/month (60k credits/year). Requires demo to access.

Limitations: Credits burn fast (10 credits per phone). No self-serve trial.

Best for: Teams tired of manually monitoring signals and want automated workflows.

4. Apollo.io – The All-in-One Beast

What it does: Everything. Prospecting, enrichment, and outreach in one platform.

My experience: Apollo is for people who hate tool sprawl. It replaced my prospect database, enrichment tool, and sequencer.

The built-in database (275M contacts, 73M companies) is the real differentiator. I found 3,400 VPs of Sales at SaaS companies (50-500 employees) using filters for job title, tech stack, funding stage, and hiring activity. Clay makes you build lists from scratch – Apollo hands you a searchable universe.

Enrichment is dead simple. Upload CSV, Apollo fills in emails, phones, job titles, and firmographics from their database. They added waterfall enrichment recently – now it tries Apollo first, then falls back to Prospeo, ZoomInfo, or Lusha. My match rate jumped from 60% to 82%.

CRM integration is seamless. Connected to Salesforce, set auto-enrichment rules. New leads with incomplete data get filled automatically.

The workflow: Prospect → Enrich → Sequence → Track. All in one dashboard. No CSV juggling between tools.

Built-in dialer and LinkedIn automation included.

Pricing: Freemium model. Paid plans from $49/month on credit system.

Limitations: Not as flexible as Clay for data orchestration. You can't customize waterfall sequence, build conditional logic ("if 50+ employees, use ZoomInfo"), chain multiple data sources creatively, or use custom formulas. Apollo decides the enrichment flow for you.

If you need pure data flexibility and complex workflows, Clay wins. If you want simplicity and speed, Apollo wins.

Best for: Teams who want prospecting, enrichment, and outreach without juggling tools.

5. FullEnrich.com – Just Contact Data, Done Better

What it does: Waterfall contact enrichment across 15+ data providers.

My experience: FullEnrich does one thing: find emails and phone numbers. That's it. No list building, no workflows, no CRM syncing. Just contact data.
The waterfall approach queries Apollo, Hunter, Lusha, and 12+ other providers sequentially until it finds a match. Upload a CSV with names and companies, FullEnrich spits back a CSV with verified contacts.

I tested 4 contacts. Got 3 verified emails (75% match rate). The fourth failed because it detected a catch-all email domain. Each result shows verification status clearly.

Match rates were noticeably higher than using single providers. The interface is stupid simple – exactly what you want for a point solution.

Pricing: $29/month (500 credits), $55/month (1,000 credits), $400-$50k/month for scale.

Limitations: It's just contact enrichment. No CRM integrations (CSV only), no list building, no automation. You're manually uploading/downloading files.
Best for: Solo founders who just need to enrich a CSV with contact data and don't want complexity.

6. ZoomInfo.com – When You Need Enterprise-Grade Data

What it does: Enterprise B2B database with intent data and buying signals.

My experience: ZoomInfo is what you graduate to when you're doing serious volume. The database is massive (over 100M contacts, 14M companies) with depth that budget tools can't match – org charts, reporting structures, direct dials.

I used it to build ICPs at scale. The intent data is next-level – tracks website visits, content downloads, job changes, funding events, and technographics in real-time. You're not just finding contacts; you're finding contacts showing buying signals.

The data quality is noticeably better than Apollo or Clay enrichments. Direct dial accuracy is higher (they verify phones more aggressively). The Scoops feature surfaces company news, hiring trends, and leadership changes automatically.

Integration ecosystem is robust – native connections to Salesforce, HubSpot, Outreach, SalesLoft. Everything syncs automatically.

The Copilot feature (AI assistant) helps with account research and generates talking points based on recent company activity. Genuinely useful for enterprise sales.

Pricing: Not public. Expect $15k-$40k+ annually depending on seats and database access. Requires annual contract.

Limitations: Expensive. Overkill for early-stage startups or small teams. The learning curve is steeper than Apollo. UI feels enterprise-heavy (lots of features, but cluttered). You're locked into annual contracts with usage limits.

Best for: Funded startups (Series A+) or teams doing $1M+ in ARR who need accurate data at scale and can afford the investment.

Bottom Line

If you're bootstrapped: Airscale for list building, FullEnrich for contact enrichment.

If you're on HubSpot: Freckle.io hands down.

If you want signals automated: Persana.

If you hate tool sprawl: Apollo.io.

If you're scaling fast: ZoomInfo (but only if you can afford it).

Clay isn't going anywhere, but these alternatives prove you don't need to burn $700/week to build a solid pipeline. Try a few and see what fits your workflow.