Comparison · QD vs Clay
Clay builds the workflow. We deliver the finished list.
Clay is a tool your team operates. We are a firm you brief once. This page sets the two side by side on what each one is, how contacts are verified, who has to run it and what it costs — with a source and a date on every figure.
- 92%+
- Deliverability target
- Stated guarantee · 2026
- 750
- Verified leads, Pilot
- 250 companies · 3 contacts each · 2026
- 5–7d
- Turnaround
- From a confirmed brief · 2026
The difference
A tool you operate, against a file you commission.
| Measure | Clay | Qualified Deals |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | An orchestration platform. You build a workflow that draws on 150+ data providers and runs multi-provider waterfalls. clay.com/pricing · checked 17 Aug 2026 | A research project. You brief a senior analyst once, and a finished file comes back. Pilot scope · 2026 |
| Verification | Automated enrichment across providers. Clay publishes no human verification step. clay.com/pricing · checked 17 Aug 2026 | Every contact is cross-checked by a person against LinkedIn and the company website before delivery, and the date of that check is recorded on the row. Delivery SOP stages 1–5 · 2026 |
| Who operates it | You do. The workflow is yours to build, run and maintain. Clay publishes no setup requirement, and includes a dedicated growth strategist on Enterprise. clay.com/pricing · checked 17 Aug 2026 | Nobody on your side. There is no workflow to build and nothing to keep running between projects. Pilot scope · 2026 |
| What you receive | A workflow that produces records each time you run it, against the credits it consumes. clay.com/pricing · checked 17 Aug 2026 | 750 verified leads across 250 companies, as XLSX and a CSV that imports cleanly, 5–7 days from a confirmed brief. Pilot scope · 2026 |
| Bounce policy | None stated on Clay’s published pricing page. clay.com/pricing · checked 17 Aug 2026 | Seven-day bounce replacement. Report above 8% inside the window and every bounced record is replaced, re-verified, within 5 working days. Stated guarantee · 2026 |
These are not competing versions of the same product. Clay is a tool you operate; we are a firm you commission. A team with a RevOps or growth engineer and a workflow already running gets things from Clay that we do not offer, and this page is not an argument against owning one.
Every Clay claim above is read from Clay’s own published pricing page on the date shown. We have not tested Clay’s output and publish no measurement of it.
How we verify
Brief, Source, Verify, QA and deliver.
| Stage | What happens | Artifact produced |
|---|---|---|
| 01 Brief | A 30-minute Project Brief call with a senior analyst — not an SDR — to scope the ICP, territory, titles, volume and timeline. Ten fields, all required before research begins. If the brief shows we are not a fit, we say so before any work starts. | The signed research brief |
| 02 Source | Analysts map the territory across twenty-plus sources — ZoomInfo, Apollo, Clay, LinkedIn Sales Navigator, Cognism, Lusha, Crunchbase, PitchBook and company websites — triangulated rather than exported. Accounts outside the brief are dropped here. | The raw master source sheet |
| 03 Verify | Every contact is cross-checked by a person against LinkedIn and the company website: current role confirmed, employer matched, email format validated. The date of that check is recorded on the row. SMTP-only verification is the floor, not the ceiling. | The LinkedIn cross-check log |
| 04 QA and deliver | A 10% spot-check by a second person, with zero QA failures permitted — anything that fails goes back to the analyst. Records that cannot be confirmed are removed, not shipped as Pending. Then a CRM-ready XLSX and CSV with a count summary. | The QA spot-check sheet |
What you receive
One workbook, four sheets, and a CSV that imports cleanly.
Delivered as QD_[Client]_[Package]_[YYYYMMDD].xlsx with a matching UTF-8 CSV for direct CRM import. Phone columns are formatted as text, so long numbers do not arrive as scientific notation.
1 · Read Me
Client, package, ICP summary, delivery date, record counts, the verification method, and the guarantee stated verbatim.
2 · Verified Leads
One row per person. Company, contact, exact title, LinkedIn URL, verified email, confirmation date, status.
3 · Companies
One row per company. Domain, employee band, HQ country, sector, and the accounts we excluded.
4 · Method
Sources used, the verification steps applied, the exclusions, and the QA sample size.
| Company | Contact | Title | Confirmed | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| N•••••• Systems | D. R••••• | VP Engineering | 2026-07-28 | Verified |
| C•••••• Labs | R. M••••• | Head of Infrastructure | 2026-07-29 | Verified |
| A••••••• Digital | S. T••••• | Director, Service Delivery | 2026-07-29 | Verified |
| V•••••• Cloud | J. P••••• | Chief Technology Officer | 2026-07-30 | Verified |
If you already run Clay
Three things buyers say first.
We use Clay to build our own enrichment workflows.
An orchestrator, not a source
Clay routes between third-party providers rather than holding the data itself, so a waterfall returns whatever those providers hold that day. The verification step still has to happen somewhere. We do it before you ever see the file.
Clay is more flexible — we can customise it.
Flexibility has a staffing cost
A workflow is a thing somebody owns: built, tuned and kept running as providers and formats change. On Clay that somebody is on your side. We hand over the finished, verified list, with no workflow to build or staff.
Isn’t Clay cheaper per contact?
Per contact, until it scales
Credit pricing moves with usage, and a workflow that enriches more fields across more providers spends more per record. A Pilot is $420 for 750 verified leads, fixed before it starts, with no credits to monitor.
Cost
A subscription you meter, against a fee you agree.
Clay’s figures are the published monthly list prices for Launch and Growth, read from clay.com/pricing on 17 August 2026. Clay lists lower rates for annual billing, a free tier below Launch, and a custom Enterprise tier above Growth. Both rows exclude tax.
Our own planning estimate for a Clay workflow running at scale is ₹7.2L a year and upward — roughly $720 a month once credit consumption is counted alongside the subscription. That is our figure, not a Clay list price, and it is the number worth comparing against a fixed project fee.
Figures outside USD are converted at the mid-market rates recorded for 16 August 2026. Our own prices are unchanged from the pricing page.
FAQ
What buyers ask when Clay is already in the stack.
Is Qualified Deals a Clay alternative, or does it work alongside Clay?
Either, and the honest answer depends on whether you have someone to run a workflow. If you do, Clay does things we do not — routing, enrichment across 150+ providers, logic you control — and a verified file from us can feed it. If you do not, a Clay subscription is a tool nobody is operating, and a fixed-price project gets you the same output without the build. We are not trying to replace a workflow that already works.
Do I need a RevOps person to use Qualified Deals?
No. The brief is a call, and the deliverable is a workbook. Nothing is configured on your side, there is no workflow to maintain between projects, and no one on your team has to learn a tool to get the file. That is the difference the page is about.
How does human verification differ from Clay’s waterfall enrichment?
A waterfall asks several providers in turn until one returns a value, so the answer is as current as whichever database answered. A researcher opens the person’s LinkedIn profile and the company website, confirms the name, the exact title and the current employer, and records the date of that check on the row. Anything that cannot be confirmed is removed rather than shipped. One is a routing decision; the other is a person looking.
Can I feed a Qualified Deals list into a Clay workflow I already run?
Yes. Delivery is a CRM-ready XLSX plus a UTF-8 CSV with a BOM, so it imports into Clay, HubSpot, Salesforce or any outbound stack, with field mapping agreed before delivery. Teams that run both usually use us for the verified base list and Clay for the enrichment they layer on top.
Related comparisons
Weighing more than one of these.
- A guarantee much like ours
- The closest comparison here. Both publish a number and attach a remedy to it — theirs returns a credit after the bounce, ours returns a re-verified record, and the check runs at a different point.
- A waterfall across 20+ sources
- They hold no database at all — they query other people’s until one answers. What their find rate measures, what it does not, and how a credit meter compares with a fixed scope.
Book a project brief
No workflow to build. Tell us who you sell to and the file comes back verified.
A senior researcher reads every brief and replies from a named address.