Clay alternatives for enterprise: what to use when you've outgrown Clay

Why Clay works until it doesn't

Clay is genuinely good at what it does. For a growth team that needs flexible enrichment workflows and doesn't have a dedicated RevOps function, Clay's waterfall enrichment and workflow builder can move fast. The credit model is approachable, and the community is active.

But at enterprise scale, several problems compound. Credit costs become unpredictable and hard to budget. There's no forward-deployed support -- when your enrichment breaks or your workflow logic needs updating, you're filing a support ticket. The data model is generic, not specific to your business. And critically: Clay stops at enrichment. It doesn't push results back into Salesforce automatically, run autonomous agent workflows, or give your team a way to interact with data without engineering help.

If you're evaluating Clay alternatives for enterprise, here's what to look for -- and what your options are.

What enterprise teams need that Clay doesn't provide

Before evaluating alternatives, it helps to be specific about where the gap is. Enterprise revenue teams typically run into these limitations:

• No reverse ETL. Clay enriches data in tables. Getting that data back into Salesforce requires a separate workflow, often built and maintained by a GTM engineer. At scale, this becomes a maintenance burden.

• Self-serve only. Clay has no implementation support. Enterprise deployments need someone who understands both the platform and your business, available in your Slack channel -- not a support ticket queue.

• Generic data model. Clay treats all data as flat tables. There's no concept of your account hierarchy, territory structure, or business-specific ICP definition built into the platform.

• Credit unpredictability. As enrichment volume scales, Clay's credit model becomes difficult to forecast. Enterprise procurement teams need predictable per-seat or per-record pricing, not a credit pool that depletes at variable rates.

• No autonomous agents. Clay requires manual trigger logic. It doesn't run workflows autonomously on real-time signals -- job changes, intent spikes, product usage events -- without a GTM engineer maintaining the tables.

The best Clay alternatives for enterprise in 2026

Lantern -- Revenue Data Platform built for enterprise

Lantern is the most direct Clay alternative for enterprise teams. Where Clay is a flexible enrichment tool that requires you to build everything, Lantern is a complete Revenue Data Platform that ships with the infrastructure already built.

The key differences: Lantern aggregates 150+ enrichment providers into a unified account model (not separate tables), deploys AI agents that run autonomously on real-time signals, and pushes enriched data back into Salesforce via bi-directional real-time sync -- no CSV export, no manual import. The Revenue Ontology layer means the platform understands your specific account hierarchies, territory logic, and ICP definitions -- not a generic schema.

The enterprise differentiator: every Lantern customer gets forward-deployed engineers who configure integrations, build agents, and optimize workflows in a dedicated Slack channel. You're in production within 3 weeks. The proof point that matters: $7.6M pipeline generated in the first 60 days for one enterprise customer.

Best for: VP RevOps and RevOps leaders at B2B SaaS companies with 50-5,000 employees who need enrichment, activation, and CRM hygiene in one platform without building and maintaining it themselves.

ZoomInfo -- For teams that want a bundled enterprise contract

ZoomInfo bundles contact data, intent signals, and some outreach capability into a single contract. For enterprise procurement teams that prefer a single vendor relationship, this is attractive. The tradeoff: ZoomInfo's data model is its own, not yours, and the platform is designed around ZoomInfo's workflow opinions rather than your business logic. Contract terms are typically multi-year with significant lock-in.

Best for: Enterprises that want a bundled solution and are comfortable with ZoomInfo's pricing model (~$15K+ per user annually).

Apollo.io -- For teams that haven't hit enterprise scale yet

Apollo is a strong all-in-one option for teams under ~50 reps. It combines contact data with outreach sequences, and G2 rankings consistently place it near the top for ease of use. The limitation: Apollo is built for the SMB and mid-market motion. At enterprise scale, the data model limitations and lack of implementation support become friction points.

Best for: Teams with 10-50 reps looking for an affordable Clay alternative before they've outgrown SMB tooling.

Cognism -- For EMEA-focused teams

Cognism's differentiator is phone-verified contact data with strong GDPR compliance coverage. For enterprise teams with heavy EMEA GTM motion, this is meaningful -- GDPR compliance isn't just a legal requirement, it's a signal of data quality. The limitation: Cognism doesn't close the activation loop the way a full Revenue Data Platform does.

Best for: Enterprise teams running primarily EMEA outbound who need compliance-first contact data.

How to evaluate Clay alternatives: the right questions

When evaluating vendors, the questions that matter most for enterprise:

• Does it push data back into my CRM automatically, or do I need to build that myself?

• What does implementation look like? Is there a team that owns the deployment, or am I self-serving?

• How does the platform handle my account hierarchy and territory structure?

• What's the pricing model at 200K+ records enriched per month?

• What happens when the workflow breaks at 2am on a Wednesday -- how do I get it fixed?

If those answers matter, the field narrows quickly.

If you're running an enterprise RevOps evaluation, Lantern's team can walk through how it compares to what you're using today.