$ man clay-wiki/actions-credits-dual-system

Before March 2026, Clay had one currency: credits. Everything you did cost credits. Simple. The new system splits that into two: Data Credits and Actions. Data Credits pay for enrichment data from Clay's marketplace. The providers, the waterfalls, the lookups. Actions pay for platform orchestration, anything where Clay does work on your behalf. The split lets Clay price data cheaper (50-90% cuts across top enrichments) while metering the orchestration separately. It's a bet that cheaper data drives more complex workflows, which drives more Actions consumption.

PATTERN

Data Credits are consumed when you use enrichment providers through Clay's marketplace. Apollo person search, email finders, firmographic data, technographics, intent signals. Each provider costs a specific number of Data Credits per row. Simple lookups cost 1-2 credits. Complex enrichments cost more. The costs dropped significantly in March 2026, with Clay claiming 50-90% reductions across the top 20 enrichments. If you're running enrichment waterfalls, the math improved. The data itself got cheaper.

PATTERN

Every enrichment run is an Action. Every Claygent call is an Action. Every HTTP API execution, CRM push, and webhook trigger is an Action. One row enriched = one Data Credit charge + one Action charge. That's the dual currency in practice. What does NOT cost an Action: importing rows, running formulas, manual edits, column transformations. Formulas remain free. This is important. If you can solve something with a formula instead of an enrichment or Claygent call, you save both currencies. The formula-first principle from the old credit system now saves you double.

PRO TIP

Free gets 500 Actions/mo. Launch ($185) gets 15,000. Growth ($495) gets 40,000. Enterprise gets 100,000+. Clay says 90% of customers won't hit their Actions limit. But if you run heavy HTTP API workflows, Claygent research chains, or high-volume enrichment tables, you can burn through Actions faster than Data Credits. The scenario to watch: HTTP API calls. These used to cost one credit. Now they cost one Action AND the external API's own cost. If you make 5,000 HTTP calls per month for MX lookups, time APIs, or custom endpoints, that's 5,000 Actions just from HTTP. Add enrichments, Claygent, CRM syncs, and you can approach the Growth limit. Map your usage before switching plans.

PATTERN

The optimization priority stays the same, just applied to two numbers now. (1) Formula first. Zero cost on both currencies. Use formulas for title normalization, MX classification, scoring bins, name merging. (2) Single-provider over waterfall. One enrichment = one Action. A 3-provider waterfall = 3 Actions for one row, even if providers 2 and 3 find nothing new. Only waterfall when coverage demands it. (3) Account-first enrichment. Enrich 500 companies, then enrich contacts only at qualified companies. You spend Actions on qualification first, not on contacts you'll discard. (4) HTTP API calls in bulk. If you're making the same API call pattern across 1,000 rows, consider whether a Python script outside Clay can do it for zero Actions. (5) Monitor the ratio. Track your Actions consumption vs Data Credits. If Actions run out first, you have an orchestration-heavy workflow that might be cheaper to partially move to code.

PRO TIP

Before dual currency, the decision to move a workflow out of Clay was about credit cost vs time cost. Now there's a second meter. Every HTTP API call in Clay costs an Action. The same call from a Python script costs nothing. Every Claygent research task in Clay costs an Action plus Data Credits. The same research via Claude Code costs your subscription, which you're already paying. This doesn't mean leave Clay. It means be intentional about what stays in Clay (orchestration UI, visual workflows, team collaboration) and what moves to code (high-volume API calls, repetitive research, batch operations). The dual currency makes the boundary clearer.