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Clay or LeadMagic for enrichment in a workflow
A straight comparison of Clay and LeadMagic for enriching rows inside an automated workflow, answered on the same seven dimensions as every other compare page here. Mamba Labs builds the Apify actors here, Prospect Engine included, and the page says where it is the wrong answer.
If you only read one part
LeadMagic is an endpoint. Clay is a workspace. LeadMagic is often a column inside Clay, which tells you these are not really competing for the same slot.
Dimension by dimension
| Clay | LeadMagic | Prospect Engine | |
|---|---|---|---|
| What it actually does | Builds and enriches a list in a table, with each column calling a provider and falling through to the next. | Answers one enrichment question per call: an email, a mobile, a LinkedIn URL, a company from a domain. | Takes a market definition or a domain list and returns enriched company and contact rows. |
| Coverage and hit rate | The widest provider catalog anywhere, and a waterfall that tries them in the order you set. | Broad rather than deep. It covers mobiles and B2B profile lookups that most email finders skip. | Public sources, read directly, with the field's origin on the row. |
| What it costs | Credits, spent per column run, and a run that returns nothing still costs on most providers. | One credit pool spent across every endpoint, so a mobile and an email draw on the same balance. | Cents per row, charged on a returned row rather than on an attempt. |
| How it fits a workflow | The table is the workflow. Exports and webhooks push the finished rows onward. | An API and native steps in Clay. It is designed to be one column in somebody else's table. | One API call, or an HTTP column in Clay, and finished rows come back. |
| Where the data comes from | Other people's data, resold through one interface, plus whatever you point its agent at. | Aggregated providers behind one interface, with the source not named per field. | The public web and public registers, named per field. |
| What it takes to set up | An afternoon to a first useful table, longer before the credit cost stops surprising you. | Take the key and call it. There is nothing else to it. | Point it at a market or a list of domains and run it. |
| Where it stops | You cannot run your own code in it, so an unusual step is a step you cannot build. | No table, no list building, no interface worth working in. It is an endpoint, on purpose. | It is not a table. Reviewing and editing rows is something you do elsewhere. |
The same seven questions are asked on every compare page here, in this order, so two of these pages can be read against each other.
Who wins what
- Clay wins on coverage and hit rate, how it fits a workflow. A spreadsheet that calls a hundred data providers, one column at a time.
- LeadMagic wins on what it actually does, what it takes to set up. A set of small enrichment endpoints sold as one credit pool.
- Prospect Engine wins on what it costs. One call that finds the companies, enriches them and returns finished rows.
- Nobody wins on where the data comes from, where it stops. Clay and LeadMagic give the same answer on those, and we are not going to invent a difference.
Try them yourself
The honest answer
If a person needs to look at the rows, argue with them and fix them, you want Clay and LeadMagic will not do. If the rows go straight into a system and nobody opens them, Clay is an expensive way to make an API call and LeadMagic is the cheaper one. The strong reason to hold LeadMagic separately is mobile numbers, which it covers and most enrichment stacks do not. Running both is common and sensible: Clay for the work a human does, a direct endpoint for the work a script does.
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