Compare Apify vs. Clay

Apify provides the infrastructure developers need to build, deploy, and monetize web automation tools. The platform centers on Apify Store, a marketplace featuring 10,000+ community-built Actors. These are serverless programs that scrape websites, automate browser tasks, and power AI agents. Developers create Actors using JavaScript, Python, or Crawlee (Apify's open-source crawling library), then publish them to the Store. When other users run your Actor, you earn money. Apify manages the infrastructure, handles payments, and processes monthly payouts to thousands of active developers. Apify Store offers ready-to-use solutions for common use cases: extracting data from Amazon, Google Maps, and social platforms; monitoring prices; generating leads; and much more. Under the hood, Actors automatically manage proxy rotation, CAPTCHA solving, JavaScript-heavy pages, and headless browser orchestration. The platform scales on demand with 99.95% uptime and maintains SOC2, GDPR, and CCPA compliance. For workflow automation, Apify connects to Zapier, Make, n8n, and LangChain. The platform also offers an MCP server, enabling AI assistants like Claude to discover and invoke Actors programmatically.

Clay is the AI-driven data marketplace and orchestration layer that powers modern go-to-market teams. Clay enables teams to find and qualify prospects with AI agents and intent signals, enrich their CRM with best-in-class accuracy and fill rates from 150+ data providers and AI, and orchestrate GTM workflows such as ABM, outbound, and pre-call meeting notes. Over 5,000+ companies, like OpenAI, Canva, Anthropic, and Rippling, use it to power everything from recurring CRM enrichment to targeted outreach. Find accounts with a burning need for your product. Analyze your closed-won list of top customers to narrow your ICP and find lookalikes of your best fit customers from multiple sources. Use AI to build the most sophisticated scoring and qualification logic. Continuously source new qualified leads so sales and marketing teams can continue to take actions such as creating Ads or launching outbound. Enrich with accuracy no single provider can match. Trusted data improves every part of your GTM engine. Clay’s waterfall enrichment approach across 150+ data sources combines multiple providers to result in higher fill rates at lower cost. Automatically run enrichments and sync data directly to your CRM or data warehouse while avoiding duplicates. The results of waterfalling providers speak for themselves: OpenAI doubled their inbound lead enrichment coverage rates and Anthropic tripled their inbound lead match rate. Orchestrate plays that convert accounts from aware to closed. Score accounts by fit and engagement, then build ABM tiers that move prospects through your funnel. When accounts hit intent thresholds—pricing page visits, job changes, webinar attendance—alert reps instantly or trigger multi-channel campaigns at scale including outbound with Clay’s sequencer.