Clay vs Koala in 2026: Koala Shut Down, Here's the Fix

Clay is a data enrichment and workflow automation tool still very much alive in 2026, pricing from $185/month for its Launch plan. Koala, the website visitor identification tool it's often compared against, shut down for good on September 30, 2025, after Cursor acqui-hired its founding team. If you're comparing them for a live purchase decision, only one option still exists.

Clay vs Koala in 2026: full comparison table

Clay is a live data enrichment platform starting at $185 a month. Koala, a website visitor identification tool, shut down on September 30, 2025, after Cursor acquired its team. Neither one replaces the other today. Compare Clay against active visitor-ID tools like Warmly, RB2B, and HubSpot's Breeze Intelligence instead.

Tool	Starting Price (2026)	Core Use Case	Status	Standout Feature
Clay	$185/mo (Launch, annual)	Data enrichment / waterfall workflow automation	Active	75+ data providers chained into one waterfall
Koala	Was ~$199/mo	Website visitor ID / intent signals	Discontinued Sept 30, 2025	Company + Slack alerts on ICP-fit visitors (pre-shutdown)
Warmly	$700/mo (Startup, up to $2M ARR)	Visitor ID + AI outbound orchestration	Active	65% company-level identification rate
RB2B	Free (150 resolutions/mo) or $79/mo Starter	Person-level US visitor ID	Active	5-20% person-level match rate on US traffic
HubSpot Breeze Intelligence	From $75/mo (credit add-on)	Company visitor ID + enrichment inside HubSpot	Active	Formerly Clearbit Reveal, now a native credit pack

How much does Clay cost in 2026, and what did Koala cost before shutting down?

Clay's March 2026 pricing overhaul introduced two self-serve plans: Launch at $185/month (2,500 Data Credits, 15,000 Actions) and Growth at $495/month (unlimited), both cheaper billed annually, per Clay's pricing page. A free plan caps at 100 Data Credits and 500 Actions. Legacy customers can stay on Starter ($149), Explorer ($349), or Pro ($800). Koala, before its September 2025 shutdown, started near $199/month, with a Growth tier reported around $350/month, per third-party benchmarks.

Clay is genuinely cheap for what it replaces. A $185/month Launch plan can out-enrich a $12,000+/year ZoomInfo seat for any team under 15 people running standard outbound lists.

Is Clay a replacement for Koala, or a completely different tool?

Clay and Koala never did the same job, even back when Koala existed. Clay pulls and cleans contact and company data across 75+ providers so you can build outbound lists, per Clay's enrichment documentation. Koala watched your website traffic and flagged which companies were already visiting, feeding warm accounts to sales reps. Confusing the two wastes a purchase decision on the wrong category entirely.

When should you actually use Clay in 2026?

Use Clay when the bottleneck is finding and cleaning contact data before outreach, not spotting who's already on your site. It earns its price for outbound-heavy teams running waterfalls across dozens of providers at once.

• You're building cold outbound lists and need emails, phones, or LinkedIn URLs waterfalled across dozens of providers instead of paying for one source that misses 40-50% of records.
• You run GTM ops for a 3-15 person team and can't justify a $25,000+/year ZoomInfo contract on Clay's $185/month Launch tier.
• You want dedupe, formatting, and conditional routing inside a spreadsheet-style canvas instead of stitching Zapier workflows by hand.

Clay: what works and what doesn't

• Waterfall enrichment routinely lands 80-95% email find rates versus 50-60% for single-source tools, per Clay's own product data.
• 75+ providers come pre-wired, so you're not managing a dozen separate API keys and invoices.
• A Google Sheets-style interface means a sales ops person can build a working enrichment flow without pulling in an engineer.
• Credit costs stack fast once you're running waterfalls across thousands of rows a month, and the 2026 Data Credit/Action split adds a second meter you have to watch.

What should you use instead of Koala in 2026?

If you still need Koala's actual job done, spotting which companies are on your site before they fill out a form, pick based on budget. RB2B's free plan gives 150 monthly company-level resolutions at zero cost, a real option for a 2-person GTM team. Warmly starts at $700/month and layers AI-driven outbound orchestration on top of a 65% company identification rate, per Warmly's benchmark data. Teams already paying for HubSpot Sales or Marketing Hub should just add Breeze Intelligence credits from $75/month instead of buying a fifth tool.

Frequently Asked Questions

Picking between a live tool and a dead one isn't really a decision, it's just due diligence. If you'd rather not manage five separate point tools (enrichment, visitor ID, verification, sending) and stitch them into one working outbound motion, that's what Modern Inbound does for clients running 500+ prospects a month. Talk to us about wiring the stack instead of researching it for another week.

By Rishabh Ambasta, Founder, Modern Inbound.