--- title: Clay compared with a personal contact book · PeopleBlade description: Clay builds and enriches prospect lists for sales teams, with paid plans from $167 a month. PeopleBlade is a free contact book for people you already know. canonical_url: https://peopleblade.com/compare/clay last_updated: 2026-09-26T00:00:00.000Z --- # PeopleBlade compared with Clay Clay is a go-to-market data platform that teams use to build and enrich prospect lists. PeopleBlade is a personal contact book for the people you already know. Both get called CRMs, but choosing between them usually means deciding whether you need a sales tool or an address book. ## What Clay does Clay is a hosted data platform for go-to-market work. Teams build tables of companies and people, enrich them through waterfall lookups across a marketplace of more than 200 providers, track signals such as job changes, and feed the results to outreach: a native email sequencer, ad audiences, and CRM sync. Claygent is its AI researcher, and webhook, HTTP-API, and MCP automation cover the tooling side, with Clay's own API reserved for Enterprise. The pricing page lists a free plan with unlimited seats and tables of up to 200 rows, then Launch listed from $167 a month and Growth from $446 a month, with usage expanding above those starting points, and custom Enterprise pricing. Exporting a table is a first-class feature: Tools → Export opens a modal that downloads a CSV, and past exports stay listed under Available Exports. [Clay's pricing](https://www.clay.com/pricing) · [Clay University's export lesson](https://university.clay.com/lessons/export-getting-your-lists-out-of-clay) ## What PeopleBlade does PeopleBlade is a personal contact book. It combines the people already in your macOS Contacts, Google Contacts, Beeper, WhatsApp, iMessage interaction metadata, and LinkedIn, Instagram, and X exports into one SQLite file on your computer. It records where each detail came from and lets you review each suggested merge before it happens. Private notes sit beside each person. Your agent works the book through `peopleblade` JSON commands and can receive one person's background as a packet, and optional hosted research fills in a selected contact's public details for prepaid credits. PeopleBlade has no list building, enrichment waterfall, sequencer, or team workspace. Public CLI · npm 0.6.0. Install it with `bun add --global @hraness/peopleblade@0.6.0` on macOS or Linux. [Read the contact-book guide](https://peopleblade.com/guide) · [See every supported source](https://peopleblade.com/sources) ## How they compare Clay finds and works new prospects for a team. PeopleBlade keeps track of the relationships one person already has. The table compares them on the points people ask about. | Aspect | Clay | PeopleBlade | | --- | --- | --- | | Purpose | Build and enrich prospect lists for a go-to-market team, then act on them | Keep one private book of the people you already know | | Who it is for | GTM teams, sales reps, and RevOps running campaigns | One person, and the agents that work for them | | Records | Companies and people assembled into tables for a campaign, with a free tier capped at 200 rows per table | Your contacts, combined from the accounts and archives you use, with no row cap | | Enrichment | Waterfall enrichment across a 200-plus provider marketplace, signals such as job changes, and Claygent AI research | Optional hosted research on one selected contact at a time, cited and prepaid per contact, or your own agent | | Outreach | A native email sequencer, ad-audience pushes, and CRM sync on paid tiers | None; PeopleBlade never sends outreach | | Cost | A free plan for small tables; paid plans listed from $167 a month for Launch and $446 a month for Growth; Enterprise is custom | Free and MIT licensed; optional hosted research is prepaid per contact | | Agent access | Webhook and HTTP-API automation on paid tiers; Clay's own API unlocks at Enterprise | Local JSON CLI commands, one-person packets for an agent, and an approved-device API over synced contacts | | Getting data out | Tools → Export → Download CSV writes a table to a CSV file, with an export history | The SQLite file is yours outright; synced contacts also export as CSV through the approved-device API | ## How to bring a Clay list into PeopleBlade If a Clay table holds people you want to keep as contacts rather than prospects, export it first: choose Tools → Export on the table and download the CSV. PeopleBlade has no generic CSV importer, so the file needs one stop on the way. Either import the CSV into Google Contacts and run `peopleblade google sync --auth gmail-main --json`, or convert it to vCards, load them into macOS Contacts, and run `peopleblade contacts sync --json`. Campaign fields that do not map to names, organizations, titles, birthdays, emails, and phone numbers do not carry over. [Set up your contact book](https://peopleblade.com/guide#start) ## Which to choose Choose Clay if the work is outbound: prospect lists, enrichment from many providers, sequences, and CRM handoff for a team that measures pipeline. Choose PeopleBlade if the work is keeping track of people you know, in one free, private book on your computer that your agent can search and annotate. If you want a cheaper Clay for personal use, PeopleBlade covers only the address-book part. ## Questions ### Can PeopleBlade replace Clay? Only if you were using Clay as a personal address book. PeopleBlade cannot build prospect lists, run enrichment waterfalls, score signals, or send sequences. ### Can I import a Clay CSV into PeopleBlade? Not directly, because there is no generic CSV or vCard import. Put the CSV through Google Contacts or macOS Contacts first, then run the matching PeopleBlade sync command. Fields beyond ordinary contact details stay behind. ### Does PeopleBlade do enrichment like Clay? Only one person at a time. Hosted research looks up one contact you select, cites its sources, and costs prepaid credits per contact, or your own agent can research a one-person packet. There is no bulk enrichment over a table. ### Is Clay free like PeopleBlade? Clay has a free plan limited to small tables of 200 rows; paid team plans are listed from $167 a month. PeopleBlade's local CLI and workspace are free and MIT licensed with no row limit, and only optional hosted research costs anything. ## Sources Compared facts were read from each product's own pages on September 26, 2026. - [Clay pricing: free tier, Launch, Growth, and Enterprise](https://www.clay.com/pricing), Clay, checked 2026-09-26 - [Clay University: Getting your lists out of Clay](https://university.clay.com/lessons/export-getting-your-lists-out-of-clay), Clay University, checked 2026-09-26 - [Clay: build systems to grow revenue](https://www.clay.com), Clay, checked 2026-09-26