Clay vs Instantly
Which one do AI engines recommend, and how do they differ on price, fit and features?
The short answer
Instantly is the stronger AI pick in Sales Engagement: it has a visibility score of 10.1 versus 2.9 for Clay, and ranks ahead in 100% of the answers that name both.
Choose Clay if…
- You want a free plan to start
- AI answers describe it more positively (33% vs 28% positive)
- You need SOC 2 Type II or ISO 27001 or GDPR or CCPA coverage
- You prefer a larger, established vendor (1,001–5,000 employees)
Choose Instantly if…
- You want the brand AI engines rank higher (10.1 vs 2.9)
- You want a lower entry price ($47 vs $167)
- Flat tiers pricing suits your budget better than usage-based
- Cost-effective platform for cold email outreach
AI visibility side by side
Latest weekly run · Nov 3
| Metric | Clay | Instantly |
|---|---|---|
| Visibility score | 2.9% | 10.1% |
| Change vs last week | down−1.5% | up+0.1% |
| Rank in Sales Engagement | #25 | #9 |
| Share of voice | 1.2% | 3% |
| Mentions this run | 9 | 19 |
| Positive in AI answers | 33% | 28% |
The stronger value in each row is marked with a ✓.
Visibility score trend
Weekly runs over the last 60 days
Clay −1.5000000000000004pp · Instantly +0.09999999999999964pp over 1 weekly runs.
Engine by engine
Instantly leads on 3 of 3 engines
Head to head in AI answers
2 engine answers name both brands
| Prompt | Engine | Clay | Instantly |
|---|---|---|---|
| Best sales engagement platform for startups | ChatGPT | #8 | #5 |
| Best sales engagement platform for startups | Perplexity | #8 | #4 |
Features, pricing & fit
| Dimension | Clay | Instantly |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing model | Usage-based | Flat tiers |
| Entry price | Free; paid from $167 / mo | $47 / mo |
| Free plan | Yes | No |
| Deployment | — | Web-based |
| Integrations | — | 50+ |
| Compliance | SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001, GDPR, CCPA | — |
| Support | Priority support queue on Growth plan, Dedicated Slack channel on Enterprise plan, Dedicated growth strategist on Enterprise plan | Chat support, Premium live support, Dedicated account manager and shared Slack channel on Enterprise plans |
| Founded | 2017 | 2021 |
| Headquarters | New York City, NY, United States | Sheridan, Wyoming, United States |
| Employees | 1,001–5,000 | 51–200 |
| Funding | Series B Expansion | Bootstrapped |
| Best for | GTM engineers and revenue teams that build their own prospecting, enrichment and outbound workflows. | Small teams, agencies and freelancers running cold email outbound at scale. |
Plans side by side
Clay
Instantly
Pros and cons
Themes from the AI answers that mention each brand
Clay
Profile in progress.
Instantly
- Cost-effective platform for cold email outreach
- Strong for high-volume cold email outbound and lead generation
- Deliverability, warm-up and sending infrastructure
- Good for agencies managing many sending accounts
- Highest G2 rating among sales engagement platforms
- Narrow focus on cold email rather than an all-in-one platform
- Not a complete CRM or full sales engagement suite
Data collected ·ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Mode·coverage 98.8%·next run
Cite as: SlateIndex, “Clay vs Instantly”, https://slateindex.ai/compare/clay-vs-instantly, data of Nov 3, 2026. Licence: CC BY 4.0.