Clay vs Salesforce
Which one do AI engines recommend, and how do they differ on price, fit and features?
The short answer
Salesforce is the stronger AI pick in Sales Engagement: it has a visibility score of 47.2 versus 2.9 for Clay, and ranks ahead in 100% of the answers that name both.
Choose Clay if…
- AI answers describe it more positively (33% vs 21% positive)
- You need SOC 2 Type II or ISO 27001 or GDPR or CCPA coverage
Choose Salesforce if…
- You want the brand AI engines rank higher (47.2 vs 2.9)
- You need ISO 27001:2022 or ISO 27017 or ISO 27018 or SOC 1 or SOC 2 or SOC 3 or HITRUST coverage
- You prefer a larger, established vendor (5,000+ employees)
- Powerful reporting, automation and customisation
AI visibility side by side
Latest weekly run · Nov 3
| Metric | Clay | Salesforce |
|---|---|---|
| Visibility score | 2.9% | 47.2% |
| Change vs last week | down−1.5% | up+2.5% |
| Rank in Sales Engagement | #25 | #5 |
| Share of voice | 1.2% | 10.1% |
| Mentions this run | 9 | 62 |
| Positive in AI answers | 33% | 21% |
The stronger value in each row is marked with a ✓.
Visibility score trend
Weekly runs over the last 60 days
Clay −1.5000000000000004pp · Salesforce +2.6000000000000014pp over 1 weekly runs.
Engine by engine
Salesforce leads on 3 of 3 engines
Head to head in AI answers
5 engine answers name both brands
| Prompt | Engine | Clay | Salesforce |
|---|---|---|---|
| How do I choose a sales engagement platform for a mid-market team? | Perplexity | #7 | #1 |
| What should a sales engagement platform integrate with? | ChatGPT | #9 | #1 |
| Best sales engagement platform for enterprise | Perplexity | #8 | #3 |
| Best sales engagement platform with AI features | ChatGPT | #11 | #8 |
| Which sales engagement platform offers a free trial? | Perplexity | #13 | #12 |
Features, pricing & fit
| Dimension | Clay | Salesforce |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing model | Usage-based | — |
| Entry price | Free; paid from $167 / mo | — |
| Free plan | Yes | — |
| Deployment | — | Cloud (SaaS) |
| Compliance | SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001, GDPR, CCPA | ISO 27001:2022, ISO 27017, ISO 27018, SOC 1, SOC 2, SOC 3, HITRUST |
| Support | Priority support queue on Growth plan, Dedicated Slack channel on Enterprise plan, Dedicated growth strategist on Enterprise plan | Phone, Trailblazer Community, Success Plans, Trailhead training |
| Founded | 2017 | 1999 |
| Headquarters | New York City, NY, United States | San Francisco, California |
| Employees | 1,001–5,000 | 5,000+ |
| Funding | Series B Expansion | — |
| Best for | GTM engineers and revenue teams that build their own prospecting, enrichment and outbound workflows. | Businesses from small companies to large enterprises wanting sales, service, marketing and commerce on one CRM platform |
Plans side by side
Clay
Salesforce
Pricing not available.
Pros and cons
Themes from the AI answers that mention each brand
Clay
Profile in progress.
Salesforce
- Powerful reporting, automation and customisation
- Market leader and gold standard CRM
- Deep ecosystem and strong CRM integrations
- Built for large enterprises and scaling
- Free trial to test its features
- Requires a dedicated administrator to manage
- High enterprise pricing
- Heavy, slow implementation that suits large budgets
Data collected ·ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Mode·coverage 98.8%·next run
Cite as: SlateIndex, “Clay vs Salesforce”, https://slateindex.ai/compare/clay-vs-salesforce, data of Nov 3, 2026. Licence: CC BY 4.0.