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When it comes to sales data enrichment, Clay.run (now Clay.com) has established itself as a popular tool due to its ease of use and data enrichment capabilities. However, as businesses face challenges with budget constraints and scalability issues, it becomes essential to consider alternative solutions. In this blog post, we will explore three alternatives to Clay.run: Python, Data Fetcher (an Airtable extension), and Gigasheet. We will begin by examining the custom Python solution, followed by Data Fetcher, and conclude with Gigasheet.

A Python Solution: Power, Flexibility, and Cost-effectiveness:

For businesses with engineering resources in-house, writing custom Python code offers a highly flexible and cost-effective alternative to Clay.run. With Python’s extensive libraries and tools, businesses can create scripts that loop over large datasets and make requests to data brokers for enriching their sales data. This approach provides unparalleled customization, allowing businesses to tailor the solution to their specific needs. Moreover, Python is an open-source language, making it the most cost-effective option among the alternatives discussed here.


Of course, if you don’t have engineering in house, this would require hiring a contractor to write the Python script and perform the analysis. This is possible using freelance sites such as Upwork or Fiverr, but can take some time and introduces the human element to the data enrichment job. While you may hire the perfect analyst the first time, you may get your data enriched faster using one of the online tools below.

Data Fetcher: Easy-to-Use Extension for Airtable:

Data Fetcher, a popular extension for Airtable, presents another alternative to Clay.run. Designed with simplicity in mind, Data Fetcher allows users to easily enrich sales data from popular data providers with customer intelligence. The integration with Airtable makes it convenient for businesses already utilizing Airtable as their data management platform. Data Fetcher offers a user-friendly interface, enabling users to extract data from various sources and enrich it within the Airtable environment. It provides a relatively affordable option for businesses with moderate datasets, making it potentially the second least expensive alternative after Python.

The downsides of Data Fetcher include limits imposed by Airtable, such as 1,200 row limit for the free plan, and by Data Fetcher itself such as the 150 column limit. You may need to upgrade both accounts to meet your data requirements. Since Data fetcher is designed to handle all types of APIs, its UI may take some time to learn. However, once mastered, it is a powerful solution to data enrichment.

Gigasheet: Scalable, No-Code and Comprehensive:

Gigasheet emerges as a powerful alternative to Clay.run, Data Fetcher, and even custom Python solutions for running sales data enrichment api. Gigasheet is a highly scalable big data spreadsheet that supports billions of rows in a single sheet. With its scalability, Gigasheet addresses the limitations faced by Clay.run and Data Fetcher. Gigasheet specializes in handling large datasets, easily scaling to millions of rows, which makes it a reliable choice for businesses dealing with substantial amounts of sales data. In addition, Gigasheet offers a comprehensive set of analytic and spreadsheet capabilities, allowing businesses to perform data cleanup tasks, conduct in-depth analysis, and generate insightful reports. Its user-friendly interface makes it accessible to users of all skill levels.

Gigasheet’s custom enrichments support nearly any API, but it does require that they are accessible using a cURL request. Gigasheet does offer templates The UI has fewer options than Data Fetcher, which is a plus for learning how to use it, but it can be a hindrance when trying to use advanced options for certain APIs. However, due to only having to deal with one software solution versus two, Gigasheet offers the best no code data enrichment API solution at scale.

In Conclusion

When seeking alternatives to Clay.run for sales data enrichment, businesses have multiple options to consider. It is worth noting that users of any of these alternatives will need to purchase API keys directly from data providers, but when operating at large scale additional discounts are available. 

Custom Python solutions provide power, flexibility, and cost-effectiveness, making them ideal for businesses with engineering resources and specific customization needs. Data Fetcher, as an Airtable extension, offers a straightforward and easy-to-use solution for enriching data within the Airtable environment. However, Data Fetcher suffers from scalability issues when dealing with large datasets. For businesses requiring scalability, affordability, and comprehensive analytic and spreadsheet capabilities, Gigasheet is a solid choice. Gigasheet easily handles large datasets, scales to millions of rows, and provides a wide range of data cleanup tools and analysis features. Its user-friendly interface ensures accessibility for users of all skill levels. 

Ultimately, the choice among these alternatives depends on factors such as budget, dataset size, coding proficiency, customization requirements, and scalability needs. By considering Python, Data Fetcher, or Gigasheet, businesses can find the alternative to Clay that best suits their sales data enrichment needs, ensuring accurate and insightful analysis for driving business growth.