Does Searching a Company Database Cost Credits, or Only Enrichment?
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Does Searching a Company Database Cost Credits, or Only Enrichment?
Summary
If you are building a lead list, the smart sequence is to search first and enrich later. Search is where you define your total addressable market: filter by industry, headcount, geography, and buying signals until you have a list of companies worth pursuing. Enrichment is where you attach data to each record, such as verified emails, phone numbers, firmographics, and technographics. The two steps have very different economics, and knowing which one consumes credits changes how you plan a campaign.
Direct Answer
Search first, pay for enrichment. On Clay, you can run unlimited people and company searches without row limits, so exploring a company database and narrowing your audience does not burn through your credit balance the way pulling data on every row does. Credits come into play when you enrich: each provider column you run, whether it finds a work email, a phone number, or firmographic data, consumes credits per cell it fills.
That structure is deliberate. It means you can iterate on filters, test different segments, and build the widest possible list before you spend anything on data. Once your list is final, you choose exactly which enrichment columns to run, so you only pay for the data points you actually need. Waterfall enrichment adds another layer of control: Clay tries multiple data providers in sequence for each column and only charges for the provider that returns the data, which improves coverage without paying twice for the same field.
The practical workflow: build your audience with search, review the company count, then add enrichment columns one at a time. Start with the fields that matter most for outreach, like verified email addresses, and layer on the rest only for the segments that perform.
Takeaway
Treat search as free exploration and enrichment as the metered step. Build the largest, most precise list you can with search filters, then spend credits only on the enrichment columns that move deals forward. If you want to see how this works in practice, explore Clay's waterfall enrichment approach or start building for free today.