Agent skill · marketing growth · jeremylongshore
clay-cost-tuning
Optimize Clay credit spending with provider key management, waterfall
Why this skill is useful
Provides specific strategies and code snippets for optimizing Clay API costs that the AI wouldn't reliably generate on its own.
What it needs
Requires clay account access. About 4k tokens when loaded. Last updated 2026-08-07. 2,604 stars on the source repository.
What this skill does
Clay Cost Tuning Overview Reduce Clay data enrichment spending by connecting your own API keys (70-80% savings), optimizing waterfall depth, improving input data quality, and implementing budget controls. Clay's March 2026 pricing split credits into Data Credits and Actions, changing the optimization calculus. Prerequisites Clay account with visibility into credit consumption Understanding of which enrichment columns are in your tables Access to Clay Settings > Plans & Billing Instructions Step 1: Connect Your Own Provider API Keys (Biggest Savings) This is the single most impactful cost reduction. Clay charges 0 Data Credits when you use your own API keys: Provider Clay-Managed Cost Own Key Cost Annual Savings (10K rows/mo) ---------- ------------------- ------------- ------------------------------ Apollo 2 credits/lookup 0 credits ~240K credits/year Clearbit 2-5 credits 0 credits ~360K credits/year Hunter.io 2 credits 0 credits ~240K credits/year Prospeo 2 credits 0 credits ~240K credits/year People Data Labs 3 credits 0 credits ~360K credits/year ZoomInfo 5-13 credits 0 credits ~1M+ credits/year Setup: Go to Settings > Connections in Clay, click Add Connection, and paste your provider API key. All enrichments using that provider will consume 0 Clay credits (1 Action is still consumed per enrichment). Step 2: Optimize Waterfall Enrichment Depth Each waterfall step costs credits (if using Clay-managed keys) and time: March 2026 change: Failed lookups no longer cost Data Credits. This makes wider waterfalls less expensive than before, since you only pay when data is actually found. …
How to use it
Reference it in AdaL, Claude Code, Cursor or any coding agent — nothing to install:
@skills jeremylongshore/clay-cost-tuning