Hi all!

·Apr 11, 2026 07:59 PM·

Hi all! I just ran a comparison between Clay and Zoominfo on companies search. Apples to apples, I looked at all companies (excluding government), 1,000 employees and up in Canada, United States, UK, Australia. I noticed that zoominfo had about 10K more 'companies' than Clay. Wondering if anyone knows if there is a good explanation for that? For instance, is it just because Clay shows parent companies where as zoominfo has more discreet business units? Would hate to think that Clay is missing that many companies.

9 comments

· Sorted by Oldest

Pat H.
·
·
What are you using to search in Clay?
Daniel M.
·
·
Just using the standard find companies
Amrita B.
·
·
I’d recommend starting with a smaller sample set, perhaps one U.S. state, to make the comparison easier and more controlled. Also, keep the query logic as aligned as possible by including only headquarters and excluding subsidiaries, sister companies, and out-of-business companies. That should give you a much clearer read on whether there is a true discrepancy in the data.
Pat H.
·
·
I’d imagine that it's an issue with subsidiaries and country HQs
Jared R.
·
·
Dive into some of the delta and see the commonalities - try searching directly for them in clay too
Stefan F.
·
·
Daniel M. my friends over at GraphIQ.ai can definitely give you an explanation as to why that’s happening and then also show you the most impressive data tool I’ve ever seen. They’re not just aggregating regurgitated data because they do their own scraping including news outlets and have everything built into an insane graph instead of the generic database structure.
Jai T.
·
·
Clay may also be retaining companies with zero matched employees. Ex. People data labs has 76m companies, 22m have at least 1 employee in their data set. Clay had 44m last I checked, so my guess is both subsidiaries/m&a + companies with no employees
Pranshu J.
·
·
I'd love to take a stab at it Daniel M.. ZoomInfo is one of the oldest databases out there. After it got acquired by DiscoveryOrg, they also became the largest B2B databases on the planet. So, if you're comparing only in terms of the database size, yes, ZoomInfo has the largest (only closest competitor is LinkedIn). Clay started building their databases since 2023, and are growing at a decent pace. Yes, there's a significant ground to cover, but they barely are competing against ZoomInfo. Now, if you want to go a little deeper, ZoomInfo has the worst accuracy and most people know this, but because most companies pay such hefty fees to them, they are okay with using more database providers along side ZoomInfo. Clay on the other hand, has much better accuracy than any database provider (most of their database is directly tied back to LinkedIn and combination of data providers). Also, when you pull any company or contact data, you can run enrichments to get more recent data overall (I'm talking only in terms of Raw enrichment built inside Clay, and not for emails or phone numbers using 3rd party providers). ZoomInfo claims to have fixed their database accuracy, but I have manually tested their database (with sample size of 20,000 contacts from the US across different industries and companies, and barely 3,000 contacts came out clean and accurate) which was way far from what they claim. Besides, for someone who can afford ridiculously expensive ZoomInfo, they must include Clay to their tech-stack as well. Here's how I'd use ZoomInfo, Apollo, or any other database providers: I would only use them for raw data. Export the data from their platform, push them to Clay for built-in enrichment and go from there. This way, you get far better accuracy than what you'd get across these platforms.
Sourabh
·
·
Daniel M. what was the total number of contacts on zoominfo? 10k more of less in context of 240k contacts is a small variation... also this could be due to industry categorization of non-profit or govt organizations...

Hi all! | RevGenius

Pat H.
·
·
What are you using to search in Clay?
Daniel M.
·
·
Just using the standard find companies
Amrita B.
·
·
I’d recommend starting with a smaller sample set, perhaps one U.S. state, to make the comparison easier and more controlled. Also, keep the query logic as aligned as possible by including only headquarters and excluding subsidiaries, sister companies, and out-of-business companies. That should give you a much clearer read on whether there is a true discrepancy in the data.
Pat H.
·
·
I’d imagine that it's an issue with subsidiaries and country HQs
Jared R.
·
·
Dive into some of the delta and see the commonalities - try searching directly for them in clay too
Stefan F.
·
·
Daniel M. my friends over at GraphIQ.ai can definitely give you an explanation as to why that’s happening and then also show you the most impressive data tool I’ve ever seen. They’re not just aggregating regurgitated data because they do their own scraping including news outlets and have everything built into an insane graph instead of the generic database structure.
Jai T.
·
·
Clay may also be retaining companies with zero matched employees. Ex. People data labs has 76m companies, 22m have at least 1 employee in their data set. Clay had 44m last I checked, so my guess is both subsidiaries/m&a + companies with no employees
Pranshu J.
·
·
I'd love to take a stab at it Daniel M.. ZoomInfo is one of the oldest databases out there. After it got acquired by DiscoveryOrg, they also became the largest B2B databases on the planet. So, if you're comparing only in terms of the database size, yes, ZoomInfo has the largest (only closest competitor is LinkedIn). Clay started building their databases since 2023, and are growing at a decent pace. Yes, there's a significant ground to cover, but they barely are competing against ZoomInfo. Now, if you want to go a little deeper, ZoomInfo has the worst accuracy and most people know this, but because most companies pay such hefty fees to them, they are okay with using more database providers along side ZoomInfo. Clay on the other hand, has much better accuracy than any database provider (most of their database is directly tied back to LinkedIn and combination of data providers). Also, when you pull any company or contact data, you can run enrichments to get more recent data overall (I'm talking only in terms of Raw enrichment built inside Clay, and not for emails or phone numbers using 3rd party providers). ZoomInfo claims to have fixed their database accuracy, but I have manually tested their database (with sample size of 20,000 contacts from the US across different industries and companies, and barely 3,000 contacts came out clean and accurate) which was way far from what they claim. Besides, for someone who can afford ridiculously expensive ZoomInfo, they must include Clay to their tech-stack as well. Here's how I'd use ZoomInfo, Apollo, or any other database providers: I would only use them for raw data. Export the data from their platform, push them to Clay for built-in enrichment and go from there. This way, you get far better accuracy than what you'd get across these platforms.
Sourabh
·
·
Daniel M. what was the total number of contacts on zoominfo? 10k more of less in context of 240k contacts is a small variation... also this could be due to industry categorization of non-profit or govt organizations...