Enrichment cost calculator
The build-vs-buy question for lead enrichment, with the arithmetic shown. Every assumption is visible and editable in the panel at the bottom, because a cost model you can't inspect is just a marketing claim with a chart on it.
No API calls. Pure arithmetic, runs in your browser.
Enrichment cost calculator
What a credit-based platform costs versus running the same waterfall yourself — at your volume, with your fields.
The share your free source misses. This is the number that decides the answer — and the number most teams have never measured.
Credit-based platform (Clay-style)
$949
40,000 credits/mo
Custom pipeline (scraping + direct APIs)
$550
$400 fixed + usage
At 10,000 leads/month, custom is $399 cheaper per month.
Platforms charge for flexibility. Past ~4k leads/month of stable workflow, you're renting a for-loop.
Get this as a model you can edit
A working spreadsheet, not a screenshot: every assumption in its own cell and every result a formula, so swapping in your real quoted rates recalculates the whole thing. Plus the one-page build-vs-buy checklist — core-vs-commodity, unit economics at target volume, rate of change. Downloads immediately.
Stored: what you type above, plus any campaign tag and referring page already in this URL. Not stored: your IP, cookies, or any device fingerprint. Used to email you this one thing and possibly follow up once — not added to a drip sequence.
How this works, and every number it assumes
Two cost curves. The platform charges a plan fee plus credits per row, so its cost rises with volume forever. A custom system carries a fixed monthly cost — infrastructure and the engineering time to keep it alive — and a marginal cost per lead that is close to nothing, because scraping a Google Business Profile is close to free. Fixed-plus-cheap beats zero-plus-expensive, but only after enough volume to absorb the fixed part. Before that point, building is the wrong call.
The fallback slider is the honest variable. Paid data is only bought for records the free source missed, so that percentage drives most of the marginal cost of the custom path.
| Platform plan | $349/mo |
|---|---|
| Credits included | 10,000 |
| Overage per credit | $0.020 |
| Custom fixed cost | $400/mo |
| Scrape per lead | $0.002 |
| Paid fallback per record | $0.03 |
These are representative, not quoted. Your plan tier, your negotiated rate, and your engineers' time all move the breakeven. The shape of the curve is the argument; the exact crossing point is only as good as the six numbers above.