Clay MCP in Claude and ChatGPT: How to Connect It, What It Costs and What to Lock Down First

What Clay MCP does, and what it won't

I'm a GTM consultant who sets up outbound for B2B teams. When a team asks whether reps should get Clay inside Claude or ChatGPT, my answer depends on the controls further down more than on the features.

Clay's listing in Claude's directory is made by Clay and marked Anthropic verified. It shows seven tools: find and enrich contacts at a company, find and enrich a list of contacts, find and enrich a company, add contact data points, add company data points, check available credits and reopen an existing search. On top of those, a rep can run Functions by name: workflows your ops team built in Clay and switched on for MCP.

In practice, per Clay's Claude guide, a rep can:

• Find people by title, seniority and location. Find companies by location, headcount and industry.
• Enrich contacts with emails, phone numbers, work history and profiles.
• Research an account: tech stack, funding, hiring and leadership changes.
• Draft outreach from that research.
• Run a Function, for example "Run Clay outbound generator for sarah@acme.com".

What it won't do matters as much:

• Volume. Results come in pages of 20, up to 100 per search. Clay recommends MCP for 1 to 20 contacts and a Clay table for anything bigger. There's no bulk upload; in Claude a shared CSV runs the Function once per row.
• Your sequencer. It won't touch your sequencer unless a Function includes that step. Without one, the assistant can still send through another connected tool, such as Gmail.
• Self-hosting. Every client connects to Clay's hosted server at api.clay.com/v3/mcp.

One side effect: clicking "Open in Clay" creates a table in your workspace. One-off lookups don't.

How to connect Clay MCP in Claude and ChatGPT

In Claude

1. Open Clay's page in Claude's connector directory and click Add to Claude.
2. Sign in to Clay. An existing account connects straight away; a new user gets an account created during setup.
3. Ask about a person, company or account. Claude calls Clay on its own, so you don't have to name it.

Clay says a free Claude account is enough to connect and search. On Claude Enterprise, an admin has to add the connector before anyone can use it. It also works in Claude Code, where results come back as text instead of the interactive table.

In ChatGPT

1. In the browser, start your prompt with @Clay. In the desktop app, type /Clay.
2. Sign in to your Clay account when asked.
3. Results open in an interactive view where you can switch to a table, filter, enrich and open a person's details. To draft an email, enrich the person first so Clay finds the address.

Clay's ChatGPT guide also says a free ChatGPT account is enough. Its FAQ says Claude and ChatGPT expose the same tools, Functions and data, and that differences usually come from ChatGPT restrictions set at the organization level.

Other clients

Microsoft Copilot and Glean have official connectors. Cursor, VS Code, Claude Code and Claude Desktop register themselves, so the sign-in screen shows "Unverified application", which Clay says is expected. And one role can't connect at all: a Viewer can't complete the sign-in (more on roles below).

What Clay MCP costs in credits

There's no MCP surcharge. Credits come from your Clay plan, at the same rates as inside Clay, per Clay's MCP FAQ and MCP settings page.

When a rep runs out of credits or hits their limit, search keeps working without enrichments, and enrichments stay blocked until the reset on the 1st of the month at midnight UTC. Clay's plans now meter data credits and actions separately, which I break down in Clay's pricing overhaul. Check Clay's pricing page for current plan prices.

Who gets access: the roles

Every rep using Clay MCP has to be invited to the Clay workspace, even if you use SSO. Clay's plans come with unlimited users, so the cost of adding reps is credits, not seats.

Use Sales Rep for anyone who only needs Clay through the assistant. Admins invite reps in the Team settings or with the Invite users button on the MCP page, which pre-selects that role. Clay's roles page has the full list of what each role can do.

Plan for one gap: an admin can't revoke a rep's MCP connection from the MCP page. To cut someone off, remove them from the workspace or set their credit limit to 0, which blocks every further action without removing them.

Credit limits and Functions: the controls that matter

Credit controls and usage tracking need a Launch, Growth or Enterprise plan (or Legacy Enterprise). Here's what you get:

• Default limit. Set it with Set default limit on the MCP page. It applies to every new MCP user when they first connect, and reps without their own limit inherit it.
• Per-rep limit. Override the default for one rep. A rep showing "No limit" has no cap at all.
• Hard stop. Once a rep hits the limit, further actions are blocked until the monthly reset. You can raise it at any time.
• Functions for reps. Reps can only run Functions an admin has switched on with "MCP for reps", under Integrations in the Function's settings. Each one needs a name, a description and an enrichment or output column to return data.
• Usage. The MCP users table shows each rep's connected platforms, credit limit and credits used. MCP spend also shows in Settings, Credit Usage, by table, integration and period. Clay's docs don't describe a log of individual prompts.
• Account scope (Enterprise). With a Salesforce audience connection, you can restrict reps to querying only the accounts they own in Salesforce.

Clay's MCP page puts CRM write-backs and pushes to a sequencer under ops control, through Functions you build. That's where your rules go: which fields get written, which sequences reps can pick and what has to be true before a contact is pushed.

What data leaves Clay

When a rep searches or enriches, the results land in the conversation, which means Anthropic or OpenAI now holds them under that account's terms. Clay's answer is that MCP runs on commercial APIs and your workspace data isn't used for training. Its settings page summarises the vendors' terms: Anthropic excludes commercial and API data from training and keeps it briefly for abuse monitoring, and OpenAI doesn't train on API, Enterprise and Business data by default and may keep inputs and outputs for up to 30 days.

The catch is the account the rep connects from, since Clay also says a free account is enough. Anthropic's consumer terms for Claude Free, Pro and Max let the user choose whether their chats are used to train Claude; Team, Enterprise and the API sit under commercial terms. On ChatGPT, OpenAI doesn't train on Business, Enterprise and Edu data by default, while personal accounts have their own model training setting.

If you sell into Europe, the emails and phone numbers Clay returns are personal data. Require reps to connect from company-managed Claude or ChatGPT accounts, and if that's not possible yet, check their training setting before you invite them.

A rollout order for ops

1. Pick the approved AI tool and plan. On Claude Enterprise, add the Clay connector yourself.
2. Set the default credit limit before you invite anyone.
3. Invite reps as Sales Rep, not Editor.
4. Package the two or three tasks reps repeat as Functions and enable only those for MCP. Clay's own advice is to turn a repeated prompt into a Function or a table.
5. Keep CRM writes and sequencer sends inside Functions with your rules in them.
6. Check the MCP users table weekly for the first month, then monthly.
7. When a rep leaves, remove them from the workspace or set their limit to 0 on the same day.

This keeps the split I want with any AI tool: automate the work, not the thinking. The assistant does the lookups; the rep decides who's worth contacting and what to say. Choosing which accounts get attention is one of the GTM tasks I'd never automate. If you're checking which other tools in your stack have an official server, see my list of MCP servers for sales tools.

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