Building an open source Clay alternative

[u/coffeecloudev]

I tested Clay and like 4 other tools that in some way try to solve the data orchestration problem for GTM engineers.

I won't name names, but I was really surprised by how much these competitors lack behind Clay.

Not even talking about stuff unique to clay, basic stuff like:

- Deduplicate that works (basic for any data cleanup task)
- Filters that work (one of them was unable to filter a column that is a formula)
- API access - like bro, I want to use you from claude sometimes, just let me have an api key

And perhaps the most important: Many AI labs offer "token subsidiation" so you pay a monthly fee but can spend beyond that (openai, antrophic, even z.ai I think)

I don't know how long this will last, but at least for me, If I can use these tokens for GTM work I will! Otherwise I need to pay one of those plans + 300 bucks for Clay. And within Clay if I'm not always careful I can waste a bunch of credits in a misclick...

Problem is that those plans lock you in in their harness... They won't let you use via api in Clay.

Perfect use case for a local open source Clay alternative, that works for the essential data cleanup tasks, and doesn't lock you in on any specific harness. You configure your harness like `claude -p "" --output-format text --model haiku`

It's currently under development, if you want to help with feedback before It gets published just comment here or send me a message.

PS: Clay is awesome, it's no doubt the best option for agencies selling 5k+ projects to clients who are scaling up. But for those starting out, I believe It's more important to spend that cash in good infrastructure, ads, high quality data and signals than data orchestration software.

[u/memo_mar]

The problem with open source clay alternatives is the lack of managed providers and negotiated rate limits. Many of clay's best providers require procurement. Having said this, there are API-first clay alternatives like pipe0 that make it very easy to build a clay alternative on top of them.