Kiln cascades your data providers into an intelligent waterfall, deploys autonomous AI research agents over your lists, and guarantees zero credit waste. A verified work email costs about 4¢. Misses, errors and cached repeats are always free.
| Prospect & Company | Waterfall Step Log | Verified Work Email | Confidence | Cost |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Eric Glyman CEO & Co-founder · Ramp | HunterApolloFindymail | eric@ramp.com | 99% | $0.020 |
Karri Saarinen CEO · Linear | HunterIcypeas | karri@linear.app | 97% | $0.018 |
Alex Bouaziz CEO · Deel | HunterApolloProspeoDropcontact | No match across 4 providers (Zero charge) | — | $0.00 FREE |
Christina Cacioppo CEO · Vanta | Hunter | christina@vanta.com | 98% | $0.020 |
David Hsu CEO · Retool | Local Cache | david@retool.com | 100% | $0.00 FREE |
Immad Akhund CEO · Mercury | Apollo | immad@mercury.com | 96% | $0.022 |
Native integrations with the data providers and sequencers you already trust
Architectural Superpowers
From multi-provider waterfall cascades to autonomous web research agents and 0% markup wholesale pricing, Kiln delivers enterprise GTM data infrastructure with mathematical cost predictability.
From 45% to 85%+ verified email coverage.
Never rely on a single database. Kiln queries Hunter, Apollo, Prospeo, Findymail, Dropcontact, and Icypeas in the sequence you specify. The waterfall halts at the first verified hit, guaranteeing you never double-pay.
Ask questions of live websites and company data.
Browse live company homepages, extract tech stacks, detect active hiring signals, and craft hyper-personalized cold outreach 1-liners across thousands of rows in minutes.
"Infrastructure for internet commerce; 100+ payment methods."
Plug in your own API keys. Pay vendor rates at cost.
Legacy data brokers charge up to a 10x markup on third-party provider credits. Kiln lets you bring your own API keys on every plan with 0% vendor markup, securely encrypted using AES-256-GCM hardware vaults.
Smartlead, Instantly, HubSpot & Salesforce.
Push enriched contacts straight into active cold email sequences or sync them into your CRM without messy CSV exports or manual Zapier workarounds.
Clean lists instantly with Excel-like syntax.
Normalize messy CRM data on the fly. Use CLEAN_COMPANY() to strip legal suffixes, FIRST_NAME() to parse full names, and SLUG() or PROPER() without writing code.
CLEAN_COMPANY()FIRST_NAME()SLUG()IS_EMAIL()Zero surprise overages. Server-side enforced.
Set an explicit monthly dollar limit for your workspace. If you reach your ceiling, processing stops cold before dispatching provider calls. No surprise $3,000 bills at 2 AM.
Transparent Ledger
Legacy tools charge per attempt, meaning a bad list costs as much as a great one. Others charge 10x credit markups on third-party APIs. Kiln charges strictly for verified answers, previews your invoice before running, and enforces hard budget caps.
billed = hit && verified && !cached && !sample && !suppressedWhat you are charged for
Free, every time
ROI & Savings Calculator
Adjust the slider to your monthly verified lead volume. Watch the price difference compound over thousands of contacts.
A cold list usually lands between 35% and 55%
2,250 verified work emails. Comparative costs:
Legacy platform (Clay)
$450
$0.20 each · 4 credits × $0.05
Kiln, platform keys
$84
$0.037 each · 3 credits
Kiln, your own Hunter key
$66
$0.029 each · fee + Hunter at cost
You keep, on this one list
$366 (81%)
Clay figure is the low end of its published 4–8 Data Credits per waterfall work email at $0.05 each, before the Action each step also consumes. Kiln figures are the Growth credit price and Hunter's catalogue cost, the same constants the invoice uses. Neither side is charged for a miss. Plan fees are separate: Clay Growth is $495/mo, Kiln Growth is $99/mo.
How It Works
Source verified data, automate deep account research, orchestrate on a schedule, and send results where the work happens.
Chain 10+ providers. Stop at first verified match. 0% markup.
sarah.jenkins@stripe.com
Under The Hood
Left: providers are queried in priority sequence and stop at the first verified hit. Right: an autonomous agent column that browses the web and tests against strict schemas.
Tomás Alvarez
vanta.com
Does this company sell to developers? Answer with a yes/no, the evidence, and a confidence from 0 to 1.
Use Cases
Each of these is a production-ready template in the product. Pick one and you are four steps from a verified, sendable list.
Charged strictly for verified work emails. Misses, catch-alls, and duplicates are always $0.00.
Execution Flow
1. Import CSV
Drop a CSV of target domains or company names.
2. Multi-Waterfall
Findymail → Prospeo → Hunter. Stops at first verified hit.
3. Pre-Flight Estimate
Inspect cost and expected match rate before moving 1 credit.
4. Sequence Sync
Push straight to Instantly, Smartlead, or download clean CSV.
Zero setup · No credit card required · Pre-seeded with 14 live accounts
p.collison@stripe.com
karri@linear.app
guillermo@vercel.com
GTM Templates
Never start from a blank spreadsheet. Each playbook comes pre-configured with waterfalls, AI research prompts, and sample rows ready to run.
Companies → firmographics → hiring-manager email (waterfall) → an AI brief on what they are hiring for.
Waterfall across three verified-only email providers, then an AI first line grounded in the company site.
Dropcontact (algorithmic, no contact database) first, Icypeas (EU-hosted) second. No US contributory data.
Domain → firmographics → owner email → phone, with a short AI description per business.
Firmographics and tech stack first, then an AI fit score — so you only buy emails for companies worth contacting.
Apollo/LinkedIn leads → Hunter/Findymail/Icypeas waterfall → Clean Company Name → 1-Line Icebreaker.
User Email → Domain extraction → Tech Stack (Wappalyzer) → Firmographics → ICP Fit Score (1-100).
Executive Name + Company → Waterfall email & mobile phone → Congratulatory outbound brief.
Recruiting agencies prospecting companies that are actively hiring.
A list of hiring managers with verified work emails and a one-line hook per company.
Direct Comparison
Here is an honest, item-by-item breakdown of how Kiln compares to legacy single-database platforms and credit-markup spreadsheets.
| Feature & Capability | Kiln | Clay | Apollo |
|---|---|---|---|
| Charge model | Verified hits only | Verified hits only | Search attempts |
| Price of one verified work email | about 4¢ | 20–40¢ | Apollo database only |
| Cost & match rate shown before run | Yes | Per-cell cost only | No |
| Multi-provider waterfall (10+ adapters) | Yes | Yes | No |
| Bring your own provider keys (0% markup) | Every tier | Enterprise tiers ($495+) | No |
| CRM & Sequencer sync (HubSpot, Smartlead) | $49/mo | $495/mo | $99/seat/mo |
| Autonomous AI Web Research Agents | Included on all plans | Included ($495+) | Add-on credits |
| Hard spend caps (enforced server-side) | Yes | Opt-in email alerts | No |
| Suppression stops the spend (anti-waste) | Yes | No | No |
| Unlimited seats on every tier | Yes | Yes | No |
| Provenance log on every single cell | Yes | Limited | No |
| Turnaround on a 5,000-row list | Minutes | Minutes | Hours |
Competitor tiers based on published pricing as of March 2026.
Agencies & Fast Teams
Clay often requires hours of setup and complex webhook scaffolding. Kiln gives founders, SDR managers, and agency operators a fast, reliable spreadsheet interface with built-in spend protections and transparent billing.
You do not pay to learn it
Every run shows its cost first. Sample runs on agents are free. The spend cap is on from the first minute at your plan allowance, so a mis-configured column stops itself instead of billing you for the lesson.
Nothing is gated four tiers up
CRM sync, the HTTP API, webhooks, the MCP server and your own provider keys are all on the $49 tier. The higher tiers buy volume and white-label exports, not permission.
Provenance on every cell
Which provider answered, what it cost, how confident it was, and whether it was cached or sampled — in a popover on the cell and in the export. The record your client or your DPO asks for is already written.
Stops mean stop
A suppressed contact is skipped before any provider is called. A running job has a Stop button that takes effect in seconds, and the rows already done are kept and never billed twice.
Customer Proof & ROI
See how modern revenue teams replace unpredictable credit systems with Kiln's mathematical cost certainty.
84.6%
Average Waterfall Match Rate
78%
Average Savings vs. Clay & Apollo
0%
Vendor Markup on BYOK Keys
$0.00
Surprise Overage Invoices Billed
"We cut our monthly Clay invoice from $1,850 to $310 while increasing our deliverable email match rate from 64% to 87%. The pre-flight invoice preview alone eliminated all surprise overages."
Marcus Vance
Founder & CEO · Apex Outbound Agency
"The multi-provider waterfall with 0% vendor markup is the fairest model in SaaS. We brought our own Hunter and Prospeo keys and pay vendor cost directly. Kiln pays for itself in the first 48 hours."
Elena Rostova
Head of Revenue Operations · HyperScale Systems
"Our SDRs were wasting hours manually checking email bounce rates. Kiln halts automatically on the first verified address and syncs straight to Smartlead. We scaled to 30k verified prospects in 2 weeks."
David Koslov
Director of Growth Marketing · PulseVelocity
Simple Pricing
Every tier starts with a 14-day full product trial without a credit card. No gated features: CRM sync, webhooks, API, and BYOK are included from the start.
For a lean team or a solo operator. CRM sync and API included.
For an agency running several clients. Multi-workspace and MCP.
For a high-volume agency. White-label exports and priority support.
Bring your own API keys on any plan to pay vendor rates at cost. Detailed pricing and overage schedule →
Got Questions?
Two core differences: the cost of verified data and the entry floor. A verified work email is 4 to 8 Data Credits on Clay ($0.20 to $0.40 at list price) vs about 4¢ on Kiln — and even less if you bring your own key. Furthermore, CRM sync (HubSpot, Salesforce) and sequencer exports (Smartlead, Instantly) are included on Kiln's $49 starter tier, whereas Clay gates them to their $495/mo Growth tier. Neither tool charges for a miss.
Yes, on every tier, from the first minute of your trial. Paste a Hunter, Apollo, Prospeo, Findymail, Dropcontact, Icypeas, or People Data Labs key and you pay that vendor directly at cost. Kiln charges 0% vendor markup and a nominal orchestration fee on verified hits only. All keys are encrypted with AES-256-GCM hardware vaults.
It is a mathematical forecast calculated before any external API is dispatched. Expected cost follows expected matches rather than speculative attempts. The ledger provides a transparent audit trail showing the reason and cost for every single enriched cell.
Zero surprises. Every workspace has a hard spend cap enabled by default at your plan allowance. It is enforced server-side before any provider call is dispatched. You receive automated alerts at 75% and 90%. During trials, processing simply halts — you will never be billed unexpected overages.
No. Kiln calls licensed, compliant provider APIs exclusively. hiQ v. LinkedIn established clear legal risks for browser scrapers, and we will never put our customers or their domains behind unvetted scraping vectors.
Suppression lists in Kiln stop the provider call before it happens, eliminating both privacy liabilities and unnecessary spend. In addition, an erasure request redacts cells, purges provenance records, and invalidates cached payloads across the workspace.
Create a workspace in 30 seconds, test any list, and see your exact match rates and costs before a single credit moves.
No credit card required · Instant setup · Full access to 10+ provider adapters