Does Clay charge for failed enrichments?

Not since its March 2026 repricing. Clay's pricing page says that if an enrichment returns no result, you are not charged data credits or actions.

Does Apollo charge if it cannot find an email?

No for its own lookups. But in Apollo's waterfall, each connected source that returns an email charges, even an unverified one found on the way to a verified address.

Does Lusha charge for no match?

Not in its platform or CSV enrichment. Lusha's API documentation says a minimum of one credit is charged per request even if no data is returned.

What is the difference between a miss and a bounce?

A miss is a lookup that returns nothing. A bounce is an address that was returned, often labelled verified, and then failed when you sent to it. Policies on the two are separate.

Paying for lookups that find nothing: who bills a miss in 2026

Why this question matters more than the price

Two tools charge 10 cents a lookup. One bills only when it finds something. The other bills every attempt. If 40% of your lookups come back empty, the second tool costs two thirds more per usable contact, and nothing on either pricing page says so plainly.

Hit rates vary widely by audience. Senior people at large US companies are easy to find; tradespeople, small companies and people outside the US are much harder. The worse your hit rate, the more the miss policy matters.

Who bills what, as of October 2026

We checked each vendor's own pricing page or help documentation. Policies change, so check again before you commit.

Tool	Lookup returns nothing	Hidden variant to know	Bounce refund
Clay	Not charged (since March 2026)	Actions and data credits are separate meters	Not stated on pricing page
Apollo	Not charged for contacts without a valid email	Waterfall sources each charge when they return an email, verified or not	Yes, within 30 days, if sent through Apollo
Instantly	Not charged when no verified email found	Partner data costs 2 credits, own data 1	Not stated
Lemlist	Enrichment add-on is "pay per success"	Enrichment is an add-on to the sending plan	Not stated
Lusha	Free in platform and CSV	API charges at least 1 credit per request, even with no match	Not stated
A large sales-intelligence database (see sources)	Its Find button uses 1 credit per contact researched	You pay for the research, not the result	Discretionary credit back for flagged emails
Sluice	Not charged; a profile with no title, company or location is not billed	Lookups are priced at supplier cost plus a stated markup	Refunded exactly what it cost, once

The change at Clay is worth stressing because so much written about it is out of date. Before its March 2026 repricing, failed lookups cost credits, and many reviews still say so. Clay's current page says plainly: "If an enrichment returns no result, you're not charged Data Credits or Actions."

The three hidden variants

"We don't charge for misses" can still hide costs. Look for these.

Unverified results count as hits. A waterfall that returns a guessed or unverified email has technically found something. Apollo's documentation says connected providers charge for each unverified email found before a verified one. You can pay several times for one usable address.
API and interface differ. Lusha's platform and CSV enrichment do not charge for no match; its API charges a minimum of 1 credit per request. If you automate through an API, read the API docs, not the pricing page.
Thin results count as hits. A record with a name and nothing else is not a miss by most definitions. Ask whether a result with no title, company or contact detail is billed.

A worked example

Say you need 500 usable contacts from a list of small companies, and your hit rate is 50%. Each lookup costs 10 credits. Illustrative numbers:

Policy	Lookups needed	Credits billed	Credits per usable contact
Miss not billed	1,000	5,000	10
Every attempt billed	1,000	10,000	20
Miss not billed, but waterfall bills 1.5 sources per hit on average	1,000	7,500	15

Same list, same hit rate, same headline price, and the cost per usable contact ranges from 10 to 20 credits. Then add bounces: if 15% of the "usable" contacts bounce and nothing is refunded, divide by 425 instead of 500.

Five questions to ask any vendor

Ask these in writing before buying. If the answer is not clear, assume the expensive one.

If a lookup returns nothing, am I charged?
If it returns an unverified email, am I charged, and how many times across a waterfall?
Is the API billed the same way as the interface?
If a verified email bounces, do I get the credit back, for how long, and does it matter where I sent from?
Can you show me the worst-case cost of a job before I run it?

The fifth question is the hardest. We found no vendor that quotes a firm worst-case cost for a job before it runs, which is part of why we built Sluice to do it.

How Sluice handles it

Sluice charges only for lookups that returned something usable; a profile lookup that comes back with no title, no company and no location is not billed. Email and phone lookups use a waterfall that asks your chosen supplier, then the cheapest usable runners-up, stopping at the first that has it, and a miss is not billed. Every address is independently verified, only verified addresses are billed, and a bounce is refunded exactly what it cost, once. Every pass shows its worst-case price before it runs. Lookups are priced at supplier cost plus 60%, 50% or 40% depending on plan, or with no markup on Agency if you bring your own data key. Our coverage is narrower than Clay's 100-plus providers, and Sluice is new. See pricing, what a lead actually costs and the glossary entry on waterfall enrichment.

The decision

Before choosing any data tool, run the five questions above, then run a test on 100 of your real targets and divide credits spent by usable contacts returned. That number, not the price per credit, is what you are buying. For tool-specific detail, see Clay pricing in 2026 and Apollo pricing.