I have setup a waterfall enrichment in clay. I have API for hunter > prospeo > snov and only these three providers were selected to find the emails but still clay has utilized the credits. Why?

Clay charges credits for each provider hit in your waterfall, even when they don't return results. So if Hunter finds nothing, you still get charged for that Hunter lookup before it moves to Prospeo.

This is different from how some people expect waterfalls to work. You're paying for the attempt, not just successful finds. Clay's credit system is provider-agnostic — each API call consumes credits regardless of the outcome.

A few things to check in your setup:

Your waterfall logic might be misconfigured. Make sure you're using "if empty" conditions between providers, not "if error." If you use "if error," Clay will charge for all providers even when earlier ones succeed.

Also verify your column mapping. If Clay can't properly read the results from Hunter (maybe due to field mapping issues), it might think Hunter returned empty and continue down the waterfall, burning credits at each step.

The credit consumption you're seeing could also include validation hits if you have email verification enabled. Prospeo charges separately for enrichment vs verification, and if Clay is auto-validating found emails, that's additional credit usage.

Check your Clay run logs to see exactly which providers returned what. You should see the specific API responses and credit deductions. Most people find they're getting charged appropriately once they dig into the actual provider responses — it's just not obvious from the surface level results.

Did that answer your question?

To use only your integrated API keys without consuming Clay credits, connect your clay.com for Hunter, Prospeo, and Snov through Settings > Connections. When you use your own API keys, 0 Clay credits are consumed - credits are only charged when using Clay's managed accounts. For email validation, you can disable it in the waterfall configuration by selecting a different validation provider or adjusting clay.com to avoid automatic validation charges.

I don't want to use the validation feature or anything that utilizes clay credits for now. I only want to rely on the three providers I have integrated.

Credits are consumed during waterfall enrichment for several reasons: Email validation charges credits - Even when emails are found, validation through providers like ZeroBounce consumes additional credits, regardless of whether the email passes or fails validation. Each provider attempt costs credits - Hunter, Prospeo, and Snov each charge clay.com attempt when using our managed accounts. Credits are charged for each attempt regardless of whether an email is found, though they're refunded if no email is discovered. clay.com - If Hunter finds a valid email, the process stops and you're only charged for Hunter + validation. If Hunter fails but Prospeo succeeds, you're charged for both Hunter and Prospeo attempts plus validation. This is normal waterfall behavior - you pay for each provider that attempts to find data, plus validation costs.