How Does Clearbit Work in 2026? Breeze, Enrichment & Pricing

How Does Clearbit Work? What You Need to Know in 2026

You just got the email from HubSpot: your Clearbit free tools are gone, and the replacement costs $45/mo before you even count the HubSpot subscription underneath it. If you're wondering how Clearbit actually works after the acquisition - and whether it's still worth paying for - you're not alone.

Here's the short version. Clearbit is now Breeze Intelligence, delivered inside HubSpot. It enriches CRM records from 250+ data sources, identifies companies visiting your website via IP, and shortens lead-capture forms by auto-filling fields. If you're not on HubSpot, Clearbit is effectively off the table.

What Clearbit Is Now

HubSpot acquired Clearbit in December 2023, and Breeze Intelligence launched at INBOUND 2024 as the unified future of Clearbit functionality inside HubSpot. The free tools that made Clearbit popular with startups - the Free Clearbit Platform, Weekly Visitor Report, TAM Calculator, Connect, and Slack Integration - all sunset on April 30, 2025. The Logo API held on until December 1, 2025.

What remains is Breeze Intelligence: a paid HubSpot add-on that handles enrichment, buyer intent/visitor identification, and form shortening inside HubSpot's CRM. Same core functionality, new packaging, new pricing, new lock-in.

How the Enrichment Engine Actually Works

At a high level, it takes an identifier - email, domain, or IP address - matches it to a company or person profile, then pushes attributes into HubSpot fields so workflows can segment, score, and route leads automatically. If you want a broader view of the category, compare it against other data enrichment tools.

Clearbit combines 250+ public and private data sources: social profiles, company websites, legal filings, crowdsourced data, and more. The system dynamically weights and scores each source in real time, choosing the best source per attribute rather than relying on a single provider. That's a smart architectural choice, and it's why the enrichment quality for US mid-market companies is genuinely strong.

Verification runs four stages. Records must have been refreshed within 30 days, multiple sources must agree on the same attribute, anomaly detection flags outliers, and human researchers review flagged records manually. The published numbers - 50M company records, 389M contact records, 4.5B mapped IPs, 94% email deliverability - are solid for company-level firmographic data.

Where it gets weaker: SMBs under ~50 employees, international coverage outside English-speaking markets, and contact-level depth. We've seen this pattern across multiple enrichment tools, but it's especially noticeable with Clearbit because the marketing implies wall-to-wall coverage. (If you're defining your target more tightly, start with an Ideal Customer Profile.)

Core Use Cases

The platform centers on three capabilities that feed your CRM and marketing workflows.

Record Enrichment

Hand it an email address or company domain, and it appends 55+ company attributes and 40+ person attributes to your CRM record - job title, industry, tech stack, revenue range, ICP fit signals. Enrichment can fire automatically on record creation or via workflows, which makes it useful for lead scoring automation at scale. It integrates with HubSpot, Salesforce, and Marketo.

Form Shortening

This is the feature that actually moves conversion numbers. Clearbit claims conversion rates increase 3-6% for every form field removed, and the mechanism is straightforward: a visitor enters their work email, enrichment runs in real time, and the form pre-fills job role, company size, and industry before the visitor types them. If it can't find a match, the form dynamically expands to show those fields. If your forms currently ask for six or seven fields, the lift is meaningful.

Website Visitor Identification

Reveal maps IP addresses to companies visiting your site. It filters out ISPs, cloud providers, and public Wi-Fi, then uses machine learning plus manual QA to match remaining traffic to company domains. You get intent signals like pricing page visits, visit frequency, and whether the company already exists in your HubSpot CRM - useful for account-based marketing plays.

Clearbit says Reveal can still identify employers for visitors using a VPN and that it retrained its models for remote-work patterns. Realistically, reverse-IP tools match around 20-40% of total traffic. Enterprise visitors on corporate networks match at higher rates; SMB traffic is harder to pin down. It also pushes up to 25 custom dimensions into GA4 with no PII involved.

Credit System and Pricing

Let's be honest: the credit system has sharp edges.

Form shortening uses 1 credit per unique form filled and/or shortened with Clearbit data. Enrichment uses 1 credit per unique record created or enriched, including list enrichment. Credits refresh monthly at midnight UTC and don't roll over.

The trap to watch for: if you map the "Clearbit Processed At" attribute in your enrichment workflow, every enrichment attempt counts toward your credits - regardless of whether meaningful data comes back. One team ran up $11,000 in unexpected charges in a single billing cycle because auto-enrichment was enabled by default. The consensus on r/GrowthHacking is that you need to audit your workflows before turning anything on. Monitor usage closely.

Continuous enrichment - where records auto-update over time - starts at the 1,000-credit tier.

This sits on top of a HubSpot subscription. The minimum viable stack - HubSpot Starter plus 100 Breeze credits - runs ~$60-75/mo. If you're trying to avoid lock-in, pay-as-you-go B2B data is usually the cleaner model.

Strengths and Weaknesses

It's genuinely strong for US mid-market and enterprise company-level data. Firmographics, technographics, and company attributes are reliable when the target fits that profile. Per G2 reviews, it holds a 4.4/5 rating across 626 reviews, and the form-shortening feature is a real conversion optimizer.

The weaknesses are harder to ignore. International records - especially outside English-speaking markets - are inconsistent. The HubSpot lock-in is a hard constraint: if you're not on HubSpot, Breeze Intelligence isn't a practical option. And the credit system punishes teams that don't carefully scope their enrichment workflows before flipping the switch.

Here's our take: the underlying enrichment tech is still excellent. But most teams don't need enrichment bolted to a pricey CRM add-on. They need accurate contact data they can use anywhere, with spend they can actually control. Reddit users describe "endpoints disappearing, prices going up, slower support" post-acquisition - a product that went from "built for builders" to "built for enterprise contracts." If you're evaluating options, start with the best B2B database benchmarks.

What to Use Instead

If you're not on HubSpot - or you need verified contact data rather than mostly company-level enrichment - Clearbit isn't the answer anymore.

Prospeo covers what Clearbit doesn't: 98% verified email accuracy, 143M+ verified emails, 125M+ verified mobile numbers, and a 7-day data refresh cycle versus the 6-week industry average. It's self-serve with a free tier, no HubSpot dependency, and no annual contract required. For RevOps teams, it also supports CRM and CSV enrichment with 50+ data points per contact, an 83% enrichment match rate, and a 92% API match rate. We've found it works especially well for teams that got burned by Clearbit's credit surprises - you pay per verified result, not per attempt. (If you’re building lists at scale, see our guide to bulk lead generation.)

For European mobile coverage specifically, Cognism is worth evaluating at ~$1K-3K/mo if GDPR-compliant EMEA data is a priority. SalesIntel offers human-verified contacts with a research-on-demand model - expect enterprise-level contracts starting around $1,500-2,500/mo for mid-market teams. Skip SalesIntel if you need self-serve access or a free trial; their sales process is long. If compliance is a gating factor, use a GDPR Compliant Database checklist before you buy.

FAQ

Is Clearbit free?

No. The legacy free tools sunset on April 30, 2025, and the remaining functionality is sold as Breeze Intelligence inside HubSpot. Pricing starts at $45/month for 100 credits, and you'll also need a HubSpot subscription underneath it.

Is Clearbit the same as Breeze Intelligence?

Yes. Breeze Intelligence is HubSpot's packaging of Clearbit's core features: enrichment, form shortening, and visitor identification. In 2026, the practical difference is that access, workflows, and field mapping all live inside HubSpot.

Does Clearbit work without HubSpot?

For most teams, no. It's effectively a HubSpot-only product now because Breeze Intelligence is delivered as a HubSpot add-on. If you need verified emails and mobile numbers you can use across tools, Prospeo includes a free tier and a 7-day refresh cycle with no CRM lock-in.

Summary

So how does Clearbit work in 2026? It's Breeze Intelligence inside HubSpot: it matches emails, domains, and IPs to profiles, enriches CRM fields, shortens forms in real time, and identifies visiting companies for intent-based workflows - all governed by a credit system that requires careful monitoring. The enrichment engine itself is still well-built. The packaging around it is what changed.

If you're committed to HubSpot and your targets are US mid-market companies, it's a reasonable add-on. If you need portable, verified contact data without platform lock-in, you'll get more flexibility and better accuracy from a dedicated data provider.