Lead research with receipts

Every field shows the sentence it came from.

Assay reads a prospect’s own website, scores the fit, and attaches to every field the exact sentence it was read from and the page that sentence is on.

A field it cannot quote ships marked unproven. Nothing is invented and nothing is quietly dropped.

Latest public run: 16 companies read for $0.80. 8 rejected. 27 of 110 fields thrown out because the quote was not on the page.

No customers yet. Nothing on this page is a customer result.

assayrun k2h9a92tqx09 Sept
ScoreCompanyVerdict
92
HubSpot
hubspot.com
strong
92
ZoomInfo
zoominfo.com
strong
92
Lusha
lusha.com
strong
92
Demandbase
demandbase.com
strong
88
Seamless.AI
seamless.ai
strong
82
RB2B
rb2b.com
strong
readingHubSpot
read    hubspot.comquote   ""found   true  on the page, character for characterwhat they sell  "Customer platform with marketing, sales, and service software built on a Smart CRM"
Hands the row to
SmartleadInstantlyMaken8nCSV
a webhook and a file. Assay sends no email itself.
Specimen

One company, read and checked.

A scripted demonstration of the real mechanism. Not a customer result. Press replay to watch it check itself.

completeacme-analytics.com
Pages read
acme-analytics.com620 ms
acme-analytics.com/about540 ms
acme-analytics.com/careers500 ms
Fit score
87/ 100
Cost so far
$0.0066
strong fit3 of 4 fields with a receipt
#0003src acme-analytics.com/careers

We are hiring two Sales Development Representatives to help us reach mid-market revenue teams in North America.

receipt checked
receipt
What they sell: Revenue analytics for B2B teamsacme-analytics.com
receipt
Who they sell to: Mid-market revenue teams, North Americaacme-analytics.com/careers
receipt
Hiring signal: 2 SDR roles openacme-analytics.com/careers
no receipt
Size signal: Not stated on any page read
A scripted demonstration of the real mechanism. Not a customer result.
The problem

Enriched data arrives without its evidence.

Outbound agencies resell data they cannot see inside. That costs them twice.

First, the bill. Per-credit tools charge for every enrichment, including the ones that fail, and the total moves 30 to 50 percent month to month with no line that explains why.

Second, the call. A client asks where a number came from. The only answer is a vendor’s name.

Credits that cannot be predicted, and claims that cannot be defended.

Same client list. Same scope. Next invoice.
$6,000/ month

Reported jump: 4,000 to 6,000 US dollars in one month, with no change in client scope. Agency bills are reported to swing 30 to 50 percent month to month.

Said in public, in 2026
#01src Reddit, r/gtmengineering
Clay as a GTM orchestration tool is not worthwhile at any meaningful scale because of the actions costs. Simply running a handful of research prompts on say 5k people or companies and then syncing these to a sequencer costs hundreds of dollars, and that's when bringing your own API keys.
#02src Trustpilot
Tried Clay for prospecting and everything fell apart. Workflows froze, data was wrong, and credits vanished fast.
#03src G2
The credit model could be better; failed enrichments still burn credits, and we've blown through monthly credits early a couple of times.
#04src G2
If your SDR team expects to sign up and start prospecting on day one, Clay will frustrate them. It's a low-code data platform.

Quoted from a September 2026 research pass over 30 cited sources. Sources are named in the file, not paraphrased here.

The gap

Every tool gives you the answer. None shows the sentence.

#0000src research pass, 30 sources, sep 2026

No tool in the sources shows the source sentence behind an enriched field, nor lets a user audit a claim back to the exact page sentence it was read from.

receipt checkedafter reviewing Clay, Apollo, ZoomInfo, BetterContact, Prospeo, Cognism, Floqer, Unify, Warmly and Karhuno

Ten tools were reviewed for the research. The sentence on the left is the finding, and the window it sits in is what a receipt looks like everywhere in the product: the words, then the page they came from.

quoted
quoted
Five questions a client asks, and what each tool can answer
Question a client asksPer-credit toolsAssay
Where did this come from?A vendor name, or nothingThe sentence, and the page
Can I read it myself?NoThe url is on the row
What if the model guessed?You find out from a bounceThe field ships marked unproven
What did this run cost?Credits, worked out laterDollars, while it runs
Can I take it in-house?No, it is their platformYes, on the Own it plan
How it works

The Receipt Rule

No quote, no field.

receipt rulescripts/verify.mjs
// before the search, both sides are folded
normalise("quote")
  · folds curly quotes
  · folds em dash
  · collapses whitespace
  · strips markdown emphasis
  · strips zero width
  · lowercases

// then it is on the page, or it is not
verified: true | false
score: > 44 needs a verified quote
  1. step 01

    It reads the site. Only the site.

    Up to three public pages the company published for anyone to read. No broker list, no bought database, no scraped person. If no page can be read, the company gets no score at all.

  2. step 02

    It must quote before it can claim.

    For every field, the model has to copy a sentence out of those pages, character for character. A field with no sentence behind it comes back empty. Empty is allowed. Invented is not.

  3. step 03

    The Receipt Rule runs the check.

    Each quote is searched for in the pages that were actually fetched. Curly quotes, dashes, spacing and case are folded first, so a real sentence is never failed on punctuation. Then it is on the page, or it is not.

  4. step 04

    What fails the check is shown failing.

    It is not deleted and it is not quietly fixed. The field ships with a red mark that says the sentence was not found. A score with no verified quote behind it is pulled down to 40 and marked no.

Both directions are tested, and the test is in the repository
must pass

A real sentence with a curly apostrophe. A real sentence split by a line break. A real sentence the page wrapped in bold.

must fail

An invented sentence. A real sentence with one word changed. Two real fragments joined that were never next to each other. A quote shortened with an ellipsis.

25 checks. A gate that has never failed is not known to work, so it is fed things it has to reject.

The proof

The whole run is public. Check it.

A deliberately mixed list: 8 companies that fit the profile and 8 that could not. Run on 9 September 2026.

Well-known companies were chosen on purpose. If a reader cannot open the page and confirm the sentence, a receipt is worth nothing.

Assay found the 8. It also rejected Salesforce, which does sell to revenue teams, because the profile asked for 20 to 300 staff and the page said otherwise.

Certificate of assay
Run k2h9a92tqx
9 September 2026
296 seconds, every call itemised
Accepted
7of the 8 that fit
Rejected
8plus 1 it could not read
Whole run cost
$0.8016 companies, 3 pages each
Fields thrown out
27of 110 it wanted to make
Receipt rate
75%1 claim in 4 could not prove itself, and the row says which one

A tool reporting 100% would be a tool that had stopped checking.

certified
certified
runk2h9a92tqx
{
  "companies": 16,
  "scored": 15,
  "unreadable": 1,
  "strong": 7,
  "no": 8,
  "claims": 110,
  "receipted": 83,
  "rejected": 27,
  "rate": 75%,
  "seconds": 296,
  "cost_usd": "0.80"
}
Open the run

read only, no sign in

The other run: 20 companies, $1.11, 76% receipts20 companies that all fit, which is why it accepts almost all of them

For comparison: independent 2026 testing put a finished lead on a per-credit tool between $0.50 and $3.00. The same 16 companies would be $8 to $48 there. This run was $0.80. Assay does not find contacts, and that is a real part of the difference.

Scope

Four things Assay does not do.

not this

It does not send email.

Sending is domain warming, SPF, DKIM, inbox rotation and bounce handling. Get that wrong and a client's domain is burned, which does not undo. Keep Smartlead. Keep Instantly. Assay hands the row to them.

not this

It does not find people.

No personal emails, no direct dials, no scraped profiles. It reads what a company published about itself. A contact tool is still needed for contacts, and the price reflects that.

not this

It is not faster than a lookup.

Reading three pages and thinking about them takes about 20 seconds a company. A database lookup takes under a second. Assay sells a checked answer, not a quick one.

not this

It has no customers yet.

No case study, no testimonial, no revenue. The only proof offered is a run that anyone can open and check, and it is linked above.

Pricing

One price a month. It does not move.

A six-person agency reading about 2,000 companies a month was costed at $1,895 to $5,325 a month on a per-credit tool in the same research. Assay’s plans are set against that number. The first 10 accounts get the Agency plan at $199, locked for 12 months.

Founding
$199/ month

The Agency plan, for the first ten accounts. The price holds for twelve months.

  • Everything in Agency
  • 2,000 companies a month
  • Price locked for 12 months
  • Ten accounts, then it closes

10 of 10 founding places left_

Bench
$149/ month

For one operator.

  • 400 companies a month
  • 1 seat
  • CSV export with receipts
  • Shareable read-only runs
Agency
$399/ month

For a team running client work.

  • 2,000 companies a month
  • Unlimited seats
  • Webhook out to Make, n8n, Smartlead
  • Shareable read-only runs for clients
  • The cost ledger, per run and per company
  • Re-audit: check September's receipts against today's pages
Own it
$899/ month

For a firm that wants the machine in its own stack.

  • Everything in Agency
  • Runs in your own stack
  • Your own API keys, billed to you at cost
  • The pipeline handed over in Make or n8n so your team can read it
Every plan in detail →

Billed monthly through PayPal. Cancel any time. A company that cannot be read does not count.

Questions

The ones that decide it.

q01Is this a Clay replacement?

No. Clay finds people and orchestrates a hundred providers. Assay does one job: it reads a company's own site and proves what it says about it. Most agencies would run both, and use Assay for the research layer where the bill hurts.

q02What happens when the model makes something up?

It gets caught, visibly. The quote is searched for in the pages that were fetched. If it is not there, the field is marked unproven in the app and in the CSV, and if nothing on that company could be proven, the score is pulled down and the verdict is set to no.

q03Why is the receipt rate not 100%?

Because the check is real. A model asked to quote will sometimes tidy a sentence, join two of them, or state something reasonable that the page never said. A tool reporting a perfect rate has either stopped checking or is checking something easy.

q04Is reading public websites legal?

Reading a page a company published for the public, and quoting it with a link back, is what search engines have always done. Assay stores no personal contact data and builds no person-level profile, which is where most of the risk in this category sits. This is not legal advice.

q05Can I run it in my own stack?

Yes, on the Own it plan. It runs on your keys, in your stack, and the pipeline is handed over in Make or n8n so a person on your team can read it without reading code.

q06Who is behind Assay?

Machines + Words (Pty) Ltd, a one-person company in Cape Town. Assay has no customers yet and does not claim any. Everything offered as proof on this page is a run you can open and check yourself.