If you came here because your old Clearbit workflow doesn't behave the way it used to, you're not imagining it. The product moved house. This page walks through what Clearbit was, what it became under HubSpot, what that means for the standalone API user, and where a simple enrichment actor genuinely fits — plus the parts where Clearbit (now Breeze) is still the stronger tool.
How Clearbit got here
- Clearbit, the standalone era Known for three workhorses: Enrichment (domain or email → company & person data), Reveal (anonymous website IP → company), and Prospector (find contacts at a company). Developers loved the clean, well-documented API.
- Acquisition by HubSpot HubSpot bought Clearbit and began folding its data into the CRM as a native intelligence layer rather than a separate product.
- Rebrand to Breeze Intelligence Clearbit's data engine now ships under HubSpot's "Breeze" AI umbrella as Breeze Intelligence, with enrichment and buyer-intent surfaced inside HubSpot records.
- The friction for outsiders The center of gravity shifted toward "use it inside HubSpot." Teams who relied on the classic standalone endpoints, or who simply aren't on HubSpot, report that the old plug-and-play API path is no longer the obvious one.
What that changes for an API user
Three concrete things tend to push people to look elsewhere:
- CRM gravity. The smoothest experience now assumes HubSpot records as the destination. Pulling enrichment into a non-HubSpot stack is less of a first-class path than it was.
- Access & packaging. Standalone, self-serve API access on the old terms is harder to count on; intelligence is increasingly bundled with HubSpot plans and credits.
- Reveal and Prospector are the sticky parts. IP-to-company deanonymization and contact-finding are the capabilities you can't trivially replicate — and they're exactly what's most tied into the HubSpot experience now.
A standalone, CRM-agnostic alternative
For the most common job — "I have domains or company names, give me structured company data" — you don't need a CRM-bound platform. Our company-enrichment actor on Apify does that one thing through a plain REST endpoint, billed per run, with no seat and no CRM you have to adopt:
curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/renzomacar~company-enrichment/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=YOUR_TOKEN" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{
"domains": ["airbnb.com", "figma.com", "acme.io"]
}'You get back firmographics, detected technologies and contact signals as JSON — drop it into Postgres, a notebook, a Sheet, or whatever CRM you actually use. Nothing assumes HubSpot.
Honest comparison
| Capability | Clearbit / Breeze (HubSpot) | Pay-per-use enrichment actor |
|---|---|---|
| Domain → firmographics | Yes, mature dataset | Yes — core job |
| Tech-stack detection | Yes | Yes |
| IP-to-company Reveal | Yes (a real moat) | No |
| Contact / person prospecting | Yes (Prospector heritage) | Contact signals only, not a people database |
| CRM dependency | Best inside HubSpot | None — works with any stack |
| Access model | Bundled with HubSpot plans / credits | Self-serve, pay per run |
| Best fit | HubSpot customers wanting native enrichment + intent | Non-HubSpot teams and devs wanting plain enrichment |
What you actually lose, and what you don't
It's easy to panic when a tool you depend on gets absorbed into a bigger suite, so let's be precise about the trade. The firmographic core — industry, size, location, revenue band, technologies in use — is the part most teams hit Clearbit's Enrichment API for, and that part transfers cleanly to a focused enrichment actor. You don't lose it; you just get it through a different door, one that doesn't ask you to standardize on a CRM.
What you genuinely do give up is the two capabilities Clearbit built a moat around. Reveal — matching an anonymous visitor's IP to a company so your site can react in real time — depends on a continuously maintained IP-to-company graph, and there's no honest way to claim a single-source actor reproduces it. Likewise, Clearbit's person-level prospecting heritage (find named contacts and roles at a target account) is a people-database problem, not a domain-enrichment one. If those two are load-bearing in your funnel, an enrichment actor is a complement, not a replacement, and you should keep Breeze for them.
The honest framing is "un-bundle, don't downgrade." Most people called Clearbit for firmographics and reached for Reveal or Prospector occasionally. If you're in the first camp, the move is low-risk. If you live in the second, weigh it carefully before you cut over.
Who should stay, who should switch
Stay with Clearbit / Breeze if…
- HubSpot is your CRM and you want enrichment + intent native on records
- You depend on Reveal to deanonymize website traffic
- You need Clearbit's depth on person-level prospecting
Switch to an actor if…
- You're not on HubSpot and don't want to be
- You just need domains turned into company data
- You want a callable endpoint and usage-based billing, not a bundled platform
It's worth being blunt: an enrichment actor is not a Clearbit clone. It doesn't do Reveal, and it isn't a people-search engine. What it is, is the un-bundled version of the part most people actually called Clearbit for — firmographic enrichment — without inheriting a CRM migration to get it.
Enrich domains without adopting a CRM
POST a list of domains, get firmographics, tech stack and contact signals as JSON. Pay per run on Apify's free-tier credits to start — no HubSpot required.
Open the company-enrichment actor → Or get done-for-you leadsDisclosure: links to Apify on this page are affiliate links. If you create a paid account through them we may earn a commission, at no extra cost to you. We recommend the actor because we build and ship it on Apify ourselves. We are not affiliated with Clearbit or HubSpot; product details reflect publicly reported changes and may have evolved since publication.