Cursive vs Clearbit at a Glance

If you are one of the thousands of teams evaluating life after Clearbit, this comparison breaks down exactly what you gain, what you lose, and what changes when you switch to Cursive. The short version: Cursive does everything Clearbit did for visitor identification and enrichment, plus a lot more.

What Happened to Clearbit?

For nearly a decade, Clearbit was the gold standard in B2B data enrichment. Founded in 2014 by Alex MacCaw, Clearbit built a suite of products that became essential infrastructure for thousands of B2B companies: Enrichment for contact and company data, Reveal for anonymous visitor identification, Prospector for finding new leads, and a robust API that developers loved.

Then in November 2023, HubSpot acquired Clearbit. The acquisition made strategic sense for HubSpot: it gave them a proprietary data layer to compete with Salesforce and ZoomInfo. But for the thousands of Clearbit customers who were not HubSpot users, the acquisition created an existential problem.

The message is clear: if you are not a HubSpot customer, Clearbit's long-term future as your data provider is uncertain at best. Even if you are a HubSpot customer, the Clearbit capabilities you relied on may look very different as they get reshaped to fit HubSpot's product vision. For a broader look at replacement options, see our Clearbit alternatives comparison.

What is Cursive?

Cursive is a full-stack visitor identification and pipeline generation platform designed for the post-Clearbit era. It combines the capabilities that made Clearbit popular, namely visitor identification and data enrichment, with modern additions that Clearbit never offered: an AI SDR for automated outreach, native intent data, audience segmentation, and multi-channel engagement across email, LinkedIn, SMS, and direct mail.

Where Clearbit was fundamentally a data infrastructure company (it gave you the data and left you to figure out what to do with it), Cursive is an action-oriented platform. It identifies visitors, enriches their profiles, scores their intent, and engages them automatically. The philosophy is that data without action is just cost, and Cursive closes the loop between identification and revenue.

Critically, Cursive is CRM-agnostic. It works equally well with Salesforce, HubSpot, Pipedrive, or no CRM at all. This independence is increasingly valuable as Clearbit becomes a HubSpot-only tool.

Feature-by-Feature Comparison

1. Visitor Identification (Clearbit Reveal vs Cursive)

Clearbit Reveal was one of the product's most popular features. It let you identify which companies were visiting your website by matching IP addresses to company records. This was groundbreaking when it launched, but the approach has fundamental limitations in 2026.

Clearbit Reveal identified companies (not people) using reverse IP lookup. Match rates ranged from 30-40% depending on your traffic mix, and the data degraded significantly after the shift to remote work. Reveal provided company name, industry, employee count, and estimated revenue, but never identified the specific individual browsing your site. After the HubSpot acquisition, Reveal has been absorbed into HubSpot Marketing Hub and is no longer available as a standalone product for non-HubSpot customers.

Cursive identifies the actual person visiting your website, not just their employer. Using a multi-source identity resolution engine that combines IP intelligence, device fingerprinting, cookie tracking, and third-party identity graph partnerships, Cursive achieves a 70% person-level match rate. That means you get the visitor's name, email, phone number, LinkedIn URL, job title, and full company details, all attached to the specific individual who was on your site. This is a generational leap beyond what Clearbit Reveal ever offered.

2. Data Enrichment

Clearbit built its reputation on data enrichment, and this remains one area where the legacy product has genuine strengths. But Cursive approaches enrichment differently, focusing on enriching identified visitors rather than enriching known contacts.

Clearbit Enrichment was (and for existing customers, still is) one of the best APIs for enriching known contacts and companies. Give it an email address and it returns 100+ data points including company size, industry, technologies used, social profiles, and more. The API was beloved by developers for its reliability and data quality. However, Clearbit Enrichment required you to already have the contact's email. It enriched known contacts rather than discovering unknown ones.

Cursive enriches visitors at the moment of identification, without requiring a prior email address. When Cursive identifies a person visiting your site, it simultaneously enriches their profile with name, title, email, direct phone, LinkedIn URL, company name, company size, industry, revenue, technology stack, and funding data. The enrichment happens automatically as part of the identification process, and the data feeds directly into outreach workflows. You do not need a separate enrichment API call because identification and enrichment are fused into a single step.

For teams that used Clearbit Enrichment as a standalone API to enrich existing contact lists (not for visitor identification), Cursive takes a different approach. If your primary use case was batch enrichment of known emails, tools in our Clearbit alternatives roundup like Apollo or ZoomInfo may be more direct replacements for that specific workflow.

3. Outreach and Action Layer

This is the most significant gap between old-Clearbit and Cursive. Clearbit never had an outreach layer. It was pure data infrastructure. You received data and had to figure out what to do with it using other tools.

Clearbit delivered data through APIs, Salesforce integrations, and its own dashboard, but it never sent an email, made a phone call, or initiated any form of engagement on your behalf. Every piece of outreach required manual effort through separate tools like Outreach, SalesLoft, HubSpot Sequences, or similar platforms.

Cursive includes a full AI SDR that automatically engages identified visitors across email, LinkedIn, SMS, and direct mail. When a visitor matches your target criteria and exceeds your intent threshold, the AI SDR initiates a personalized multi-channel outreach sequence within minutes. The AI crafts messages using the visitor's browsing behavior, job context, and company details. This is not template-based mail merge. It is context-aware, AI-generated outreach that references specific pages visited and tailors the value proposition to the visitor's role and company.

For teams that used Clearbit as part of a broader stack (Clearbit for data, Outreach for email, LinkedIn Sales Navigator for social), Cursive consolidates those functions into a single platform. You no longer need to pipe data between three or four tools to go from identification to outreach.

4. Intent Data and Lead Scoring

Intent data was never part of Clearbit's product. This was a notable gap that many Clearbit customers filled with separate tools like Bombora, G2, or 6sense.

Clearbit provided no intent signals, no behavioral scoring, and no way to differentiate between a casual browser and a serious buyer beyond basic page view data. If you wanted intent data, you needed to purchase it separately and somehow merge it with your Clearbit enrichment data.

Cursive includes native intent scoring that tracks visitor behavior in real time. The platform monitors pages viewed, time on site, scroll depth, return visit frequency, content topics engaged with, and off-site research signals. Each visitor receives a composite intent score, and you can create intent-based audiences that trigger different outreach strategies based on the visitor's engagement level. High-intent visitors get immediate, aggressive multi-channel sequences. Medium-intent visitors get nurture content. Low-intent visitors get tracked but not engaged until signals strengthen.

5. Audience Segmentation

Clearbit's segmentation capabilities were limited to basic filters within its dashboard and whatever segmentation you built in your connected CRM or marketing automation platform.

Clearbit allowed you to filter identified companies by firmographic attributes (size, industry, location, technology) but did not offer a dedicated audience builder. More sophisticated segmentation required exporting data to other tools or relying on your CRM's segmentation features.

Cursive's audience builder is a core product feature. It lets you create dynamic, multi-dimensional segments combining firmographic filters, behavioral triggers, intent scores, and custom attributes. Audiences update in real time as new visitors are identified and existing visitors' behavior changes. Each audience can be connected to specific outreach workflows, enabling highly targeted engagement strategies. For example, you can build an audience of "engineering leaders at Series B+ SaaS companies who viewed your API documentation page and have a high intent score" and attach a technically-focused outreach sequence authored by your AI SDR.

6. CRM Integration and Ecosystem

Clearbit had excellent integrations, particularly with Salesforce and HubSpot. But the HubSpot acquisition has changed the integration calculus.

Clearbit historically offered deep integrations with Salesforce, HubSpot, Marketo, Segment, and many other tools. The Salesforce integration was particularly popular for automatic lead and account enrichment. However, since the HubSpot acquisition, investment in non-HubSpot integrations has visibly slowed. Salesforce users have reported that Clearbit's Salesforce app updates have become less frequent and that support for Salesforce-specific issues has declined. The clear strategic direction is HubSpot-first, everything else second.

Cursive integrates natively with Salesforce, HubSpot, and other major CRMs with bidirectional data sync. Identified visitors, enriched contact records, intent scores, and outreach activity all flow into your CRM automatically. CRM data also flows back to Cursive to prevent duplicate outreach and inform the AI SDR's messaging. The Cursive marketplace provides additional integrations with popular sales and marketing tools. Because Cursive is independently owned and CRM-agnostic, there is no risk of integration support being deprioritized in favor of a parent company's product.

7. API and Developer Experience

This is one area where Clearbit historically excelled and where Cursive takes a different philosophical approach.

Clearbit's API was one of the best-documented, most developer-friendly data APIs in the B2B space. Engineers loved it for its clean design, comprehensive documentation, fast response times, and reliability. If your team built custom applications on top of Clearbit's API, this is a real consideration in any migration. The API still works for existing customers, but long-term support commitments from HubSpot have not been clearly communicated.

Cursive is platform-first rather than API-first. The core value proposition is delivered through the platform's UI, automated workflows, and native integrations rather than through raw API access. Cursive provides webhook capabilities and CRM sync for programmatic data access, which covers most use cases. However, if your primary Clearbit use case was building custom applications on top of the enrichment API, Cursive's platform approach is a philosophical shift. You gain a complete pipeline generation system but lose some of the raw programmatic flexibility that Clearbit's API provided.

8. Pricing and Transparency

Clearbit's pricing was always opaque, and the HubSpot acquisition has made it even more so. Cursive takes the opposite approach.

Clearbit never published pricing. Costs varied widely based on which products you used, your API volume, company size, and negotiation skills. Typical annual contracts ranged from $12,000 to $50,000 or more. Since the HubSpot acquisition, existing customers have reported 30-50% price increases at renewal, and new standalone Clearbit contracts are increasingly difficult to secure. The trend is clearly toward bundling Clearbit capabilities into HubSpot's (already expensive) premium tiers.

Cursive offers transparent, published pricing: Visitor Pixel is $97/month, Custom Audience is $197/month, and the Pixel + Audience Bundle is $247/month. Every plan is self-serve and month-to-month, with no setup fee and the flexibility to cancel anytime.

Use Case Scenarios

Choose Cursive If...

Stay with Clearbit (via HubSpot) If...

Data Quality Comparison

Clearbit built its reputation on data quality, and it is fair to examine whether Cursive matches that standard across the dimensions that matter.

Company data quality: Clearbit's company data was among the best in the industry, covering firmographics, technographics, social profiles, and detailed company attributes. Cursive provides comprehensive company data through its enrichment partnerships, including company size, industry, revenue, technology stack, funding data, and location. For most use cases, Cursive's company data is comparable to Clearbit's, though power users who relied on niche Clearbit company attributes may notice some differences in coverage.

Contact data quality: Clearbit Enrichment excelled at enriching known email addresses with additional data points. Cursive's approach is different: it discovers and enriches contacts that you did not previously know about (anonymous visitors). For the specific case of enriching existing contacts from an email address, dedicated enrichment APIs may still have an edge. For the broader case of discovering and enriching new contacts from website traffic, Cursive is dramatically more capable.

Visitor identification quality: This is where Cursive decisively wins. Clearbit Reveal identified companies at a 30-40% match rate. Cursive identifies people at a 70% match rate. The data you get from Cursive is both more voluminous (more visitors identified) and more actionable (person-level rather than company-level).

Data freshness: Clearbit updated its data regularly through automated and community-driven processes. Cursive enriches data in real time at the moment of identification, pulling from multiple live sources. For visitor identification data specifically, Cursive's real-time approach ensures you always have the most current job title, company, and contact information.

Integration Ecosystem

Clearbit's integration ecosystem was mature and extensive. Cursive's is growing rapidly. Here is an honest assessment.

Clearbit integrations included Salesforce, HubSpot, Marketo, Segment, Zapier, Slack, and dozens of other tools. The Salesforce integration in particular was deeply built, with managed packages for automatic lead and account enrichment. Since the acquisition, HubSpot integrations have strengthened while other integrations have seen reduced investment.

Cursive integrations include Salesforce, HubSpot, Slack, and a growing marketplace of third-party connections. The integrations are bidirectional and designed to push rich, person-level data rather than just company records. While Cursive's integration catalog is not as extensive as Clearbit's mature ecosystem, the integrations that exist are deeper and more action-oriented, pushing complete contact records with intent scores and triggering workflows automatically.

Cursive's self-serve plans have no setup fee, so teams can choose Visitor Pixel, Custom Audience, or the Pixel + Audience Bundle and get started month-to-month.

Migration Guide: Switching from Clearbit to Cursive

Whether your Clearbit contract is expiring, your renewal price increased beyond budget, or you simply want to upgrade to person-level identification, here is how to make the switch.

Step 1: Audit your current Clearbit usage. Identify which Clearbit products you actually use. Most teams use Reveal (visitor ID) and/or Enrichment. Understanding your usage patterns helps determine what you need from Cursive and whether any supplementary tools are needed.

Step 2: Get a free Cursive audit. Request a free audit that analyzes your website traffic and shows exactly how many additional visitors Cursive would identify compared to Clearbit Reveal. This gives you concrete ROI data for the switch.

Step 3: Install the Cursive pixel. Add the Cursive tracking pixel to your website. Run it alongside your existing Clearbit Reveal script for one to two weeks to directly compare identification volume and data quality.

Step 4: Configure audiences and outreach. Build your intent-based audiences in Cursive's audience builder and connect outreach workflows. This is functionality that Clearbit never offered, so it is net-new capability that starts generating value immediately.

Step 5: Migrate CRM integrations. Connect Cursive to your CRM and configure data sync rules. If you used Clearbit's Salesforce enrichment, Cursive's CRM integration replaces it with richer person-level data from identified visitors.

Step 6: Deprecate Clearbit. Once you have validated Cursive's performance, remove the Clearbit scripts and cancel your subscription. Most teams complete the full migration within two to three weeks.

The Verdict: The Post-Clearbit Era Has a Clear Winner

Clearbit had a great run. It defined the B2B data enrichment category and served thousands of companies well for nearly a decade. But the HubSpot acquisition fundamentally changed the calculus for anyone evaluating Clearbit today.

If you are a committed HubSpot customer, Clearbit's data capabilities will increasingly be baked into the tools you already use. That is a reasonable path forward, though you lose standalone flexibility and pay for it through HubSpot's premium pricing.

For everyone else, and that includes the majority of former Clearbit customers who use Salesforce, Pipedrive, or other CRMs, Cursive is the clear upgrade. You get everything Clearbit offered for visitor identification and enrichment, plus capabilities Clearbit never had: person-level identification at higher match rates, AI-powered multi-channel outreach, native intent data, and sophisticated audience segmentation. All at a transparent price point that is typically lower than what you were paying Clearbit.

The best way to evaluate the switch is to start with a free Cursive audit. In five minutes, you will see exactly how many visitors Clearbit was missing and what the pipeline impact of person-level identification would be for your specific traffic.

About the Author

Adam Wolfe is the founder of Cursive. He built Cursive after the Clearbit acquisition left thousands of B2B teams searching for a standalone alternative that did not just replace Clearbit's data capabilities but improved upon them with modern identification, intent data, and automated outreach.