Best AI SDR software

An AI SDR agent does the top-of-funnel work a sales development rep does: pick accounts, research them, write the first message, send it, follow up, and hand over a booked meeting. What separates the category from a sales engagement platform is the unit of sale.

AiSDR charges by AI-researched contacts rather than by seat, with Solo at $250 a month for 200 contacts, Explore at $900 for 800 and Scale at $2,500 for 2,500, and Explore and Scale both include unlimited users.

Jason AI, Reply's AI SDR product, prices by active contacts too: $500 a month billed annually for 1,000 contacts and $1,500 for 5,000. Salesforge sells Agent Frank at $499 a month billed quarterly for 2,000 or more contacts a month, about $0.25 a contact.

Those three published price lists tell you what the category sells: volume of researched and contacted prospects, not rep productivity. That changes the business case. A per-seat tool gets cheaper per message as reps work harder.

A per-contact agent costs the same per contact whether the list is good or bad, so all the pressure moves onto targeting.

Work out how many net-new contacts a month your market can absorb without exhausting the list in two quarters, because that number sets the tier and the tier sets the price.

The AI SDR software category lists every vendor we track with a fit line and a directory-level price. All figures checked September 2026.

AI SDR products fall into three operating models, and the model you pick narrows the shortlist faster than any feature comparison. In the assisted model, the agent researches accounts and drafts emails, and a rep approves every send.

In partial automation, the agent builds and runs sequences, and a rep or manager signs off on the sequence rather than each email. In the near-autonomous model, the agent picks accounts, writes, sends and handles first replies, while people review a sample each week.

Each model puts human judgment in a different place. Choose one before the first demo, because if you skip that step the vendor chooses for you, and it will pick the most autonomous setup since that is what its pricing assumes.

A vendor that bills by contacts worked has no reason to propose a workflow where a rep reads every draft.

The operating model also decides who you hire. The assisted model keeps SDR headcount and makes each rep faster. Partial automation replaces list building and first-draft writing, which is roughly a third of an SDR's week, and keeps the rep on replies and calls.

The near-autonomous model replaces the role and creates a new one: somebody has to read what the agent sent last week, every week, and that person needs enough commercial judgment to spot a message that reads fine and lands badly.

Teams coming from a conventional sequencing tool find the assisted model familiar. The autonomous model needs review habits that do not exist yet in most organizations, and nobody builds them by accident.

The clean case for an AI SDR is a large addressable market, a short qualification path, and more accounts than your current team can contact. If you sell into 40,000 companies and your two SDRs touch 600 a month, software can close that gap.

If you sell into 300 named accounts, an agent that contacts them faster is a liability, because you only get one first impression per account and you have already burned several of them.

Deal size changes the maths more than headcount does. At a $6,000 average contract value, a $2,500 a month Scale plan costs $30,000 a year and needs five extra closed deals to pay for itself, which is reachable.

At a $600 average contract value the same plan needs fifty, and the follow-up work will swamp the team before the number lands.

Two situations argue against buying at all. The first is an untested message: an agent running a multi-touch sales cadence that has never converted will produce the same result at ten times the volume, and the volume is what damages your domains.

The second is a CRM nobody trusts. Agents work from account and contact records, so duplicate accounts and three-year-old job titles turn into well-written emails sent to people who left.

Teams with either problem should spend the first quarter's budget on the message and the data, then revisit the agent.

The third honest answer is that some teams need capacity, not autonomy. If reps spend half their week building lists, an assisted tool at a few hundred dollars a month recovers most of that time without changing who owns the outbound motion.

Score every vendor on five things demos tend to skip. Research quality: can the agent explain in one sentence why an account fits your ICP, using a fact you can verify on the company's own site?

Sequence control: how much can a rep edit before launch and after the sequence is running? Deliverability: who manages domain warm-up, daily sending limits and mailbox rotation, and is the mailbox estate included or billed separately?

Reply handling: what does the agent do when a prospect asks about pricing or pushes back on a claim? Inspection: can a manager see exactly what was sent, to whom, and on what reasoning?

The fifth one is where most rollouts fail quietly. An agent that sends 4,000 emails a month produces more outbound copy in a week than a manager will ever read, so the product has to sample and surface rather than archive.

Ask to see the review screen, not the dashboard.

Mailbox capacity is the other line to pin down. AiSDR caps domains and mailboxes per plan, from 1 domain and 3 mailboxes on Solo to 6 domains and 18 mailboxes on Scale, which means sending capacity is a tier decision rather than a setting.

Salesforge sells mailboxes separately through Primeforge at $4.50 per mailbox per month with a 10-mailbox minimum, plus .com domains at $14 a year, so a 30-mailbox estate is $1,620 a year on top of the software.

Clean up your data enrichment and deduplication before launch or budget it as part of the rollout. All prices checked September 2026.

These are the vendors sold as a replacement for the role rather than a tool for the person in it. None of the three largest publish a price.

11x publishes no prices and sells per customer, with the quote driven by agent capacity and contract length.

It fits teams running high-volume outbound who want one vendor accountable for the whole motion, and the review question to press is what inspection a manager gets over a program sending at that volume.

Artisan sizes its plans by leads contacted per month, with the price scoped to the plan and an AI dialer sold as a per-seat add-on.

Because the unit is leads contacted, compare it on cost per lead and cost per meeting held, and ask what happens when you exceed the monthly allowance.

AiSDR is the one autonomous vendor with a public price list, which makes it the useful anchor for every quote you receive. Explore works out to $1.125 per contact on quarterly billing and $0.90 on annual, and Scale to $1.00 and $0.80.

A team needing 1,500 contacts a month has to move to Scale, which means $7,500 upfront for the first quarter. Its fully managed service adds $2,500 a month on top.

Two smaller options fit narrower jobs. Bosh, an AI BDR agent built on the Relevance AI platform, is listed as custom-priced on business requirements, so ask first whether you are billed on leads worked, meetings booked or agent runs.

SalesCloser AI runs voice conversations and demos rather than email, and its pricing page invites a call with no plan grid; agents of that type are usually metered by minutes, so ask for the unit and the rate. Checked September 2026.

These products keep a rep accountable for what goes out, and all four publish rates, which makes them easier to budget and easier to leave.

Apollo.io lists four plans: Free, Basic at $49, Professional at $79 and Organization at $119 per user per month on annual billing, with monthly billing about 20% higher and a three-user minimum on Organization.

It bundles contact data, AI drafting and sequencing in one subscription, which is why lean teams pick it, and the bundling is also why swapping out one half later is awkward. A 10-seat team on Professional pays $9,480 a year.

Regie.ai publishes self-serve pricing for its outbound product: Pro at $41 a month billed annually for one person with 5,000 credits, and Team at $125 per seat per month annually with a two-seat minimum and 15,000 credits per seat pooled across the team.

Ten seats on Team is $15,000 a year for 150,000 pooled credits a month.

Credits fund research, drafting, enrichment and dialing, they do not roll over, and actions pause when they run out unless an owner enables capped overage, so track credit burn per rep in month one.

Jeeva AI publishes Growth at $95 a month and Scale at $239 a month, both billed annually for one seat, with Enterprise starting at ten seats.

Ten Scale seats at list would be $2,390 a month, which is a useful ceiling to negotiate the Enterprise quote against.

Humanlinker prices in euros, with Pro at 69 euros per user per month monthly for 1 to 5 users and higher usage levels at 99 and 149 euros; phone numbers sit outside the plan and are bought through FullEnrich from 47 euros per 100, which for a calling team can cost more than the seats.

Checked September 2026.

Neither of these is an AI SDR, and both keep turning up inside AI-led outbound stacks because the agent still needs somewhere to send from. Price them as part of the same decision.

Instantly prices per workspace rather than per seat, which is the single most important thing about it for a growing team.

Growth is $37.60 a month on annual billing for 1,000 uploaded contacts and 5,000 emails, Hypergrowth is $77.60 for 25,000 contacts and about 100,000 emails, and Light Speed is $286.30 for 100,000 contacts and 500,000 emails with dedicated sending servers.

Because seats are not metered, a 10-rep team on Hypergrowth pays $931.20 a year, about $93 per rep. Its lead database is a second subscription starting at the same $37.60.

Smartlead sells four plans on the same logic: Base at $39 a month, Pro at $94, Unlimited Smart at $174 and Unlimited Prime at $379, with annual billing cutting each by about 17%.

Base has no API, webhooks or CRM access, so most sales teams start at Pro.

Mailboxes are the hidden line again: through SmartSenders, fresh Google or Outlook mailboxes run $4.50 each per month plus $13 per domain per year, so a 30-mailbox estate on 10 domains adds $1,750 a year, more than the Pro subscription itself.

The pattern holds across the category. Software is the small number and sending infrastructure is the large one, which is why a per-contact quote from an autonomous vendor can look expensive and still be cheaper than assembling the stack yourself. Checked September 2026.

Fit, published price and the dimension that decides each purchase, as of September 2026.

AiSDR: autonomous outbound with a price you can model. From $250 a month for 200 contacts. Decider: contact volume, since seats are unlimited above Solo.

11x: high-volume programs on a custom quote. Quote only. Decider: what inspection a manager gets over the sending.

Artisan: handing the whole motion to one vendor. Quote only, scoped by leads contacted, dialer as a per-seat add-on. Decider: cost per meeting held against your current SDR cost.

Jason AI: mid-market teams already on Reply. From $500 a month annually for 1,000 active contacts, unlimited users. Decider: how an active contact is defined.

Agent Frank, from Salesforge: an agent priced per contact. $499 a month billed quarterly for 2,000-plus contacts. Decider: whether mailboxes are in the price.

Apollo.io: reps in the loop on one subscription. Free tier, then $49 to $119 per user per month annually. Decider: credit allowances rather than features.

Regie.ai: partial automation with pooled usage. Free tier, Pro $41, Team $125 per seat a month annually. Decider: credit burn per rep.

Jeeva AI: small teams testing agentic outbound. Free tier, Growth $95, Scale $239 a month. Decider: per-credit cost after allowances.

Humanlinker: personalisation-heavy outbound in Europe. From 69 euros per user per month. Decider: phone credits at 47 euros per 100.

Four pricing models run through this category, and they are not comparable on a spreadsheet without conversion. Per researched or active contact is the dominant one: AiSDR, Jason AI and Agent Frank all meter this way, and seats are unlimited or near enough.

Per seat survives at the assisted end, where Apollo.io and Regie.ai charge $41 to $125 per user per month. Per workspace is how the sending tools price, so headcount barely moves the bill.

Quote only covers 11x, Artisan, Bosh and SalesCloser AI, where the proposal is built from agent capacity, volume band and term.

Convert everything to cost per qualified meeting held before you compare. Take the monthly fee, divide by the contacts the plan allows, then apply a conservative meeting rate from your own history rather than the vendor's benchmark.

On AiSDR's published Explore plan that is $1.125 per contact, so 800 contacts at a 1% meeting rate is eight meetings at about $112 each.

Run the same arithmetic on each quote and the spread usually turns out to be smaller than the list prices suggest.

Then add the costs that sit outside the subscription. Sending domains and mailboxes, at roughly $4.50 per mailbox per month plus $13 to $14 per domain per year from the vendors that publish those rates.

Contact data, which is a separate subscription at Instantly, Salesforge and Smartlead. And the review time of whoever reads what the agent sent.

Our sales tool ROI calculator is where to run subscription, credits and mailboxes as one number, and how we check vendor pricing explains what sits behind the figures above.

Run the decision in this order. First, pick an operating model: assisted, partially automated, or near-autonomous. Second, write down the monthly contact volume your market can absorb for four quarters without burning the list.

Third, convert every quote to cost per contact and cost per meeting held on your own historical rates. Fourth, price the mailbox estate and the contact data separately, because those two lines are frequently larger than the software. Only then compare features.

Test it properly before you sign an annual term. Run a 30-day parallel pilot that puts your best human-written sequence against the vendor's on the same account list, split by territory rather than by rep so the comparison holds.

Judge it on meetings held and pipeline created, not emails sent or accounts researched. Ask for a written success metric and an exit clause, which is reasonable to request from every vendor in this category and is granted more often than buyers expect.

Our SDR to AE handoff checklist is worth fixing first, because an agent that books meetings into a broken handoff produces no pipeline.

If two autonomous vendors reach the final round, the 11x and Artisan head to head covers workflow control and outbound quality. If you want humans in the loop, the Clay and Apollo.io comparison is the more useful read.

And if the real bottleneck is list quality rather than writing capacity, start with our guide to AI prospecting software instead, because the best AI SDR software cannot fix a target list that was never right.