We Priced 17 AI SDR Tools for a Team of One. Nothing Exists Under $99.

We read the pricing page of every AI SDR and outreach tool we could find on 9 August 2026 — seventeen of them — and priced each one against a single scenario: 500 prospects a month, on email and LinkedIn, run by one person. The cheapest assembly that actually holds is $111.34/month, and it takes three separate vendors plus mailboxes bought outside all of them. Across the nine stacks we could assemble from published prices, the median advertised entry price is $49 and the median real monthly cost is $156.54 — a ratio of 3.1×. Below $99 there is nothing.

Published 9 August 2026 · Last updated 9 August 2026 · All vendor pages read on 9 August 2026. Exchange rate 1 EUR = 1.155 USD (US Federal Reserve H.10, 6 August 2026); every conversion is marked ≈. We recheck this page when a vendor changes a published price and restate the date at the top when we do.

Disclosure first, because it changes how you should read the table. We build Lead Scorer, which competes with several tools below. Lead Scorer is in the table with its real prices and its real limits, priced under exactly the same assumptions as everyone else — and it comes out as the most expensive assembled stack in this scenario. That is the point of putting it there. A comparison where the author's product wins is a brochure.

The scenario, fixed before any price was looked up

A price only means something against a workload. Ours is one person trying to start 500 new conversations a month on both channels. Everything below follows from these assumptions, which were written down before the first pricing page was opened.

Assumption	Value	Where it comes from
Volume	500 new prospects contacted per month	The scenario
Email sequence	3 touches each → 1,500 emails/month, ~68 a working day	Standard short sequence
Capacity per mailbox	30 cold emails a day	2026 deliverability consensus: 20–50/day, 20–30 to stay human-shaped
Mailboxes needed	3 (3 × 30 × 22 = 1,980 capacity for 1,500 of use)	Arithmetic of the two rows above
Mailbox cost	$7 each on annual Google Workspace Business Starter → $21/month	workspace.google.com — official
Secondary domains	2 × $10.44/year → $1.74/month	Cloudflare Registrar, at cost
Email lookups	70% find rate → ~750 lookups for 500 addresses	Our assumption, not a source. Flagged as such.
LinkedIn ceiling	~100 invitations a week ≈ 400 a month per account	Soft limit, consistent across automation vendors
Billing	Annual commitment taken wherever it exists	The assumption most favourable to vendors. Totals below are floors.
Sales Navigator	Excluded ($119.99/month if your targeting needs it)	Add $90–$120 to every row if you need it

One consequence of that LinkedIn ceiling deserves its own line, because it breaks the scenario before any pricing does. 500 prospects a month is about 115 invitations a week, above the ~100 soft limit. A single LinkedIn account cannot reach 500 prospects a month. Every total below therefore models 500 on email and roughly 400 on LinkedIn. Actually hitting 500 on both means a second LinkedIn identity, and four vendors rebill that as a seat.

The master table

Three labels, never mixed. Official means read on a page the vendor controls on 9 August 2026. Reported means a third party said it and the vendor did not — we keep those visible and never call them prices. Not published means the vendor does not publish the figure, which is a finding in its own right rather than a hole to fill with an estimate. Nothing here was estimated, extrapolated or reconstructed.

Pure-play AI SDRs

Tool	Entry price shown	Real solo cost, 500/month	LinkedIn at entry	Overage rate	Source status
Artisan (Ava)	None. All three tiers say "Pricing scoped on your plan"	Not computable	Ambiguous — "social", LinkedIn never named	Not published	Official absence — artisan.co/pricing, demo-gated
11x (Alice)	$3,750/month, annual only = $45,000/year	$3,750 (infrastructure included)	Not listed on the pricing page	Not published	Official, but on a URL the homepage does not link; /pricing returns 404
AiSDR	$250/month (Solo, 200 contacts) · $900/month (Explore, 800 contacts)	$720 (Explore, annual) — Solo cannot hold 500 prospects	Yes, one account from entry	Mechanism published, rate not published	Official, fully public — aisdr.com/pricing
Qualified (Piper)	None	Not computable — and out of scope: Piper is inbound	No LinkedIn channel	Not published	Official absence, demo-gated. Vendr reports a $65,000/year median over 187 purchases
Coldreach	None — /pricing returns 404	Not computable	Not published	Not published	Official absence. G2 states no pricing was provided. A "$899/month" figure circulates; we will not print it as a price
Salesforge (Agent Frank)	$499/month, billed quarterly (~$1,497 up front)	$535 with Infraforge	Yes — unlimited LinkedIn senders	$0.25/contact above 2,000/month	Official, public — salesforge.ai
Gojiberry	$99/month (Pro)	$99 (1,800 prospects/month claimed)	Yes — 2 LinkedIn accounts	Not published	Reported only. The site returns HTTP 403 to automated reads; four concordant third-party reviews, no vendor page
Reply.io (Jason)	$500/month annual, $800 monthly (1,000 contacts)	$500	Yes — 2 LinkedIn accounts	Published credit packs	Official, and machine-readable— one of two in the panel
Rox	$0 (Starter, 2,000 actions) · "from $50/month" (Core)	Not computable — no sending channel of its own	n/a	No rate; you renew early to reset	Official, public
Persana AI	Dead. Merged into Rox, billing stopped 1 April 2026, data deleted 2 May 2026 — announced by the vendor.

Data, sequencers and multichannel

Tool	Entry price shown	Real solo cost, 500/month	LinkedIn at entry	Overage rate	Source status
Smartlead	$32/month annual, $39 monthly (Base) — the panel's floor	$111.34, with Waalaxy as a third vendor for LinkedIn (see the stacks table below)	No, at any tier. There is no upgrade path to LinkedIn	Not published on sends or contacts	Official, and machine-readable — the other of the two
Instantly	$37.60/month annual, $47 monthly (Growth, sending only)	≈ $128	No	None — upgrade or stop	Official, public; mailbox infrastructure priced in-app only
Apollo	$49/seat/month annual (Basic)	≈ $130 — Professional at $79 is mandatory past one mailbox	No — prospecting extension, not a sending channel	Not published. Two third-party sources disagree by 8×	Official, public — apollo.io/pricing. Organization tier forces 3 seats = $357/month
Lemlist	$55/month annual (Email plan, per workspace, unlimited users)	≈ $147 — Multichannel required for LinkedIn	No. LinkedIn requires Multichannel at $87 per user, and the billing unit changes with it	$0.05 per verified email, $0.20 per phone	Official, public. No official EUR price could be captured from a US IP — the currency selector did not render
Clay	$167/month annual, $185 monthly (Launch)	≈ $256 — Clay posts nothing, so add a sequencer and LinkedIn	No — no sending channel at all	+30% premium, credits "from $0.05"; Actions have no overage	Official, public — clay.com/pricing
La Growth Machine	€50/identity/month annual (€60 monthly); LGM also publishes $60/$70 itself	≈ $188 — Basic (250 enriched leads) and Pro (400) both fall short; Ultimate required	Yes — LinkedIn and email from Basic. The only one of its group	€0.01/credit, full enrichment 5 credits → €0.05/lead	Official, and publishes EUR, USD and GBP. Prices live in the page's JavaScript, not the served HTML
Waalaxy	€19/user/month (Pro, 300 invitations)	≈ $57 (Advanced €49, the first tier that holds ~400 invitations)	LinkedIn only. Pro and Advanced cannot send a single email; email starts at Business, €69 — 3.6× the advertised entry	Not published (credit packs). LinkedIn Inbox add-on €20/month	Official, public — but the "−50% annual" discount amount is published nowhere
useArtemis	Two live grids. /pricing, linked in the nav: $69, enrichment only, no sending. /upgrade, unlinked: $99, email and LinkedIn	≈ $122 (Starter $99 + mailboxes)	Yes — at $99, not at $69	Not published	Official on both pages. The real tariff sits on a URL the navigation does not link
Lead Scorer (ours)	€0 CRM · €20/month (Enrichment, no sending) · €49 Solo · €99 Pro · €199 Scale — yearly billing takes 20% off Solo, Pro and Scale	≈ $309 — see the calculation below. The most expensive assembled stack here	No. LinkedIn starts at Pro, €99, with 1 account; Scale carries 2	Published per action: 1 credit per lead enriched, 3 per email found, 15 per phone; packs from €49/1,000	Official — but there is no /pricing URL (that path redirects to a login screen); the grid is an anchor on the homepage, plus /llm-info and llms.txt. No USD price published

The nine stacks, cheapest first

All totals in USD per month, annual commitment, mailboxes and domains included. These are the seventeen surveyed tools only — Lead Scorer is priced separately further down and is deliberately excluded from the medians, because including your own product in your own benchmark's average is how benchmarks stop being worth reading.

Stack	What is in it	Real total	Price shown	Ratio
A · Smartlead + Waalaxy + Google	Smartlead Base $32 (2,000 contacts, 6,000 sends, 2,000 verifications included) + Waalaxy Advanced $56.60 + 3 mailboxes $21 + domains $1.74	$111.34	$32	3.5×
B · useArtemis	Starter $99 from the unlinked page + 3 mailboxes $21 + domains $1.74	$121.74	$69 (the page the nav links)	1.8×
C · Salesforge suite	Salesforge Pro $40 + Leadsforge $49 + Mailforge $30 (10-mailbox minimum) + 3 domains $3.50	$122.50	$40	3.1×
D · Lemlist Multichannel	$87/user + 750 verified emails at $0.05 = $37.50 + 3 mailboxes $21 + domains $1.74	$147.24	$55	2.7×
E · Instantly + Waalaxy + Google	Outreach Growth $37.60 + Credits Growth $37.60 + Waalaxy Advanced $56.60 + 3 mailboxes $21 + domains $1.74 + verification $2	$156.54	$37.60	4.2×
F · Apollo + Waalaxy + Google	Apollo Professional $79 (Basic gives one mailbox) + Waalaxy Advanced $56.60 + 3 mailboxes $21 + domains $1.74	$158.34	$49	3.2×
G · La Growth Machine	Ultimate $165 (LGM's own annual USD price) + 3 mailboxes $21 + domains $1.74	$187.74	$60 (Basic)	3.1×
H · Reply.io Multichannel	$89/user + 1,000 Live Data credits $119 + 3 mailboxes $21 + domains $1.74	$230.74	$49	4.7×
I · Clay + sequencer + LinkedIn	Clay Launch $167 + Instantly Growth $37.60 + Waalaxy Advanced $56.60 + 3 mailboxes $21 + domains $1.74	$283.94	$167	1.7×

Median advertised price $49. Median real cost $156.54. Median ratio 3.1×. One widely cited comparison advises budgeting 1.5× to 2× the sticker price. Computed off vendor pages rather than off vibes, the real number is more than double that advice.

And the fully managed end, for scale: AiSDR Explore at $720/month is the cheapest AI SDR with a published price that can hold the scenario. Agent Frank sits at $535. 11x sits at $3,750. For exactly the same work, the market spans 34× from $111 to $3,750.

Pricing ourselves under the same rules

Lead Scorer now bills yearly as well as monthly, at 20% off — the same assumption that favours everybody else in the table. We priced ourselves on the monthly rate anyway, so the total below is a ceiling where the rest of the table shows floors. Here is the arithmetic, using our published per-action rates:

• Scale, €199/month (€159 a month on yearly billing) is the first plan that clears the scenario: 3 email inboxes matching the 3 mailboxes the volume needs, 2 LinkedIn accounts, 2,000 credits, €80 of AI budget. Solo (€49) has one inbox and 500 credits; Pro (€99) has one inbox and 1,000. Neither holds 1,500 emails a month.
• Credits: 2,750 needed, 2,000 included. 500 enrichments at 1 credit, plus 750 email lookups at 3 credits each — and lookups are billed per lead requested, not per address found, so the 70% find rate is paid for in full. The shortfall takes a 1,000-credit pack at €49.
• €248/month ≈ $286.44, plus the same $21 of Google mailboxes and $1.74 of domains everyone else pays. Total ≈ $309.18.

Against our cheapest paid plan (€20 ≈ $23.10, enrichment only, no sending) that is a ratio of 13.4×. Against the cheapest plan that can send anything (€49 ≈ $56.60), it is 5.5×. Either way it is the widest gap on this page, and the highest total of any assembled stack. Three things follow, and we would rather write them ourselves than have someone else find them:

1. Our credit model is the expensive part, not the subscription. Finding an email costs 3 credits whether or not one is found. At 500 prospects a month that single line is roughly €90 of the €248.
2. Scale carries the second LinkedIn account. The identity the 500-prospect scenario requires used to exist nowhere on our price list; it is included on Scale now, at no extra charge, where Waalaxy, Lemlist, LGM and AiSDR rebill it as a seat. Solo has no LinkedIn account and Pro stops at one, and that ceiling is real: one account cannot work 500 new prospects a month.
3. We publish a LinkedIn quota, which most of the panel does not: the engine caps invitations at 15 per account per day, all campaigns combined, and lower while an account warms up. That is roughly 330–450 a month depending on how you count days, and it is the same physical wall everyone hits — we just wrote it down.

What we do not claim: that $309 is a better deal than $111. On this scenario it is not. The scenario is 500 cold prospects a month, which is a volume play, and volume is the thing our pricing is worst at.

The LinkedIn tax is a multiplier, not a tier

Six of seventeen tools include LinkedIn at entry. Five do not sell it at any price — Smartlead, Instantly, Clay, Apollo and Qualified. For everyone in between, the second channel does not cost a step, it costs a factor:

Tool	Email-only entry	With LinkedIn	Multiplier
Waalaxy	€19 (Pro — and it cannot send email at all)	€69 (Business)	3.6×
Reply.io	$49	$118	2.4×
Lemlist	$55 per workspace, unlimited users	$87 per user	1.6× — and the billing unit changes underneath you
Apollo	$49	$79 (still no native LinkedIn sending)	1.6×
useArtemis	$69	$99	1.4×

Waalaxy is the sharpest case and worth stating plainly rather than as a gotcha: it is a LinkedIn tool that also sells email, so its cheap tiers are cheap because they are LinkedIn-only. Someone landing on the €19 price expecting a two-channel product is reading their own assumption, not the page. The multiplier is still 3.6×.

Nobody publishes what going over costs

Twelve of seventeen tools publish no usable overage rate. That includes all four pure-play AI SDRs — Artisan, 11x, AiSDR and Qualified — which is the segment charging the most. AiSDR publishes the mechanism and withholds the rate, which is a specific and deliberate half-step.

The five that do publish something workable:

• Salesforge — $0.25 per contact above 2,000 a month.
• Lemlist — 1 credit = $0.01; a verified email is 5 credits ($0.05), a phone number 20 ($0.20).
• Clay — a 30% premium on top-ups, credits from $0.05. Actions have no overage at all: you change tier or you stop.
• La Growth Machine — €0.01 a credit, full enrichment 5 credits, so €0.05 a lead, minimum purchase 500 credits.
• Reply.io — published credit packs.

The cost of the silence is measurable. Because Apollo publishes no rate, the two third-party figures in circulation are $0.20 and $0.025 per credit — a factor of eight on the line item most likely to surprise you at the end of a good month. That is not a vendor being devious; it is what happens downstream when a number is missing.

Five entry plans that cannot do the job they are priced against

These prices are all real. They just do not buy the scenario, and in each case the constraint is on the same page as the price:

• Apollo Basic, $49 — one mailbox. 1,500 emails a month through one mailbox is 68 a day, far outside any safe deliverability range.
• La Growth Machine Basic, €50 — 250 enriched leads a month, half the target. Pro at €100 gives 400, still short. Ultimate is the first tier that works, at 3× the entry price.
• AiSDR Solo, $250 — 200 contacts sourced a month, 40% of the target.
• Waalaxy Pro, €19 — 300 invitations a month, and no email capability whatsoever.
• useArtemis at $69 — no sending channel of any kind. It is an enrichment product; the sending product is $99 on a different page.

Add to that a cost that is constant and invisible across the whole table: ~$23 a month of email infrastructure that no sequencer includes. "Unlimited mailboxes" — used by Instantly, Smartlead, Salesforge and Lemlist — means unlimited software slots. It is accurate, and it does not reduce your Google Workspace bill by a dollar.

What we refuse to state

The gaps are half of what makes this worth publishing, so they get their own section rather than a footnote:

• Gojiberry's $99 is reported, not official. Its site returns HTTP 403 to automated reads. Four independent reviews agree on the figure and none of them is the vendor. It is the only tool in the panel whose price rests entirely on third parties. A manual browser visit would settle it cheaply, and we have not done that yet.
• We have no official EUR price for Lemlist. Read from a US IP address, the currency selector never rendered. The €69/€87 figures circulating are reported, and if they are right, the euro price is materially worse than the dollar one at current rates. We are not printing them as prices.
• Coldreach publishes nothing at all, and /pricing returns 404. The "$899/month" repeated across aggregators appears on no Coldreach page, and G2 records that no pricing was provided. We are leaving that cell empty rather than filling it with an internet rumour.
• Artisan's third-party estimates diverge by 4× — one set of sources says $250–$280/month, another says $1,000–$2,500. Vendr has no Artisan page at all. Both ranges are reported here precisely because they contradict each other.
• No purchases were made. Everything comes from public pages, so negotiated prices are out of reach. Vendr's transaction medians are the closest available proxy and are labelled reported throughout.
• Our 70% email find rate is an assumption, not a source. It moves the enrichment line in several stacks. It does not move any conclusion.

What the table actually says

1. The segment is priced for a team. Not badly designed, not overpriced for what it does — designed around a sales org with seats, and a solo founder is not the customer it was drawn for. That is a structural observation, and it is checkable line by line above.
2. Below $99 the shelf is empty for email plus LinkedIn at 500 prospects a month, and the cheapest thing on it costs $111.34 across three vendors and a Google Workspace account you set up yourself.
3. The advertised price is a floor with a median 3.1× above it, and the pieces that make up the gap — mailboxes, domains, verification, the LinkedIn tier, the tier that actually holds your volume — are the pieces nobody puts on a pricing page.

Prices move. Everything here is dated 9 August 2026 and sourced to a page you can open yourself. When a vendor changes a published price we will update the row and move the date at the top — and if you find a figure that has drifted or that we read wrong, we would rather hear it than keep publishing it.

The companion piece, the pricing pages that lie to robots, covers what happened when we tried to read these same seventeen pages the way an AI assistant would. If you want the outreach side rather than the cost side, the cold outreach reply-rate data and the 70-founder first-customers dataset are the two studies underneath it.