Comparison
Lead Scorer vs Smartlead
Smartlead has the lowest published entry price of the 17 tools we priced, and it anchors the cheapest complete month too — $111.34 across three vendors. That number is the floor of this whole market, which makes it the right thing to compare anything against.
Verdict
Pick Smartlead if you want the lowest-cost email infrastructure on the market and you will assemble the data, the LinkedIn channel and the copy yourself. Pick Lead Scorer if you want one subscription that does the research and writes the messages.
What Smartlead really costs one person
500 new prospects a month, one person, a 3-touch email sequence (1,500 emails).
Advertised
$32/month billed annually (Base) — $39 monthly
Real month, one person
≈ $111/month for the complete scenario
3.5× the advertised price
Lead Scorer, same month
≈ $251/month — Scale at €199 (≈$230) plus your own 3 mailboxes (≈$21). One inbox on Solo (€49) carries about 200 prospects a month at 3 touches, which is the volume we are actually built for.
Billed monthly, cancel anytime. Yearly billing takes 20% off Solo, Pro and Scale: €468, €948 and €1,908 a year (€39, €79 and €159 a month). Optional — monthly still cancels anytime.
Read on Smartlead's own pricing page and its machine-readable llms.txt — one of only two vendors in the survey whose prices an agent can read directly.
smartlead.aiWhat the advertised price leaves out
- The cheapest viable month in our whole survey: Smartlead Base $32 + Waalaxy Advanced €49 ≈ $57 for LinkedIn + 3 mailboxes ≈ $21 + domains ≈ $1.74 = $111.34, across three vendors.
- Smartlead has no LinkedIn channel at any tier and no upgrade path to one.
- Base includes 2,000 verified emails, which is why this stack needs no separate verification line — a genuine advantage over Instantly's two-subscription model.
- No overage rate is published for sends or contacts.
- Smartlead's pricing page says 500,000 sends where its own llms.txt says 510,000. Both read 2026-08-09.
How we priced this
- Scenario
- 500 new prospects a month, one person, a 3-touch email sequence (1,500 emails).
- Infrastructure counted in every total
- 3 mailboxes at 30 emails/day (Google Workspace Business Starter, ≈$21/month) and 2 secondary domains (≈$1.74/month) are counted in every stack, because every vendor leaves them out.
- Billing
- Annual commitment wherever one exists — the assumption most favourable to the vendor.
- LinkedIn cap
- LinkedIn's ~100 invitations/week soft cap means a single account cannot physically work 500 new prospects a month. The totals model 500 by email and ~400 on LinkedIn.
- Exchange rate
- €1 = $1.155 (US Federal Reserve H.10, 2026-08-06). Conversions are marked ≈.
- Limits
- No purchase was made. Every official figure comes from a vendor page read on 2026-08-09; third-party figures are labelled as such and never used as prices.
Side by side
| Feature | Lead Scorer | Smartlead |
|---|---|---|
| Free tier | Full CRM, forever | Trial — duration not published |
| Entry price | €0 · €49/mo with the agent | $32/mo (Base, annual) — the survey's lowest |
| Real cost, 500 prospects/month | ≈ $251 (Scale €199 + your 3 mailboxes) | ≈ $111 across 3 vendors — the survey's cheapest |
| Vendors to manage | 1 | 3 (sender + LinkedIn tool + mailboxes) |
| LinkedIn channel | Included from €99 (Pro) | None at any tier, no upgrade path |
| Finds and qualifies for you | Agent sources, scores, rejects off-ICP | No — you bring the list |
| Email verification | Included in credits | 2,000 verified emails included at Base |
| Published overage rate | Yes — €0.049/credit | Not published |
| Machine-readable pricing | llms.txt published | llms.txt published — one of two in the survey |
Where Smartlead beats Lead Scorer
Written by us, about our own product.
- $32/month is the lowest published entry price of the 17 tools we priced, and it is a real price, not a teaser. At pure email volume, nothing beats it.
- Unlimited mailboxes and no seat accounting anywhere in the plan. Nothing punishes you for growing.
- 2,000 verified emails included at the entry tier — the only cheap sender in the survey that does not sell verification as a second line.
- Smartlead publishes an llms.txt with its prices. Two vendors out of seventeen do that. We think it is the right thing to do and we do it too.
- Monthly billing, no lock-in.
Where Lead Scorer wins
Same standard of evidence, opposite direction.
- The agent finds the accounts, scores them and writes the sequence. Smartlead assumes all of that is already done.
- LinkedIn exists in our product from €99; in Smartlead it does not exist at any tier, which is why the cheapest complete month needs a third vendor.
- One vendor and one invoice instead of three.
- Company records come from the official French State registry with a verified SIREN and a named dirigeant.
- MCP server with 104 tools, so your own agent can drive the entire motion.
Which one is for you
Pick Smartlead if…
Operators and agencies running many mailboxes for many clients, who supply their own data and their own copy and want the cheapest reliable sender.
Pick Lead Scorer if…
One founder with no list, no copy and no time to assemble three subscriptions.
Frequently asked questions
Is Smartlead the cheapest way to do outbound?
For sending, yes — $32/month is the lowest published entry price of the 17 tools we priced on 2026-08-09. For a complete month with LinkedIn, the total is $111.34 across three vendors, which is still the cheapest complete stack we could assemble. Nothing in this market goes under $99 once you count everything.
Can Smartlead send LinkedIn messages?
No, and there is no tier that adds it. That is why the cheapest complete stack pairs it with Waalaxy Advanced at €49. If you want both channels from one vendor, Smartlead is not the answer.
What does Smartlead charge when you go over?
It does not publish a rate for sends or contacts. That puts it with the 12 tools out of 17 in our survey that publish no overage at all.
Why compare a €49 agent to a $32 sender at all?
Because they are the two ends of the same decision. Smartlead is the cheapest way to send messages you have already written to a list you have already built. Lead Scorer is the cheapest way to have the list built and the messages written. If you have the list and the copy, buy the sender.
Other comparisons
Run your outreach on autopilot with AI agents.
Free CRM forever. The outbound agent from €49/month — it finds the accounts, scores them, writes the messages. Nothing sends until you approve it.