Disclosure: GTM Bud is our product. We include it alongside competitors to give you a complete picture, and we call out its limitations honestly.
AI SDR pricing in 2026 spans an order of magnitude, from $499 a month at the entry level to $5,000 a month and beyond for enterprise platforms, and the advertised number is rarely the number you pay. This article is the cost breakdown: the real tiers, the pricing models behind them, the line items that show up after you sign, and what to budget by team size. If you are deciding whether the category is worth buying at all, that is a different question, and we answered it in our AI SDR ROI breakdown. If you are still working out what the software does, start with what an AI SDR is.
I work on GTM Bud, and our parent outbound agency, Referral Program Pros, has run more than 4,000 outbound campaigns and booked over 7,000 meetings for B2B clients. Pricing our own product meant mapping every vendor’s model in this category, and backing it with a written guarantee: a 5 percent positive reply rate on LinkedIn, 1.5 percent on email, or a full refund. What follows is that market map, with each number attributed to who published or reported it.
What are the real AI SDR pricing tiers in 2026?
AI SDR pricing in 2026 falls into three tiers. Entry-level autonomous agents run $499 to about $900 a month: Salesforge publishes Agent Frank at $499 a month on annual billing, and AiSDR’s own pricing page starts plans at $900 a month. The mid tier runs roughly $900 to $2,500 a month, where 2026 third-party pricing guides place Coldreach’s reported self-serve plans from $899 and Artisan’s higher-volume plans on custom annual terms. The enterprise tier starts around $3,750 a month, the published price of 11x’s Growth plan on annual billing, with 2026 procurement analyses reporting typical first-year contracts of $40,000 to $60,000. The subscription is only the anchor. Data credits, email infrastructure, onboarding fees, and annual prepayment stack on top, and 2026 pricing guides note the extras can double the advertised price. The tier you shop in matters less than the line items attached to it.
Here is the market at a glance, with what each published price actually includes and what gets billed separately:
| Vendor | Published entry price | What the price includes | Billed separately or worth checking |
|---|---|---|---|
| Salesforge (Agent Frank) | $499/mo on annual billing, $599/mo quarterly | One agent, ~1,000 active contacts, 6,000 to 7,500 emails/mo per its published specs | Extra mailboxes and domains, annual prepayment |
| AiSDR | $900/mo per its pricing page ($250 Solo tier reported by 2026 breakdowns) | Unlimited seats; Solo caps at 200 AI-researched contacts/mo | Contact caps, quarterly terms on larger tiers |
| Coldreach | ~$899/mo reported by 2026 pricing guides | Signal-based targeting; some sources describe pricing as quote-based | Demo-first sales process, contract length |
| Artisan (Ava) | Entry self-serve ~$250/mo billed annually per third-party breakdowns | Credit-based usage; heavier sending consumes credits faster | Higher tiers custom, estimated $2,000+/mo by 2026 reviews |
| 11x (Alice) | $3,750/mo Growth plan on annual billing per 2026 pricing indexes | Autonomous outbound agent, email plus phone | Annual commitment, implementation, sales-led |
| GTM Bud | $350/mo per LinkedIn account, $150/mo per email account | About 1,200 leads/mo capacity per LinkedIn account, monthly terms, 7-day trial | You (or we) handle the replies; it is not a conversational agent |
Two caveats on that table. Artisan’s pricing is the least consistent across sources: third-party breakdowns in 2026 list everything from a $250 a month entry tier on annual billing to custom plans estimated at $2,000 to $5,000 a month, so treat any single Artisan number as a snapshot rather than a quote. And Coldreach’s figures come from third-party pricing guides, since the vendor itself starts with a demo. Where a price is not published by the vendor, it belongs in your negotiation, not your budget. For what each tool actually does at these prices, our comparison of the best AI SDR tools in 2026 covers capability rather than cost.
Why the same category costs $499 or $5,000: the four pricing models
The spread is not random. Four distinct pricing models produce those numbers, and each one changes how your cost behaves as you scale.
- Flat per-agent subscription. One price, one agent, a defined workload. Agent Frank’s $499 a month covers roughly 1,000 active contacts and 6,000 to 7,500 sent emails per Salesforge’s published specs. Predictable, but the contact cap is the real product boundary: outgrow it and you buy another agent.
- Usage and credit pricing. Artisan’s plans meter activity through credits, per 2026 third-party breakdowns, so cost scales with how much you prospect. Good for low volume, punishing if a campaign takes off mid-cycle and you hit overage rates you never priced.
- Per connected account. GTM Bud charges $350 a month per connected LinkedIn account, with capacity for about 1,200 leads a month, and $150 a month per email sending account, on monthly terms with a 7-day trial. Cost maps to channel capacity, so scaling means adding accounts, not renegotiating a contract. The honest limitation: it runs the outreach and hands you the positive replies. It is done-for-you outbound execution at a flat per-account price, not an autonomous agent that converses on your behalf.
- Custom enterprise contracts. 11x publishes a Growth plan at $3,750 a month on annual billing per 2026 pricing indexes, and procurement analyses report typical first-year totals of $40,000 to $60,000 once implementation and commitments are counted. You are buying a program with account management, and the price reflects the buyer, not the reply rate.
The model matters more than the tier because it decides who carries scaling risk. Flat plans cap you, credits meter you, per-account pricing grows in steps you choose, and enterprise contracts lock the whole year in before the first reply arrives.
The hidden line items buyers discover late
The subscription is the visible half of AI SDR cost. These five line items are the invisible half, and every one of them tends to surface after the contract is signed.
Data and enrichment credits
Many platforms advertise contact volume in the headline price, then charge separately for enrichment, verified emails, or phone numbers, a pattern 2026 pricing guides flag as the largest hidden cost in the category. AiSDR’s Solo tier, for example, caps at 200 AI-researched contacts a month per 2026 pricing breakdowns; past the cap, you are buying data. If your niche is thin in the built-in database, a separate data subscription joins the stack, and our comparison with AiSDR goes deeper on how those caps behave in practice.
Email infrastructure and warmup
Sending at volume safely requires extra mailboxes beyond whatever the platform includes. Per 2026 pricing comparisons of cold email infrastructure providers, inboxes run a few dollars each per month. Small individually, meaningful across ten or twenty inboxes, and each new inbox needs two to four weeks of warmup before it can carry full sending volume. That warmup period is a scheduling cost as much as a dollar cost: your paid subscription is running while your infrastructure is not yet allowed to.
Dedicated sending domains
Your primary domain should never carry cold email risk, which means buying and configuring secondary domains. Google’s bulk sender requirements, in force since February 2024, require authentication and a spam complaint rate below 0.3 percent for senders of 5,000 or more daily messages (Google email sender guidelines). A burned domain fails those thresholds for months. Domains cost a few dollars a year each; the real cost is that skipping them puts your company’s actual domain on the line.
Onboarding and setup fees
2026 pricing guides report one-time onboarding fees of $500 to $2,000 appearing on first invoices at the mid tier, with enterprise implementations running $5,000 and up. These rarely appear on pricing pages. Ask directly, in writing, before the demo ends.
Annual-only billing
The advertised price is very often the annual-billing rate. Agent Frank is $499 a month on annual billing but $599 a month billed quarterly, per Salesforge’s published pricing, and 11x sells annual commitments. A “monthly price” you cannot actually pay monthly is a prepayment disguised as a subscription, and it moves the entire testing risk onto you.
How much should you budget by team size?
Based on the published prices above, a solo founder should budget $500 to $1,000 a month all-in for an AI SDR program: an entry subscription such as Agent Frank at $499 or one GTM Bud account at $350 or $500, plus a modest infrastructure layer of domains and inboxes. A team of two to ten sending across multiple channels should budget $1,000 to $2,500 a month, which covers a mid-tier platform or several connected accounts plus real data and infrastructure spend. A sales org of ten or more evaluating enterprise agents should budget from $3,750 a month, anchored to 11x’s published Growth price, and plan for first-year totals of $40,000 to $60,000 per 2026 procurement analyses once implementation is included. In every band, reserve six to eight weeks of that budget for testing before you judge cost per meeting.
The same framework as a table:
| Team size | Monthly budget | What it buys | The trap to avoid |
|---|---|---|---|
| Solo founder | $500 to $1,000 | One entry agent or one to two connected accounts, plus domains and inboxes | Annual prepayment before the channel is proven |
| Team of 2 to 10 | $1,000 to $2,500 | Mid-tier platform or multi-account setup, data, infrastructure | Credit overages when a campaign scales mid-cycle |
| Sales org of 10+ | $3,750 and up | Enterprise agent with onboarding and account management | Paying enterprise implementation for unproven fit |
One structural note for the solo and small-team bands: if nobody on the team has hours to manage campaigns weekly, the comparison is not between AI SDR tiers at all. It is between software and a done-for-you outbound service, where the management time is part of the price instead of an unbudgeted extra. Whether any of these budgets pays for itself depends on what a meeting is worth to you, and the break-even arithmetic lives in our worth-it analysis.
Five pricing questions to ask before any demo
Pricing diligence in this category fits in five questions. Ask them in writing and keep the answers:
- Is the advertised price billed monthly, or is it the annual-billing rate? Get the true monthly-terms price.
- What exactly does a contact or credit include? Enrichment, verification, and phone numbers are often separate.
- Who pays for sending domains, extra mailboxes, and warmup? If the answer is you, add it to the budget now.
- Is there an onboarding or setup fee, and can it be waived? It usually can be at sales-led tiers.
- What happens at the volume cap? Overage rates and forced upgrades are where predictable pricing stops being predictable.
A vendor who answers all five crisply is telling you something about the product, too. A vendor who will not put the answers in writing is telling you more.
Frequently asked questions about AI SDR pricing
Is an AI SDR cheaper than hiring a human SDR?
On sticker price, yes, by a wide margin. Entry AI SDR agents run $499 to $900 a month per the vendor pricing above, while hiring a good human SDR in the US comes close to $100,000 a year all-in, our founder’s figure from hiring and managing them. The honest comparison is cost per qualified meeting rather than cost per month, because a human handles replies and qualification in ways most AI agents do not, and the replies are where meetings are won.
Are there any free AI SDR tools?
There are free trials and limited free tiers, but no genuinely free autonomous AI SDR. Artisan lists a free tier with roughly 300 credits a month per 2026 third-party pricing breakdowns, enough to evaluate the interface but not to run a campaign. Tools priced under $500 a month are usually sequence automation rather than autonomous agents, per 2026 category reviews. The practical free option is a real trial on monthly terms: GTM Bud’s AI outbound sales tool comes with a 7-day trial for exactly that reason.
Why do so many AI SDR vendors require annual contracts?
Because outbound takes six to eight weeks of testing before results stabilize, and vendors would rather you commit past that window than churn inside it. Annual billing also flatters the advertised price, since the headline number is usually the annual-billing rate. The commitment shifts testing risk from the vendor to you, which is why monthly terms are worth prioritizing until the channel is proven for your audience.
Can you negotiate AI SDR pricing?
At the sales-led tiers, almost always. Quote-based platforms like 11x and the enterprise tiers at Artisan and Coldreach price per deal, and contract length, onboarding fees, and volume caps are all movable. Self-serve tools with published pricing rarely negotiate, but they also carry less risk, since you are not committing tens of thousands of dollars before seeing a reply. Ask for a shorter initial term before asking for a discount.
What does email infrastructure cost on top of an AI SDR subscription?
Budget for extra sending domains and mailboxes if your plan does not include them. Domains cost a few dollars each per year, inboxes run a few dollars each per month per 2026 infrastructure pricing comparisons, and each new domain needs two to four weeks of warmup before it can carry full volume. The dollar amounts are small; the warmup time is the real cost, and it belongs in your launch schedule, not your surprise column.
Price the whole stack, then make the vendor carry the risk
AI SDR pricing looks like a $499-to-$5,000 spread, but the spread you actually pay is subscription plus data plus infrastructure plus onboarding plus the billing terms, and the last item quietly decides who carries the risk of a failed test. Price the whole stack for your team size, insist on the true monthly number, and prefer any structure that lets you leave after one honest testing cycle. We built our own pricing to survive exactly that scrutiny: $350 a month per connected LinkedIn account, $150 a month per email sending account, monthly terms, a 7-day trial, and a written reply-rate guarantee of 5 percent positive on LinkedIn or 1.5 percent on email, or a full refund. See what that looks like as an AI SDR for small business and judge the price against the replies.