AI SDR: What It Is and 14 AI SDR Tools, Priced

AI SDR stands for artificial intelligence sales development representative: software that runs the prospecting half of an SDR's job on its own. It finds people who fit your ideal customer profile, researches them, writes and sends outreach, handles replies and books meetings. On prices read October 16, 2026, AiSDR charges $1.50 a person prospected, Artisan starts at $250 a month billed annually, Salesforge's Agent Frank at $499, Reply.io's Jason at $500 and 11x at $3,750 a month billed annually (its own FAQ says $36,000 a year). HubSpot's Prospecting Agent costs $1 a lead and Salesforce Agentforce $0.10 an action, while Qualified's Piper and Relevance AI publish no price.

Disclosure: We make Cleanlist AI, so read this as a vendor's guide. Cleanlist AI's own agents sit in a disclosed box after the 14 tools, outside the comparison, and its plans are on the Cleanlist AI pricing page. Every competitor price and feature comes from the vendor's own page, read October 16, 2026, with the URL in the sources.

What is an AI SDR?

An AI SDR (artificial intelligence sales development representative) is an AI agent that does the work an SDR does before a meeting exists. It builds or receives a list of prospects, researches each one, writes a message for that person, sends it by email and often LinkedIn or phone, follows up, answers replies and books the meeting on a rep's calendar. Salesforce's own guide defines it as an AI-powered SDR "that focuses on automating top-of-funnel activities."

What separates it from a sequencer is who makes the decisions. A sequencer sends steps a person wrote to a list a person built. An AI SDR picks the people, writes each message from live research and chooses the next step from the reply, inside limits a person sets.

The 14 tools below fall into five groups:

• Outbound agents that find and contact new prospects: 11x's Alice, Artisan's Ava, AiSDR, Salesforge's Agent Frank, Reply.io's Jason, Amplemarket's Duo, Apollo and Regie.ai's RegieGO.
• Inbound agents that answer people who come to you: Qualified's Piper and Breakout on the website.
• Voice agents that hold phone calls: 11x's Julian and Aircall's AI Voice Agent.
• Agents inside a CRM: Salesforce's Agentforce SDR and HubSpot's Prospecting Agent, priced per action or per lead on top of the CRM.
• A platform build: Relevance AI's BDR agent, configured to your own process.

For the same products sorted by BDR job, and the cost of a BDR hire, see the AI BDR guide. For agents that run other go-to-market jobs, see GTM agents.

How does an AI SDR work?

An AI SDR runs the steps a human SDR runs, in software, inside limits a person sets:

1. Target. You give it the ideal customer profile and the exclusions, or point it at your CRM. Agentforce works from your Salesforce data; outbound agents search their own contact data.
2. Find the people and their contact data. Artisan's Ava searches 250M+ verified B2B contacts, 11x a database of 400M+ verified B2B contacts while drawing on 21+ data providers, and Salesforge a 500M+ contact search engine. HubSpot's agent sources the buying committee from providers including ZoomInfo, Apollo, Surfe and Seamless.
3. Research each account. The agent reads signals and public information to find a reason to write now. HubSpot says its agent "monitors buying signals, scores accounts against your ideal customer profile."
4. Write. It drafts a message for each person from that research, often in the rep's voice.
5. Send and follow up. It sends from your domains or from mailboxes the vendor runs, then spaces the follow-ups. Artisan sends in your reps' names from your own sending domains; 11x includes managed Gmail mailboxes on every plan.
6. Handle replies and book. It reads each reply, answers the simple ones, books the meeting and hands the rest to a person. Agent Frank books by sending your calendar link or asking for the prospect's.

How much it decides alone is a setting. Salesforge's Agent Frank runs in Auto-Pilot or in Co-Pilot, where it asks for your review before sending; HubSpot's agent has a review mode and a fully autonomous mode; Artisan describes Ava as "autonomous by default, adjustable by design." Start in the review mode and widen it once the first few hundred messages read right.

AI SDR tools compared

Prices, contracts, channels and contact data as each vendor's own page showed them on October 16, 2026. "No published price" means the page asks for a demo or a sales call instead.

Not listed: Persana, which Google's AI Overview for "ai sdr tools" still names. Persana's own blog announced in March 2026 that it is sunsetting the Persana platform.

The 14 AI SDR tools

Listed in the order of the table. Each entry gives what the product does, its price on October 16, 2026, and the team it fits.

11x (Alice and Julian)

11x sells two agents. Alice is the outbound one, which 11x calls an AI outbound SDR: she builds prospect lists from a database of 400M+ verified B2B contacts, drawing on 21+ data providers, and runs sequences across email, LinkedIn and a dialer, with consented outbound calling. Julian is the inbound one: he responds to leads in seconds, qualifies them and books the meeting with the right rep, across phone, chat, SMS and WhatsApp. Across both agents, 11x lists two-way conversations over voice, chat, email, SMS and WhatsApp.

11x now publishes prices. Alice's Growth plan starts at $3,750 a month billed annually for up to 5 users and 2,000 new prospects a month, with managed Gmail mailboxes included; Pro (5,000 prospects) and Enterprise (10,000+) are custom. Julian Voice starts at $5,333 a month for 2,000 calls and Julian Chat at $2,417 a month for 3,000 chats, both billed annually. The same Alice pricing page's FAQ says 11x "starts at $36,000 per year on the Growth plan." That does not match $3,750 a month, which is $45,000 a year, so ask 11x which figure applies before you sign. There is no self-serve trial.

Best for: larger teams that want outbound, inbound and phone agents from one vendor on an annual contract.

Artisan (Ava)

Ava is Artisan's outbound AI BDR. She searches 250M+ verified B2B contacts across 200+ countries, enriches them from 22+ data sources, writes the emails, sends them in your reps' names from your own sending domains, handles the replies and gets your reps the meetings. Artisan describes her outreach as multichannel across email and social. Reps keep the phone: Artisan says Ava cannot legally make calls, and sells a human power dialer for reps at $67 a seat a month billed annually ($75 monthly). Approval before sending, tone and call-to-action locks and escalation rules are settings you can switch on.

Artisan's self-serve plans sit on the Startups tab of its pricing page. Free gives 300 credits a month to search and enrich leads; campaigns need Intern or above. Intern is $250 a month billed annually ($280 monthly) for 10,000 credits, about 500 leads contacted a month, with larger Intern levels at $300 and $400 billed annually. Employee is $600 ($660 monthly) for 25,000 credits, about 1,250 leads, with levels up to $1,000 billed annually. Annual billing saves 10%. Artisan puts most campaigns at about 20 credits per prospect enrolled (30 for cold campaigns with phone numbers), and bills mailboxes and phone numbers separately. Team, Scale and Enterprise plans go through sales, and a new account gets a 10,000-credit trial to use within 30 days.

Best for: small teams that want one managed outbound agent with a contact database inside and approvals they can turn on.

AiSDR

AiSDR has replaced its Solo, Explore and Scale plans; its plain-text pricing reference was last updated on October 15, 2026. Self-serve is now pay as you go at $1.50 for each person prospected, charged daily, with no subscription. Team plans for companies contacting 1,000+ people a month are priced on volume, at up to 40% lower per contact, and billed monthly on quarterly contracts, with annual plans 20% cheaper than quarterly ones. AiSDR also sells a fully managed service at $2,500 a month, a managed campaign at $149, and warmed-up mailboxes at $33 each.

AiSDR's agent sends email through Gmail or Outlook, sends LinkedIn connection requests, DMs, InMails and voice notes, can add AI call steps through an Aircall dialer, picks leads from a native database of 300M+, and answers replies within 5 to 10 minutes or in a co-pilot mode a person reviews.

Best for: founders and small teams who want to pay per person reached, with no subscription.

Salesforge Agent Frank

Agent Frank is the AI SDR inside Salesforge's cold email platform. It prospects around the clock from a 500M+ contact search engine, writes and sends over email and LinkedIn in 20+ languages, books meetings by sending your calendar link or asking for the prospect's, and runs in Auto-Pilot or in Co-Pilot, where it asks for your review before sending.

Frank costs $499 a month billed annually or $599 a month billed quarterly, which Salesforge frames as 2,000+ contacts a month at $0.25 a contact. Email infrastructure is an add-on, or you connect your own mailboxes. Salesforge says Frank is only available after a demo with its team.

Best for: teams that want email and LinkedIn outreach at the lowest published price per contact.

Reply.io (Jason)

Jason is the AI SDR inside Reply.io's sales engagement platform. Reply.io says Jason finds ideal customers using data from 1+ billion global contacts, personalizes outreach across email and LinkedIn, handles replies and books meetings, and its pricing card lists 24/7 operations, realtime contact search and intent signals.

Jason's AI SDR Starter plan starts at $500 a month billed annually for 1,000 active contacts and 2 LinkedIn accounts ($800 on monthly billing). AI SDR Growth is $1,500 a month billed annually for 5,000 contacts ($2,500 monthly), and Enterprise is priced on request.

Best for: teams that already sequence in Reply.io and want an agent on the same contacts.

Amplemarket Duo

Amplemarket sells contact data, multichannel sequences and its Duo AI in one annual contract. Startup is $600 a month on an annual term for two users, with 27,000 contacts, plus 13,500 email credits and 600 phone number credits per user a year, and Duo Copilot. Growth (four users) adds Duo Voice for AI voice messages, and Elite (ten users) adds Duo Inbox, which drafts a reply to every prospect email. Growth and Elite are priced on request. Amplemarket's AI agents "find buyers, research prospects, and personalize outreach", and its MCP server lets you prospect and research from Claude or ChatGPT.

Best for: teams of two to ten reps that want data, sequences and AI agents from one vendor.

Apollo

Apollo builds its AI into its contact database (240M contacts and 30M companies) and its sequencer. Its AI Assistant ("Run your entire outbound motion in Apollo with AI") pulls lead lists from plain language, writes outreach and triggers follow-ups based on prospect behavior, and Apollo's agents run in the background on Professional and Organization plans. An FAQ on Apollo's own site says "Most AI SDRs are spray-and-pray."

Free gives 900 credits a seat a year, granted monthly. Basic is $49 a seat a month billed annually ($65 monthly), Professional $79 ($99), and Organization $119 a seat billed annually with a 3-seat minimum; annual billing saves 24%. A verified email costs 1 credit and a phone number 8. The AI Assistant is free as an introductory offer on paid plans, and some actions it runs, such as enrichment, can use credits.

Best for: teams that want data, sequences and AI in one per-seat tool and will write their own playbook.

Regie.ai (RegieGO)

RegieGO is Regie.ai's "agentic sales workspace" for reps who fill their own pipeline. It researches each account for a reason to reach out now, enriches contacts (an enrichment that finds nothing costs nothing), drafts the messages, sends from your own Gmail or Outlook and adds a power dialer from Pro.

Free gives each person 250 one-time credits. Pro is $49 a month ($41 billed annually) with 5,000 credits a month; Team is $150 a seat ($125 annually) with 15,000 credits a seat and a two-seat minimum.

Best for: individual reps and small teams who want research, drafts and calling in one low-cost seat.

Qualified Piper

Piper is an inbound AI SDR. It talks to website visitors over video, voice or live chat, nurtures and converts inbound leads over email, and books meetings while interest is high. Qualified is now a Salesforce company, and Salesforce's own FAQ says "Salesforce's AI SDR is Piper by Qualified."

Qualified lists three plans, Premier, Enterprise and Ultimate, all priced on request. Every plan includes the multi-modal agent, website and email conversations and meeting booking; agent handoff starts on Enterprise and multiple agent profiles on Ultimate.

Best for: B2B companies with real website traffic whose inbound leads wait too long for an answer.

Breakout

Breakout sells AI SDRs for three jobs. The inbound one works your website: it answers product questions, qualifies visitors against your ICP and books the meeting before they leave the page. The outbound one follows up over email and LinkedIn through the sequencers you already run, triggered by first-party signals such as pricing-page and return visits plus 700+ third-party signals; it sorts the replies, answers them, books and logs each one to the CRM. A third, the 1:1 AI SDR, works accounts over months until they raise a hand.

Signals, which identifies website visitors without the AI SDR, starts at $500 a month with 5 seats. Growth adds the Inbound AI SDR from $2,000 a month with 12 seats. Enterprise is priced on request.

Best for: B2B companies with real website traffic that want an inbound agent and signal-led follow-up from one vendor.

Aircall AI Voice Agent

Aircall, which sells business phone plans, also sells AI Voice Agents. They handle inbound calls, outbound calls, SMS and WhatsApp in 38 languages, update the CRM and book meetings during and after the call. For sales development, Aircall describes an agent that calls a new lead once it lands in HubSpot, typically inside a minute, and confirms budget, timeline and use case on the call.

Aircall prices the agents per minute: $0.49 a minute pay as you go up to 2,500 minutes, then $0.39, or prepaid bundles from $175 for 500 minutes a month, with 100 free minutes on sign-up and 50 a month after. Its pricing page lists a $100 a month minimum on annual billing ($125 monthly), while the AI Voice Agents page says there is no minimum usage, so confirm the terms. AI-voice calls to residential and mobile numbers need the called person's prior express consent under the FCC's 2024 ruling.

Best for: teams that already run their phones on Aircall and want a voice agent on new inbound leads.

Agentforce SDR (Salesforce)

Agentforce SDR is Salesforce's customizable SDR agent. Salesforce's demand generation FAQ says Agentforce SDR "allows lots of customization" and is "designed for outbound outreach," while Piper, from its Qualified acquisition, is the ready-made option for inbound leads. Salesforce also now sells an outbound sales agent in Sales Cloud, with no published price, whose FAQ says it "can perform many tasks associated with an AI SDR or BDR." The agent writes "brand-aligned, personalized outreach for every prospect", works the inbound leads you route to it, answers emailed questions from documents such as a pricing guide and offers real-time calendar availability for booking, all grounded in your CRM data.

There is no SDR-specific price. Agentforce bills Flex Credits at $500 per 100,000 (20 credits, or $0.10, a standard action; voice actions take 30), $2 per conversation, or per user, with Agentforce add-ons for Sales at $125 a user a month. Max Editions start at $550 a user a month with the Agentforce add-on and Flex Credits included.

Best for: Salesforce customers with an admin who will configure the agent's workflows.

HubSpot Prospecting Agent

HubSpot's Prospecting Agent "monitors buying signals, scores accounts against your ideal customer profile", researches each account, sources the buying committee from data providers including ZoomInfo, Apollo, Surfe and Seamless, and drafts emails "in each rep's voice". Reps can review every draft or switch on a fully autonomous mode. The HubSpot Prospecting Agent review tests it in more depth.

It costs $1 for each lead it recommends outreach for, paid in HubSpot Credits at 100 credits a lead. Sales Hub Starter includes 500 credits a month, Professional 3,000 and Enterprise 5,000, enough for 5, 30 and 50 leads; extra credits cost $0.01 each, and unused credits do not roll over.

Best for: HubSpot customers who want an agent without adding a vendor.

Relevance AI BDR agent

Relevance AI is a platform for building AI agents, and its BDR agent (called Bosh on its page) is a ready-made multi-agent system you customize "to fit any team playbook". It researches prospects across LinkedIn, CRM data, web search, enrichment services and company websites, writes the outreach, handles replies and books meetings for inbound, outbound and product-qualified leads.

Relevance AI publishes no price. Its pricing page lists one Enterprise plan with a "Talk to sales" button, and the BDR agent page sends you to a demo or a sales call.

Best for: operations teams that want to build and tune their own agent on a platform.

Our product: Clu and Cleanlist AI agents

Cleanlist AI sells the list half of this work as agents a rep directs, and Clu is not an AI SDR: your team writes each sequence email once, with variables for each lead's details, decides whether leads enter a sequence automatically or after a yes in Slack, and takes the calls. Clu, Cleanlist AI's GTM agent, builds an agent from one sentence, such as "Every Monday, find new people who match my ICP, get their verified work emails, and send me the list in Slack." Clu reads your company profile and connections, sizes the audience before anything costs money, asks at most four questions and proposes the agent on a canvas. Nothing saves until you click Accept, and Clu turns an agent on only after an explicit yes.

On its schedule the agent finds, enriches, researches, scores and sequences. It searches 1B+ profiles for new people who match your ICP and never sends you the same person twice, finds work emails across a 25+ provider waterfall (1 credit for each email found, nothing for a miss) and phone numbers (10 credits each when found), can research each lead with a source on every fact and score it from 0 to 100 against your ICP with the reasons written down, and adds it to a sequence that sends email from the rep's own Gmail or Outlook inbox, with call tasks for the rep. An Approve step can hold each lead for a person's yes, in the app or in Slack. Reps work the replies and take the calls.

Every agent Clu builds carries a credit limit and a record limit per run. Schedules run within 30 minutes of the time you set, and CRM triggers on Salesforce and HubSpot are checked every 30 minutes. You can build agents with Clu during the 14-day Pro trial; running, testing and switching them on need Pro, at $89 a seat a month or $67 billed annually with 5 active agents per workspace, or Enterprise with unlimited agents. See how the agents work, the prospecting automation agent and the AI lead qualification agent.

What to look for in an AI SDR tool

Seven checks decide whether an AI SDR books meetings or burns a domain. Ask each vendor for the answer in writing.

1. Which steps it runs alone. List building, research, writing, sending, replies and booking. Ask which of the six wait for a person by default.
2. Where the contact data comes from, and the bounce rate on your list. A built-in database (Artisan, AiSDR, Salesforge, 11x, Reply.io, Apollo), providers the agent calls (HubSpot), or your own CRM (Agentforce). Run 200 of your own contacts through it and count bounces before the first campaign.
3. Approval controls. A co-pilot or review mode, tone and call-to-action locks, escalation rules, and a do-not-contact list the agent cannot override.
4. Whose mailboxes send, and who pays for them. Artisan and Salesforge bill sending infrastructure separately, 11x includes managed Gmail mailboxes, AiSDR sells warmed-up mailboxes at $33. Never send agent volume from your main domain.
5. Channels and consent. Email and LinkedIn are common; SMS and AI voice calls carry consent rules (see "Are AI SDRs illegal?" below).
6. CRM fit. An agent inside the CRM (HubSpot, Salesforce) or a sync that writes every touch and reply back to the record.
7. Contract and unit price. Pay as you go (AiSDR), monthly (Artisan, Regie.ai, Reply.io), quarterly (Salesforge, AiSDR Team) or annual (11x, Amplemarket). Compare on price per contact and, after a month, per meeting held.

Every AI SDR is only as good as the contact data under it. An agent that writes a good email to an address that bounces books nothing and costs you sender reputation on every send.

How much an AI SDR costs

Published AI SDR prices start at $49 a month (Regie.ai's RegieGO Pro, for one rep) and $250 a month (Artisan Intern, billed annually) and reach $3,750 a month for 11x's Alice Growth and $5,333 for its Julian Voice, both billed annually. Unit prices run $0.25 a contact (Salesforge's Agent Frank), $1 a lead (HubSpot), $1.50 a person (AiSDR) and $0.10 an action (Agentforce). Qualified and Relevance AI price on request. Per contact, on the vendors' own volume figures, read October 16, 2026:

Three costs sit outside the sticker price. Sending infrastructure: Artisan bills mailboxes and phone numbers separately, Salesforge sells email infrastructure as an add-on, AiSDR sells warmed-up mailboxes at $33, and 11x includes managed mailboxes. CRM seats: HubSpot's and Salesforce's agents need the CRM subscription underneath. Review time: someone has to read replies and check what the agent sends, at least in the first month.

For medians and cost-per-meeting math across the category, see AI SDR pricing.

AI SDR vs human SDR

An AI SDR costs less per contact and runs around the clock; a human SDR runs the live conversation. Side by side, on the vendors' and Indeed's own figures, read October 16, 2026:

Indeed has no separate US SDR salary page; its SDR title redirects to Sales Representative, so the Business Development Representative figure ($72,801 base plus $10,000 commission, from 15.8k salaries) is the closest published benchmark. Salesforce's own guide lands in the same place as the table: AI SDRs "are adept at high-volume, repetitive tasks," while human SDRs focus on relationship-building and closing deals. The setup that uses both puts software on the list, the research and the first touches, and SDRs on calls, replies and the top accounts.

Do AI SDRs actually work?

For research and first-touch writing at volume, yes; for fully autonomous outbound, results vary by list and market. Salesforce, which sells two AI SDRs, says on its own AI SDR guide that "the most sophisticated AI SDRs today are better suited to tackling inbound leads" and that fully autonomous outbound motions are "more complex for AI SDRs."

The published results come from vendors and their customers, so read them as best cases:

• LangChain's own GTM agent, which drafts outreach for a rep to approve, raised its conversion rate 250% between December 2025 and March 2026 and gave each rep back 40 hours a month, LangChain reports.
• Relevance AI quotes customers with $7M in pipeline generated and a threefold increase in meetings.

Where AI SDRs fail is the input and the inbox. An agent that writes well to a stale list sends confident emails to people who left the company, and every bounce and spam complaint lands on your domain. Gmail asks senders to keep spam rates under 0.10% and never reach 0.30%, and anyone sending more than 5,000 messages a day to Gmail needs SPF, DKIM and DMARC plus one-click unsubscribe. An agent sending thousands of emails a week to a weak list reaches those limits fast.

So judge an AI SDR on meetings held per 1,000 contacts, bounce rate and spam complaints over a month, against your current channel. The trial plan below sets that up.

Is AI replacing SDRs?

Not as a role in 2026. AI is taking over the research and writing tasks, and the live parts of the job stay with people. The vendors say so themselves: Artisan's FAQ asks "Does Ava replace our BDR team?" and answers that Ava runs the repetitive outbound work "so your reps spend their time on live conversations." HubSpot's agent drafts in each rep's voice, and LangChain's own agent sends its drafts to a rep for approval first.

The headcount data points the same way. Regie.ai, which sells AI to sales teams, tracked eight quarters of LinkedIn Sales Navigator headcount across a panel of accounts and reports SDR seats down 22.7% and AE seats up 10.8%: fewer people prospecting, more people closing.

The setup that uses both puts the software on lists, research and first drafts, and SDRs on calls, replies and the top accounts. A founder with no SDR can run a first outbound motion before the first sales hire.

Are AI SDRs illegal?

No. Using AI to research prospects and write or send B2B outreach is legal in the United States, and the outreach follows the same rules a person's would, plus one rule aimed at AI voices. This section summarizes primary sources. It is not legal advice.

• Email. The CAN-SPAM Act covers business email: the FTC states that "the law makes no exception for business-to-business email." Each message needs accurate header information, a subject line that does not deceive, identification as an ad, a valid physical postal address and a way to opt out, and opt-outs must be honored within 10 business days. The FTC also tells senders to monitor what others do on their behalf, so you answer for what your AI SDR vendor sends. Each email in violation can cost up to $53,088.
• Calls with AI voices. On February 8, 2024 the FCC ruled that calls made with AI-generated voices are "artificial" under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act. Calls of that kind to residential lines and mobile numbers need the called party's prior express consent, and prior express written consent when they carry telemarketing. An AI voice agent cold calling people who never agreed to it breaks those rules.
• Bots that hide what they are. California's bot law (Business and Professions Code section 17941) makes it unlawful to use a bot online to mislead a person in California about its artificial identity in order to drive a sale. A clear, conspicuous disclosure that it is a bot avoids liability.
• Canada. Canada's anti-spam law (CASL) bans commercial electronic messages sent without the recipient's consent, express or implied, and requires sender identification and an unsubscribe mechanism in each one.

Before an agent sends, put four controls in place: authenticated sending domains with an unsubscribe in every message, a suppression list the agent cannot override, consent before any AI voice call, and a clear statement of who is writing wherever a buyer would otherwise assume a person. For your own markets and lists, ask counsel.

AI SDR vs AI BDR

The two labels name the same products, and vendors pick whichever term their buyers search for: Artisan calls Ava "the autonomous AI BDR," Qualified calls Piper "the AI SDR Agent," and Salesforce's FAQ for its outbound sales agent asks whether it is "the same as an AI SDR or AI BDR". Where companies split the roles, SDRs often work inbound leads and BDRs prospect outbound. The AI BDR guide sorts the tools by BDR job and prices them against a BDR hire.

How to run a 30-day AI SDR trial

A month is enough to see whether an agent books meetings your team would not have booked anyway. Seven steps:

1. Pick one segment and one offer. Write the ICP, the exclusions and the single reason a buyer in that segment should reply.
2. Keep a control group. Split the segment in two: half to the agent, half to your current motion, over the same weeks.
3. Set guardrails before the first send. Approve the first 100 messages, cap daily sends per mailbox, load a do-not-contact list (customers, open deals, competitors, past unsubscribes) and set a spend cap.
4. Send from separate, authenticated domains. Set up SPF, DKIM and DMARC, add one-click unsubscribe and warm the mailboxes, so a bad week never touches your main domain.
5. Read every reply in week one. Check what the agent answered and where it should have handed the thread to a person.
6. Track five numbers each week: bounce rate, spam complaints (Gmail's line is 0.10%), positive replies, meetings booked and meetings held, each per 1,000 contacts.
7. Decide on cost per meeting held, against the control group and your current channel.

Trial terms read October 16, 2026: Artisan gives new accounts 10,000 credits for 30 days and has a Free plan with 300 credits a month, AiSDR's pay-as-you-go plan has no subscription, Amplemarket says every plan includes a free trial, and Regie.ai has a free plan with 250 one-time credits a person. 11x has no self-serve trial.

Which AI SDR tool is currently the best?

None wins every case. Pick by the problem you have, on prices read October 16, 2026:

• Testing outbound on a small budget: AiSDR at $1.50 a person with no subscription, or Artisan's Free plan and then Intern ($250 a month billed annually).
• The lowest published price per contact, on email and LinkedIn: Salesforge's Agent Frank at $0.25 a contact.
• Already on HubSpot: the Prospecting Agent at $1 a lead.
• On Salesforce: Piper for inbound conversations, Agentforce SDR for outbound you configure.
• Data, sequences and AI in one annual contract: Amplemarket, from $600 a month.
• One rep who wants research, drafts and a dialer: Regie.ai's RegieGO, from $49 a month.
• Outbound, inbound and phone agents from one vendor on an annual contract: 11x, from $3,750 a month (its FAQ says $36,000 a year).
• A custom agent built to your own process: Relevance AI.
• Already sequencing in Reply.io: Jason, from $500 a month billed annually.
• Data, sequences and AI per seat: Apollo, from $49 a seat a month billed annually.
• Inbound leads on the phone: 11x's Julian or Aircall's AI Voice Agent.
• Agents that find, verify and score the list every week while reps own replies and calls: the agents in the disclosed box above, with plans on the Cleanlist AI pricing page.

See pricing

FAQ

What does AI SDR stand for?

AI SDR stands for artificial intelligence sales development representative. It names software that does an SDR's prospecting work on its own: finding people who fit the ideal customer profile, researching them, writing and sending outreach, answering replies and booking meetings. Vendors also sell the same products as AI BDRs, AI sales agents or digital workers.

What are the top AI SDR tools?

On vendor pages read October 16, 2026, the outbound AI SDRs with published prices are AiSDR ($1.50 a person), Artisan's Ava (from $250 a month billed annually), Salesforge's Agent Frank ($499 a month billed annually), Reply.io's Jason (from $500 a month billed annually) and 11x's Alice (from $3,750 a month billed annually, or $36,000 a year in 11x's own FAQ). Qualified's Piper and Breakout work inbound leads, Salesforce's Agentforce SDR and HubSpot's Prospecting Agent run inside their CRMs, and Relevance AI builds a custom agent. The comparison table above lists all 14.

What is the difference between inbound and outbound AI SDR tools?

Outbound AI SDRs start the conversation: they find people who never contacted you, write to them and follow up. Inbound AI SDRs answer people who came to you, on the website, by email or by phone, then qualify them and book the meeting. 11x sells one of each (Alice outbound, Julian inbound); Salesforce sells Agentforce SDR for outbound and Piper for inbound.

What is Salesforce AI used for?

In sales, Salesforce's AI is Agentforce: agents that work inside Salesforce on your CRM data. For sales development, Salesforce sells Piper by Qualified for inbound leads, Agentforce SDR for outbound outreach you configure, and an outbound sales agent in Sales Cloud. Agentforce bills on Flex Credits ($500 per 100,000, 20 credits a standard action), $2 a conversation, or Agentforce add-ons for Sales at $125 a user a month.

Will CRM be replaced by AI?

No. The CRM stays the system of record, and AI agents now work inside it: HubSpot's Prospecting Agent researches and drafts in HubSpot, and Agentforce works on Salesforce data. An AI SDR that sits outside the CRM needs a sync that writes every touch and reply back to the record, or the next rep starts blind.

What is an AI SDR?

An AI SDR is software that does the work of a sales development representative on its own: it builds or receives a prospect list, researches each person, writes and sends outreach by email, LinkedIn or phone, handles replies and books meetings. Outbound AI SDRs include 11x's Alice, Artisan's Ava, AiSDR, Salesforge's Agent Frank and Reply.io's Jason; inbound ones include Qualified's Piper and Breakout.

How much do AI SDR tools cost?

On vendor pages read October 16, 2026: AiSDR charges $1.50 a person prospected, Artisan $250 to $1,000 a month billed annually on its self-serve plans, Salesforge's Agent Frank $499 to $599 a month, Reply.io's Jason from $500 a month, 11x from $3,750 a month billed annually (its FAQ says $36,000 a year), Amplemarket $600 a month on an annual term, Regie.ai from $49 a month, HubSpot's Prospecting Agent $1 a lead and Salesforce Agentforce $0.10 an action or $2 a conversation. Qualified and Relevance AI publish no price.

Do AI SDR tools include contact data?

Most outbound ones do. Artisan searches 250M+ verified contacts, 11x a database of 400M+, AiSDR a 300M+ lead database, Salesforge a 500M+ contact search engine, Reply.io 1 billion contacts and Amplemarket and Apollo their own B2B databases. HubSpot's agent sources contacts from data providers, and Agentforce works from your Salesforce data. Check the bounce rate on a sample of your own list before the first send, because every bounce counts against the sending domain.

Can an AI SDR make phone calls?

Some can. 11x sells Julian as an AI phone agent and lists consented outbound calling, Amplemarket's Duo Voice sends AI voice messages, and AiSDR adds call steps to sequences through an Aircall dialer. Aircall sells AI Voice Agents for inbound and outbound calls, priced per minute. Under the FCC's February 2024 ruling, calls that use AI-generated voices need the called party's prior express consent, and written consent for telemarketing. Artisan says Ava cannot legally make calls and sells a human power dialer for reps.

Can AI do lead generation?

Yes, for the research, drafting and follow-up parts. AI SDRs build lists, research accounts, write first messages and follow up, and agents can run the same steps on a schedule for your reps. The judgment calls, such as which segment to target and when a list has gone stale, still need a person. The guide to automating lead generation walks through the setup, and the AI lead generation tools guide compares the tools.

How can I build an AI lead generation agent?

Write the job as a trigger, steps, limits and an output: for example, every Monday find 200 new people who match the ICP, verify their work emails, score them and post the best 25 to Slack. You can build it in code with a framework and data APIs, in a workflow tool such as n8n or Clay, or describe it to an agent builder. The GTM agents guide compares those routes, the Claude Code prospecting agent tutorial builds one in code, and the prospecting automation agent shows the whole weekly job as one agent.

What is the 30-day rule in prospecting?

The 30-day rule is a working convention: a prospect who finished a sequence without replying rests for about 30 days before anyone contacts them again. It protects the prospect's patience and your sending domain. Agents make it easy to break, because re-enrolling a contact costs them nothing, so keep the suppression window in the system that owns the contact record and re-verify the email before the second attempt.

What is the 5 minute rule for leads?

The 5 minute rule is the sales convention that an inbound lead should hear from you within five minutes of filling in a form, while they are still at their desk and still thinking about the problem. It is the main case for inbound AI SDRs such as Qualified's Piper and 11x's Julian, which answer at any hour. Routing still matters: the lead has to reach the right owner with enough context to act.

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