TL;DR
Smartlead's cheapest paid plan is Base at $39 a month billed monthly, or $32.50 a month billed annually, for 6,000 email sends and 2,000 contacts. Pro is $94 monthly or $78.30 annual for 90,000 sends and 30,000 contacts. Unlimited Smart is $174 monthly or $144.50 annual for 150,000 sends and unlimited contacts. Unlimited Prime is $379 monthly or $314.60 annual for 500,000 sends. Annual billing saves 17%. Every plan includes unlimited email accounts at no extra cost. All figures read from smartlead.ai/pricing on September 1, 2026. Last updated: September 1, 2026.
Last updated: September 1, 2026. Every Smartlead figure below was read from smartlead.ai/pricing on September 1, 2026 and the URL is named inline. Smartlead sells four plans, not three, and the fourth one changes the per-email arithmetic, so the whole range is priced here.
Smartlead is a cold email infrastructure platform: mailboxes, warmup, sequences, a unified inbox and deliverability tooling. Cleanlist sits upstream and builds the list you load into it. Cleanlist does not send email and does not ship an inbox or a dialer, so nothing here is a swap. The reason to read both price sheets together is that a send ceiling only pays for itself if the addresses under it are real.
How much does Smartlead cost in 2026?
Smartlead costs $39 a month for the Base plan on monthly billing, or $32.50 a month on annual billing, which is a 17% discount (smartlead.ai/pricing, checked September 1, 2026). Pro is $94 monthly or $78.30 annual. Unlimited Smart, the plan Smartlead marks most popular, is $174 monthly or $144.50 annual. Unlimited Prime is $379 monthly or $314.60 annual. There is no permanent free plan. The pricing page says "Try for free and pick a plan later" and states no credit card is required to start, but it does not print a trial length. Every tier includes unlimited email accounts at no extra cost, so the meter is sends and contacts rather than mailboxes.
What does each Smartlead plan include?
The four plans differ on contacts, monthly sends, the verified-email allowance and which platform features are bundled rather than sold as add-ons.
| Plan | Billed monthly | Billed annually | Contacts | Sends / month | Verified emails | Warmup pool | CRM | API and webhooks |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Base | $39/mo | $32.50/mo | 2,000 | 6,000 | 2,000 | Add-on, $59/mo | No | No |
| Pro | $94/mo | $78.30/mo | 30,000 | 90,000 | 30,000 | Included | No | Add-on |
| Unlimited Smart | $174/mo | $144.50/mo | Unlimited | 150,000 | 50,000 | Included | Included | Included |
| Unlimited Prime | $379/mo | $314.60/mo | Unlimited | 500,000 | 170,000 | Included | Included | Included |
Unlimited Prime also includes 3 SmartServers with OAuth, 3+ client workspaces and white labelling. On Unlimited Smart, white labelling is an add-on at $29 a month per client workspace (smartlead.ai/pricing, September 1, 2026).
What is the real cost per email on each Smartlead plan?
Divide the annual monthly price by the send ceiling and the ranking is not the one the plan order suggests. Base costs about $0.0054 per email at $32.50 for 6,000 sends. Pro costs about $0.00087 at $78.30 for 90,000. Unlimited Smart costs about $0.00096 at $144.50 for 150,000. Unlimited Prime costs about $0.00063 at $314.60 for 500,000 (smartlead.ai/pricing, September 1, 2026). Pro is cheaper per email than Unlimited Smart. If your only reason to move from Pro to Unlimited Smart is send volume, you are paying about 10% more per message for 60,000 extra sends. The reasons to make that move are the unlimited contact pool, the bundled CRM and the bundled API, not the send economics.
Which Smartlead plan is cheapest per contact?
Base allows 2,000 contacts at $32.50 a month annual, about $0.016 per contact per month. Pro allows 30,000 at $78.30, about $0.0026. Unlimited Smart and Unlimited Prime publish unlimited contacts, so the per-contact figure goes to zero at scale and the binding constraint becomes the verified-email allowance instead: 50,000 a month on Smart and 170,000 on Prime (smartlead.ai/pricing, September 1, 2026). Read those two numbers together. "Unlimited contacts" with a 50,000 verified-email ceiling means you can store any list you like and validate 50,000 of it a month. Cleanlist prices verification the other way round and includes it in enrichment: syntax, DNS and MX, SMTP and catch-all detection, charged only when a verified record comes back.
What are Smartlead's add-ons and what do they cost?
Smartlead's add-on list is where a $32.50 plan becomes a $200 bill. As of September 1, 2026 the published add-ons are SmartSenders mailboxes at $4.50 to $9 per mailbox per month depending on provider, SmartDelivery at $49 to $599 a month across its Growth, Pro and Export tiers, SmartDialer at $9.00 in credits a month, email verification at $32 a month, SmartServers at $39 per server per month, the warmup pool at $59 a month on Base, and white labelling at $29 a month per client workspace (smartlead.ai/pricing). A Base plan with warmup and verification turned on is $32.50 plus $59 plus $32, which is $123.50 a month annual, or nearly four times the headline price.
Does Smartlead charge per seat?
Smartlead's pricing page does not print a seat or workspace-user count for Base, Pro or Unlimited Smart. Unlimited Prime prints "3+" client workspaces, which is an agency-client construct rather than a user seat (smartlead.ai/pricing, checked September 1, 2026). The metered resources on this platform are contacts, sends and verified emails. That makes the effective cost per person fall as your team grows, the same way it does on Instantly. Cleanlist counts seats explicitly instead of leaving them unstated: Free is 1 seat, Starter $79 is 2, Pro $229 is 5, Scale $599 is 10, and an extra seat is $20 a month.
Does Smartlead have a free plan?
No. Smartlead publishes a free trial rather than a free plan. Its pricing page says "Try for free and pick a plan later" and that no credit card is required to start, but it prints no trial length and no permanent free allowance (smartlead.ai/pricing, September 1, 2026). If a standing free tier is part of your evaluation criteria, that is a difference worth noting against tools that publish one. Cleanlist starts a new workspace on a 14-day full Scale trial with 250 credits, 3 seats and no card, including every feature except the public API and MCP, and then drops to a Free plan at $0 for 30 credits a month with no expiry.
How much does Smartlead cost per year?
On annual billing, Base is $32.50 a month, which is $390 a year. Pro is $78.30 a month, or $939.60 a year. Unlimited Smart is $144.50 a month, or $1,734 a year. Unlimited Prime is $314.60 a month, or $3,775.20 a year (smartlead.ai/pricing, September 1, 2026). Annual billing saves 17% against the monthly rate at every tier, so the annual saving is $78 on Base, $188.40 on Pro, $354 on Unlimited Smart and $772.80 on Unlimited Prime. Add-ons are billed on top and are not discounted by the annual toggle on the page we read.
Is Smartlead cheaper than Instantly?
At the entry tier, yes: Smartlead Base is $32.50 a month annual against Instantly Growth at $37.60, and Base allows 6,000 sends and 2,000 contacts against Growth's 5,000 sends and 1,000 contacts (smartlead.ai/pricing and instantly.ai/pricing, both checked September 1, 2026). One tier up they converge almost exactly: Smartlead Pro at $78.30 gives 90,000 sends and 30,000 contacts, Instantly Hypergrowth at $77.60 gives 125,000 sends and 25,000 contacts. Both publish unlimited email accounts and unlimited or included warmup at that tier. Within $1 a month, the decision is not about price. It is about deliverability tooling, inbox workflow and which add-ons you will actually turn on. Our Instantly pricing guide prices that side in full.
What does Smartlead not include that you still have to buy?
Smartlead does not include domains, and mailboxes are an add-on at $4.50 to $9 each per month through SmartSenders. It does not include a contact database, so the leads are yours to source. Email verification is bundled as an allowance on the higher plans and sold at $32 a month as an add-on. It does not include enrichment across multiple data providers. That last gap is the one that decides whether the send ceiling earns anything: Cleanlist returned 98% verified email and 85% direct dial across 500 stratified B2B leads in the Cleanlist 500-Lead Enrichment Benchmark, 2026, while single-source providers returned 70-80% email and 30-60% phone on identical input. A 150,000-send ceiling loaded with 75% deliverable data wastes a quarter of the tier.
How do Smartlead's credits compare to Cleanlist's credits?
They are not the same unit and should not be compared as one. Smartlead's meters are sends, contacts and verified emails, all bundled into the plan price, plus SmartDialer credits sold at $9.00 a month. Cleanlist's meter is enrichment credits: 1 credit for a verified email with LinkedIn, title and company, 10 for a direct dial, 11 for both, 1 for a company enrichment, 0.2 per lead for CRM or sequencer sync, and 0.5 to 3 per lead for smart agents. People Search and Company Search cost 0 credits, with no export meter layered on top. Cleanlist Pro is $229 a month for 5,000 credits, about $0.046 a credit, and enrichment is charged only when data comes back.
Does Smartlead replace an enrichment tool?
No. Smartlead verifies the addresses you bring and sends to them. It does not find contacts across a provider network, does not return direct dials and does not run firmographic enrichment. Those are the jobs Cleanlist does: People Search and Company Search with structured filters at 0 credits, waterfall enrichment across 25+ providers, email verification with syntax, DNS and MX, SMTP and catch-all detection, ICP scoring from 0 to 100, smart agent columns, Chrome extension capture, LinkedIn and Sales Navigator import, and CRM sync to HubSpot, Salesforce and Outreach. The two products sit in sequence rather than in competition: build and verify in Cleanlist, export or sync, send from Smartlead.
Who should buy which Smartlead plan?
Buy Base if you are testing a single motion at low volume and can live without the warmup pool, because the $59 warmup add-on nearly triples the plan price. Buy Pro if you send between 6,000 and 90,000 emails a month, because it is the cheapest per email of the two middle tiers and it bundles warmup. Buy Unlimited Smart for the unlimited contact pool, the bundled CRM and the bundled API rather than for the sends, since it costs about 10% more per email than Pro. Buy Unlimited Prime if you are an agency: it is the cheapest per email in the range at about $0.00063, and it bundles white labelling, three client workspaces and three SmartServers that would otherwise cost $39 each per month.
Smartlead pricing at a glance
| If you send | Best value plan | Annual monthly price | Cost per email |
|---|---|---|---|
| Under 6,000/mo | Base | $32.50 | ~$0.0054 |
| 6,000 to 90,000/mo | Pro | $78.30 | ~$0.00087 |
| Up to 150,000/mo with unlimited contacts | Unlimited Smart | $144.50 | ~$0.00096 |
| Up to 500,000/mo, agency | Unlimited Prime | $314.60 | ~$0.00063 |
Every figure in this guide was read from the named vendor URL on September 1, 2026. Cold email platform pricing changes without notice, so re-check the vendor page before you buy.
References & Sources
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- [2]
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Take a batch of contacts off your pipeline, run them through the waterfall, and see how many emails bounce and how many numbers are wrong. Then export the corrected rows. 250 credits, 3 seats, 14 days. No card required. The whole CSV goes in on Starter at $79/mo.
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