AI Sales Assistant: 9 Best Tools Ranked, With Prices (2026)

To watch an assistant do a real job, describe your buyer to Clu in one sentence: it builds the list and finds each person's verified work email and phone number, and the step-by-step below shows what each step costs.

Disclosure: Cleanlist AI publishes this page, and Clu, Cleanlist AI's GTM agent, is third of the 9, labeled as our product. HubSpot and Salesforce sit above it, and Outreach, Salesloft and lemlist follow the list, unranked. The order is our editorial pick for a B2B team of 5 to 50 reps and carries no score. Every price was read on the vendor's own page on November 4, 2026.

What is an AI sales assistant?

An AI sales assistant is software that does a defined part of a rep's job when the rep asks, or on a trigger the rep set, and leaves the decisions to the rep. The time it goes after is large. Salesforce's 2026 sales statistics page says reps spend 60% of their time on non-selling tasks, citing its seventh State of Sales report, a survey of 4,000+ sales professionals.

Most assistants do one or two of six jobs well. Match the tool to the job before you compare features.

AI sales assistant vs AI sales agent vs AI SDR

The three labels overlap, and vendors use them loosely. The useful difference is who starts the work and who approves it before a buyer sees anything.

Most tools on this list now do some of all three. For the agent side, read AI sales agents explained. For software that runs outbound on its own, our AI SDR tools comparison prices 15 of them.

The 9 best AI sales assistants, ranked

1. HubSpot Sales Hub (Breeze): best for teams that run HubSpot

Price (read November 4, 2026): free for up to 2 users. Starter starts at $7 a seat a month, a discount for new customers. Professional starts at $90 a seat a month plus a required $1,500 onboarding fee, and Enterprise at $150 a seat plus $3,500 onboarding.

HubSpot builds its assistant into the CRM, so it works from the records your team already keeps. Starter includes the Prospecting agent, which HubSpot says identifies and engages high-value leads, plus a Notetaker, calling, Agent Builder and 500 HubSpot Credits a month. Professional adds sequences, forecasting, conversation intelligence and 3,000 credits, and Enterprise has 5,000. Agents spend HubSpot Credits, and extra credits cost $0.010 each. HubSpot calls its chat assistant Breeze Assistant.

Best for: small and mid-sized teams that want the CRM and the assistant on one bill.

2. Salesforce Sales Cloud (Agentforce): best for teams that run Salesforce

Price (read November 4, 2026): Starter Suite $25 a user a month; Pro Suite $100 a user a month, billed annually. Agentforce for Sales is an add-on from $125 a user a month, and the Max edition, $550 a user a month billed annually, includes it.

Salesforce sells its assistants as Agentforce agents inside Sales Cloud. Its SDR agent qualifies leads, answers their questions and books meetings before handing them to a rep. Its Sales Coach agent role-plays pitches and negotiations with reps and gives feedback grounded in the deal's CRM data. Even Starter Suite syncs emails, events and contacts to the CRM on its own.

Best for: teams already on Salesforce that want the assistant to work from the same records as the forecast.

3. Clu, Cleanlist AI's GTM agent (our product): best for finding new buyers and their contact data

Disclosure. We make Cleanlist AI. Its 98% verified email and 85% direct dial figures come from our own 500-lead benchmark, which named no other vendor.

Clu is the AI assistant inside Cleanlist AI. You describe your buyer in one sentence, and Clu writes the search filters, which you can see and edit, then builds the list from 1B+ profiles. Once you confirm, it finds a verified work email and phone number for each person across 25+ data providers. Ask it to repeat the job and it sets up an agent that runs every week, or when a CRM record changes, and posts each run to Slack.

The MCP server comes with Starter, so you can run the same searches from Claude. HubSpot and Salesforce sync, agents and Clu in Slack start on Pro. Cleanlist AI owns no contact database: each record comes from its providers when you ask for it.

4. Gong: best for teams that coach from call data

Price (read November 4, 2026): no published price. Gong says licenses are priced per user, with a platform fee based on the number of users supported.

Gong records and analyzes calls, emails and meetings, then shows managers which deals are moving and what the best reps do differently. Gong Agents, by Gong's description, automate follow-ups, pipeline edits, enablement triggers and forecast corrections.

Best for: sales teams of about 20 reps or more with a manager who coaches from recordings.

5. Apollo: best for one seat that finds, writes and sends

Price (read November 4, 2026): free with 900 credits a seat a year, granted monthly. Basic $49, Professional $79 and Organization $119 a seat a month, all billed annually, with Organization at a 3-seat minimum. Apollo says annual billing saves 24%. An email costs 1 credit and a phone number 8.

Apollo pairs its own contact database with an AI Assistant, AI Research and AI writing, plus sequences and a US dialer. The Free plan caps the AI Assistant at 5 chats and allows 2 sequences. Basic adds unlimited sequences and 5 automated workflows with 30,000 credits a seat a year, and Professional adds AI lead scoring and call recordings with AI insights. Credits reset each billing cycle and do not roll over.

Best for: founders and small teams that want search, writing and sending in one tool.

6. Fathom: best for meeting notes in the CRM on a small budget

Price (read November 4, 2026): free forever for individuals. Premium $16 a month billed annually, or $20 monthly. Team $15 a user a month billed annually ($19 monthly) and Business $25 ($34 monthly), both with a 2-user minimum. Enterprise $35 a user a month, billed annually only.

Fathom records and summarizes meetings, and the free plan includes instant AI call summaries. Team adds search and Ask Fathom across the team's calls. Business adds CRM field sync that updates records after each meeting, plus coaching metrics and AI scorecards.

Best for: small teams that want accurate notes in HubSpot or Salesforce without an enterprise contract.

7. Lavender: best for reps who write their own cold emails

Price (read November 4, 2026): Basic is free for 5 analyzed and 5 personalized emails a month. Starter $27 and Individual Pro $45 a month, billed annually ($29 and $49 monthly). Team $89 a seat a month billed annually, or $99 monthly, with a coaching dashboard. Lavender offers a 7-day free trial.

Lavender scores each email while you write it, suggests fixes and helps personalize the opening. It works in Gmail and Outlook and lists integrations with Outreach, Salesloft, HubSpot, Apollo, Groove and Gong.

Best for: SDRs and founders who send their own outbound and want a coach in the inbox.

8. Claude: best for one general assistant for research and prep

Price (read November 4, 2026): free. Pro $17 a month billed annually ($200 up front) or $20 monthly. Max from $100 a month. Team standard seats $20 a seat a month billed annually, or $25 monthly. Enterprise $20 a seat a month billed annually, with a 20-seat minimum, plus usage at API rates.

Claude reads websites, filings and documents and turns them into account briefs, call plans and first drafts. Connectors come on every plan, including Free, so it can work with the tools you connect. Cleanlist AI's MCP server lets Claude search people and get verified contact data in the same chat.

Best for: reps and founders who want one assistant for research, writing and call prep.

9. ZoomInfo Copilot: best for enterprise teams on ZoomInfo data

Price (read November 4, 2026): no published price. ZoomInfo says packages are built around your data use cases, and its sales use cases link to a free trial.

ZoomInfo Copilot ranks accounts on ZoomInfo's buyer signals and flags prospects who have re-engaged or gone quiet. For research it assembles contacts, org charts, account history and company updates, and it drafts emails and talking points from them. ZoomInfo says it connects to Salesforce, HubSpot, Outreach, Salesloft and Gong.

Best for: enterprise teams that already license ZoomInfo data.

Outreach, Salesloft and lemlist: try the AI in your sequencer first (unranked)

Many teams already send from one of these three, so its built-in AI is the first assistant to try. We describe them here without a rank. Cleanlist AI pushes lists to Salesloft and lemlist.

Outreach. No published price. Outreach bills seats plus consumption-based AI credits, from 10,000 in its Amplify Essentials package to 100,000 in Pro, and the packages include Research, Deal and Personalization agents and AI Assist for accounts, emails and calls.

Salesloft. No published price; the pricing page leads to a sales conversation. For account teams Salesloft lists Cadence, Conversation Intelligence, Deals, Rhythm, AI Agents and an MCP server, and for revenue leaders Clari Forecast.

lemlist. The Email plan is $55 a month billed yearly, or $69 monthly, for 50,000 emails a month with unlimited users and senders. Multichannel is $87 a month billed yearly, or $109 monthly, priced by user, and adds LinkedIn, SMS and calls. Both plans include lemAgent and AI agents for signals, enrichment and messaging.

Cleanlist AI pushes leads to Salesloft and lemlist, so a list Clu builds can go straight into either one.

How to build a prospect list with Clu, step by step

Building the list is the job most reps do before every first call, so it is a fair test of any assistant. Here it is done with Clu, with what each step costs.

1. Open a workspace. Every new Cleanlist AI workspace starts with a 14-day Pro trial: up to 3 seats and 250 credits, plus 100 more if you sign up with a work email. A card is required. After the trial, the Free plan keeps 50 credits a month.
2. Describe the buyer in one sentence. For example: "VPs of Sales at US software companies with 51 to 200 employees, one per company, none already in my lists." Clu turns it into filters you can see and edit: title, seniority, location, industry and headcount.
3. Check the count before you spend. Searching costs 0 credits, so read the number of matches and tighten the filters until the list is the size you want.
4. Get the contact data. Confirm, and Clu finds a verified work email for each person at 1 credit each, and a phone number where you ask for one at 10 credits each, across 25+ providers. A miss costs nothing.
5. Send the list where your team works. Start a sequence in Cleanlist AI's own Sequences, which send from your inbox, or push the list to Salesloft or lemlist. On Pro, enriched records sync to HubSpot or Salesforce.
6. Make it weekly. Ask Clu to repeat the search every Monday as an agent, so new matches arrive without anyone rebuilding the list. Agents run on Pro, 5 active at a time, and Clu turns one on only after you say yes.

What you get: one row per person with name, title, company, LinkedIn URL, a verified work email and, where you asked, a phone number. What it costs: 100 people with emails is at most 100 credits, and phone numbers for the top 20 add at most 200 more, which fits inside the 750 credits a Starter seat adds each month. Clu itself also spends credits based on the work it does, priced by the AI model a task runs on.

How to test an AI sales assistant in two weeks

A demo shows the best case. Two weeks on your own deals shows the real one.

1. Pick one job: the one that takes the most rep hours, such as list building, call notes or follow-up emails.
2. Measure it for a week first: hours per rep on that job, and what came out of it, such as lists built, notes logged or emails sent.
3. Split the team: give the assistant to two reps and keep two working the old way, in the same territory if you can.
4. Check its work daily in week one: wrong CRM fields, facts in a research brief that you cannot find in a source, and bounces on any list it builds.
5. Compare at the end of week two: hours saved and output per rep. Then price the seats for the whole team and decide.

Ask every vendor two questions before the test starts: what the assistant can change without a person approving it, and whether your data is used to train its models.

For the whole stack by job, see AI sales tools by job. For the process around the assistant, from lead routing to quotes, see sales automation software.

See pricing

Frequently asked questions

Can an AI sales assistant replace a sales rep?

No. An assistant takes over tasks such as research, notes, data entry and first drafts, and buyers still expect a person to run discovery, handle objections and negotiate. Teams that want software to run outbound on its own are buying an AI SDR, a separate category with its own risks.

Is there a free AI sales assistant?

Several have free plans. HubSpot's free CRM covers 2 users, Apollo's Free plan includes 900 credits a seat a year, Fathom's free plan includes AI call summaries, Lavender's Basic plan covers 5 emails a month, Claude has a free plan, and Cleanlist AI's Free plan has 50 credits a month. Free plans cap usage, so test the paid tier you would actually buy.

What does an AI sales assistant cost for a team of 10?

At the prices read November 4, 2026: Cleanlist AI Starter is $490 a month for 10 seats, with 7,500 credits shared across the team. Fathom Team is $150 a month, Claude Team $200 and Lavender Team $890, all billed annually. HubSpot Sales Hub Professional starts at $900 a month for 10 seats, plus the $1,500 onboarding fee. Gong, ZoomInfo, Outreach and Salesloft publish no price.

Is it safe to give an AI sales assistant access to my CRM and inbox?

Give it the narrowest access that does the job, and ask what it can change without approval. A good assistant shows each action before it runs, logs what it changed and lets an admin switch features off. Read the vendor's data terms to see whether your data trains its models.

Can I use ChatGPT or Claude as an AI sales assistant?

Yes, for research and writing. Connect it to your CRM and inbox through its connectors, and add a data source for contact details, because a general model holds no verified emails or phone numbers. Our guides to ChatGPT for sales and Claude for sales cover setup and prompts.