AI SDR

Vital signs

Why it's on the table

On the table, AI SDR (Sd) is seat 32 of 58, in the Sales & Revenue family. It is an emerging element — the job is real and here to stay, but the leaderboard still changes quarterly. Choose for this quarter, hold loosely, and watch the changelog. It is optional: plenty of companies run without it — until a specific trigger (scale, regulation, cost, or customers) makes it essential for them. It sits in the premium band — justify it with a number, not a feeling.

AI SDR: the top 5 — v2026.Q3

Edition v2026.Q3 · ranking, pricing and status verified 2026-08-06.

1. 1Artisan (Ava)Artisan AI

   Custom-scoped: Team ~2,500 leads/mo · Scale ~6,000 leads/mo + CSM · Enterprise custom; AI dialer per-seat add-on

   Best for Founders who want outbound fully run for them — Ava researches, writes, sends, and books against a 250M+-contact database with a human CSM watching.

   The managed AI SDR that came through the category's 2025 credibility crash intact: 250 customers and $5M ARR at its $25M Glade Brook-led Series A (Apr 2025), YC and HubSpot Ventures on the cap table, and customers like SumUp, CookUnity, and Quora on the pricing page in Aug 2026. It sells outcomes (leads contacted, meetings booked) with CRM setup and a dedicated CSM — closer to an agency with an AI engine than a tool you babysit.

   Watch Marketing runs hotter than the product: the 'Stop Hiring Humans' billboards, a LinkedIn ban (Dec 2025, resolved Jan 2026 after it dropped scraped-data vendors), and a settled art-theft complaint from the 'This is fine' artist (May 2026). Pricing is quote-only. No public ARR since Apr 2025 — assume mid-eight figures at most, not the category-king numbers the billboards imply.

   $25M Series A (Glade Brook), $5M ARR, 250 customers (Apr 9, 2025) [src] · LinkedIn banned Artisan Dec 19, 2025 over scraped-data vendors; reinstated after ~2 weeks of remediation [src] · 250M+ verified contacts in-platform; Scale tier ~6,000 leads contacted/mo with dedicated CSM (Aug 2026) [src]
   Site →Docs →

2. 2UnifyUnify (unifygtm.com)

   Free tier · Base $20/seat/mo (800 credits) · Pro $60/seat (2,400 credits) · Business custom, annual

   Best for Teams with real intent to work — website visitors, product usage, hiring signals — who want agents running warm outbound instead of cold spray.

   The retention story the category lacks: signal-triggered 'warm outbound' — Unify reports a 9.1% positive reply rate on product-usage-signal campaigns, an order of magnitude above cold benchmarks. $40M Series B from Battery with the OpenAI Startup Fund and Thrive on board (2025), 1.1B-person data layer across 40+ sources, and GTM-brand customers (Perplexity, Together AI, Justworks) that publicly stay.

   Watch Credit-metered pricing gets opaque at volume, and the best signals (website intent) are gated to the custom Business tier. It's a prospecting system you operate, not a turnkey rep — thin team = thin results.

   $40M Series B led by Battery Ventures, with OpenAI Startup Fund, Thrive, Emergence (2025) [src] · 9.1% positive reply rate on product-usage-signal campaigns (Unify, first-party) [src] · 1.1B+ people, 65M+ companies, 40+ data sources; Base from $20/seat (Aug 2026) [src]
   Site →Docs →

3. 3Regie.ai (RegieOne)Regie.ai

   AI SEP $180/user/mo (10-seat min, annual) · Force Multiplier Rep $499/user/mo (5-seat min, 120k credits) · Enterprise custom

   Best for Enterprise sales teams that keep human reps and want prospecting agents doing the research, sequencing, and low-intent grind underneath them.

   The 'force multiplier, not replacement' position aged best as autonomous-SDR hype deflated: RegieOne consolidates enrichment, dialer, email, and prospecting agents into one platform, and enterprise logos (BILL, Bitdefender, Commvault, Wrike) plus customer stories like '3 SDRs outproduced a team of 8' back the claim of 3–5x account coverage without headcount.

   Watch Seat minimums mean real entry cost is ~$1,800/mo minimum, and credits, mailbox rotation ($50–100/user/mo), and parallel dialer ($1,800/user/yr) stack on top. It presumes you have SDRs to multiply — solo founders should look elsewhere.

   AI SEP $180/user/mo (10-seat min); Force Multiplier Rep $499/user/mo with 120k AI+enrichment credits (Aug 2026) [src] · Enterprise customers incl. BILL, Bitdefender, Commvault, Wrike; G2 Spring 2025 Momentum Leader [src] · Customer story: '3 SDRs outproduced a team of 8' with prospecting agents [src]
   Site →Docs →

4. 4AiSDRAiSDR

   Solo $250/mo (200 contacts) · Explore $900/mo (800 contacts, quarterly) · Scale $2,500/mo (2,500 contacts) · managed +$2,500/mo

   Best for Self-serve buyers who want a pure AI SDR — email + LinkedIn + calling via Aircall — at a published price with no demo-call gauntlet.

   The rare autonomous-SDR vendor with public pricing and modest, checkable claims: 250+ companies, a stated 1–3% prospect-to-meeting conversion (most rivals promise fantasy), and an Ami strategist agent that builds campaigns from your ICP. The $250/mo Solo tier is the cheapest honest way to test whether AI outbound works for your product at all.

   Watch All results metrics are self-reported; no outside funding disclosures or press scrutiny means less validation either way. 200 contacts/mo on Solo is a small test — statistically thin for judging your ICP.

   Solo $250/mo · Explore $900/mo · Scale $2,500/mo; 250+ companies (Aug 2026) [src] · Self-reported 1–3% prospect-to-booked-meeting conversion; ROI claimed in 30–60 days [src]
   Site →Docs →

5. 5InstantlyInstantly.ai

   Outreach $47–358/mo · bundles $94–555/mo (5k–500k emails, leads + credits) · Enterprise custom

   Best for Founders who keep targeting and copy in their own hands and buy the machine: mailboxes, warmup, deliverability, lead database, and increasingly AI agents on top.

   The infrastructure answer to the AI SDR question — 50,000+ sales teams run outbound on it, and its AI Sales/Reply/Lead-Finder agents now cover most of what $1,000+/mo autonomous SDRs charge for, at $47–194/mo. When the category's managed vendors churn customers, this is where those customers land: cheap, self-directed, and honest about being a tool.

   Watch It amplifies whatever you feed it — bad list, burned domains. Volume-first cold email runs against tightening Gmail/Outlook bulk-sender enforcement, and the AI agents are young next to purpose-built SDR products. Smartlead ($39–379/mo, unlimited mailboxes) is the interchangeable rival.

   50,000+ sales teams; AI Sales, Reply, and Lead Finder agents in-platform (Aug 2026) [src] · Outreach-only from $47/mo (5k emails); bundle $94/mo adds 1,000 leads + 1,500 credits (Aug 2026) [src]
   Site →Docs →

AI SDR: the top 8 compared

Edition v2026.Q3 · ranking, pricing and status verified 2026-08-06.

How to choose your ai sdr

If you want outbound off your plate entirely and can spend four figures a month

Artisan — but contract like a skeptic: 3-month break clause, meetings-held (not booked) as the success metric, and two reference calls with customers past month six. The 11x saga is why.

If you have product usage, website traffic, or hiring signals to work

Unify. Warm outbound on real intent (9.1% positive reply on usage signals) retains; cold spray at scale is what killed this category's first wave.

If you already employ SDRs

Regie.ai (or Nooks for call-heavy motions) — agents that multiply reps beat agents that replace them on every retention signal visible in 2026.

If you're pre-revenue or testing whether AI outbound works for your ICP at all

AiSDR Solo at $250/mo or Instantly at $47–94/mo. Spend the difference on list quality — the element's take is literal: it amplifies whatever truth you feed it.

If a vendor shows big-logo customers but won't connect you to one, or resists a break clause

Walk. 11x displayed ZoomInfo and Airtable as customers when neither was, and counted churned break-clause deals in ARR ($14M claimed vs ~$3M contracted). Logos are marketing; references are evidence.

AI SDR: the whole field

19 more tools tracked in this category, including 5 dead, renamed, or sunsetting — a reference that hides the graveyard isn't one. Verified 2026-08-06.

AI SDR: the category in numbers

Edition v2026.Q3 · ranking, pricing and status verified 2026-08-06.

• The category's defining scandal: 11x displayed ZoomInfo and Airtable as customers (neither was), reported ~$14M ARR vs ~$3M long-term contracted, and an ex-employee described 70–80% churn (TechCrunch investigation, Mar 24, 2025); founder-CEO stepped down May 5, 2025 [src]
• Consolidation into CRM platforms: Salesforce's acquisition of Qualified (Piper AI SDR) announced Dec 2025, closed Apr 1, 2026 — autonomous pipeline generation folds into Agentforce [src]
• Platform pricing commoditizes the job: Agentforce at $2/conversation or ~$0.10/action (Flex Credits); HubSpot's Prospecting Agent at $1.00/lead drafted, bundled free into Pro/Enterprise CRM (Aug 2026) [src]
• Capital kept flowing despite the hype-gap: Unify $40M Series B (Battery + OpenAI Startup Fund, 2025), Landbase $30M (Jun 2025), 1mind $30M (Nov 2025), Alta $25M, Artisan $25M (Apr 2025) — >$200M into the category since the 11x exposé [src]
• AI SDR market estimated at $4.12B (2025) → $15.01B (2030), 29.5% CAGR — aggregator figure, treat as directional [src]
• Channel risk is structural: LinkedIn banned Artisan (Dec 2025) over scraped-data vendors before reinstating it — every LinkedIn-touching SDR agent lives at a platform's mercy [src]

AI SDR: method & sources

Ranking criteria: verifiable customer retention (named, checkable customers over logo walls), pricing transparency, funded durability, and honesty of claims — in that order; raw capability demos ranked last because this category's failure mode is demos that don't survive month four. This is the table's most caveat-heavy element: the honest 2026 read is that fully-autonomous cold outbound mostly disappointed (11x, Luna, Bosh), while three adjacent theses retained — warm/signal-based outbound (Unify), human-amplification (Regie, Nooks), and platform-bundled agents (Agentforce/Piper, HubSpot Breeze). Conflicts resolved: 11x's ARR is reported as TechCrunch's contracted-revenue finding (~$3M vs $14M claimed) because 11x's own 'CARR' framing counts break-clause churn; Artisan's ARR is the Apr 2025 TechCrunch figure — no newer audited number exists, so treat 2026 vendor claims as unverified. MarketsandMarkets sizing reached via a non-canonical URL and is aggregator-grade — flagged, kept as the only available category-specific figure. Regie's help center (help.regie.ai) blocks crawlers but is linked from Regie's own footer; verified indirectly. Adjacent elements: Clay, Apollo, and Common Room (enrichment/signals) → En; CRM the agents write to → Cr; AI voice/dialer infra (Vapi, Retell) → Vs; inbound support agents → Sa. Instantly/Smartlead earn a place here as the infra layer the whole category runs on, but their databases overlap En. Ranking criteria: verified commercial traction, independent satisfaction surveys, agent benchmarks, and founder-fit (price floor, lock-in, surfaces). Editorial, never paid — the charter. Machine-readable twin: sd.json.

Our take

Works when your targeting is sharp and your product is real. Amplifies whatever truth you feed it — including the bad ones.

Combines with