# Sd · AI SDR — element 32 of 58

> Outreach while you sleep. Turns lists into booked conversations.

- **Group:** 7 · Sales & Revenue
- **Necessity:** Optional
- **Price band:** $$$ · $150+/mo
- **Maturity:** Emerging
- **Edition:** v2026.Q3 · verified 2026-09-13

## Leading tools (v2026.Q3)

- **Artisan (Ava)** — managed ai sdr, buy carefully
- **Unify** — warm outbound on signals
- **Regie.ai (RegieOne)** — agents multiply human sdrs
- **AiSDR** — self-serve, honest pricing
- **Instantly** — own the machine yourself

## 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

En, Cr, Em


## The top 5 — deep dossier (verified 2026-09-13)

Artisan, if you want a managed AI SDR — it survived the category's credibility crash with real customers (250 at $5M ARR, Apr 2025), transparent-enough packaging, and a product (Ava) that actually ships meetings — but buy it the way you'd buy anything in this, the most caveat-heavy element on the table: 3-month test, meetings-held as the metric, references checked. Unify wins when you have product signals or website traffic to work — warm outbound retains where cold spray churns. Regie.ai wins for enterprise teams that want agents multiplying human SDRs, not replacing them. AiSDR wins on transparent self-serve pricing from $250/mo. Instantly wins when you'd rather own the targeting and just buy the sending machine. The cautionary tale is 11x: fake customer logos, ~$14M claimed ARR vs ~$3M actually contracted, CEO out by May 2025 — the hype-gap IS this category's story.

1. **Artisan (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. Why: 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. [https://www.artisan.co](https://www.artisan.co)
2. **Unify** (Unify (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. Why: 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. [https://www.unifygtm.com](https://www.unifygtm.com)
3. **Regie.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. Why: 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. [https://www.regie.ai](https://www.regie.ai)
4. **AiSDR** (AiSDR) — 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. Why: 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. [https://www.aisdr.com](https://www.aisdr.com)
5. **Instantly** (Instantly.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. Why: 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. [https://instantly.ai](https://instantly.ai)

### How to choose
- 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.

### The field (19 more)

11x (Alice · Julian), Qualified (Piper / PiperX) (acquired), Agentforce (SDR agent), Breeze Prospecting Agent, Nooks, Jason AI, Agent Frank, Alta (Katie · Alex · Luna), Rox, Landbase, 1mind, AiSDR, Smartlead, Lindy, Bosh (fading), Conversica, Luna.ai (dead), Drift (acquired), Exceed.ai (acquired)

Full dossier data: https://elems.ai/e/sd.json

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Source: [elems.ai](https://elems.ai/e/sd.html) — the periodic table of the AI-led startup. Data: https://elems.ai/elements.json (CC BY 4.0, cite elems.ai).