What is the cheapest AI SDR?

It depends on what you count as an AI SDR. lemonreach Starter is €199 a month on quarterly billing (€159 yearly) with 750 credits. Sending tools such as Smartlead and Instantly cost less per month, but they send emails you have already written and do not research prospects.

Is there an AI SDR for under €500 a month?

Yes. lemonreach Starter is €199, Growth is €349, and Growth with the AI Prospecting add-on is €428 a month on quarterly billing. AiSDR's team plans start around $900 a month, which is above this budget. Enterprise-style AI SDRs such as 11x do not publish prices and are generally quoted well above this level.

What is the difference between an AI SDR and a cold email tool?

A cold email tool sends and schedules emails you provide. An AI SDR also finds prospects, researches them and writes the emails. Cold email tools cost less, but the research and writing time moves to you.

What hidden costs should I count?

Mailboxes (about $7 to $8.40 per user per month on Google Workspace), domains, lead data or enrichment credits, and the time spent reviewing what the tool sends. Credit-based tools also vary in what a credit buys, so compare cost per verified contact or per sent email, not the headline price.

Do I need a team to use an AI SDR?

No. The AI SDR category is aimed at teams with no SDR headcount. A single founder or account executive can run it, but someone should still review what goes out and take the calls.

Best AI SDR for Small Teams Under €500 a Month

Key takeaways

Under €500 a month you can buy a full AI SDR (lemonreach Starter at €199, or Growth plus AI Prospecting at €428) or assemble sending and data from cheaper tools that leave research and writing to you.
AiSDR's team plans start at about $900 a month billed quarterly, so they sit above a €500 budget. Its self-serve pay-per-person option is not built for teams, and its pricing has been hard to predict, so read what each action costs before relying on it.
11x, Artisan and Alta do not publish a price you can plan around. If you need to see a number before talking to sales, they are out of this comparison.
Sending-only tools such as Instantly ($47 to $97 a month on outreach plans) and Smartlead ($39 to $174) are cheaper but do not research prospects or write the emails.
Price lists change often. Every figure here was read from the vendor's pricing page on 24 October 2026.

For under €500 a month you have two real options: a full AI SDR that finds prospects and writes the emails (lemonreach at €199 or €428), or a cheaper sending tool such as Instantly or Smartlead, which leaves research and writing to you. The enterprise AI SDRs do not publish a price you can plan around.

I work on lemonreach, so treat it as one entry among several. The table is dated: every price was read from the vendor’s own pricing page on 24 October 2026, and where I could not read a number I say so rather than fill it in.

What does each tool cost?

Tool	What it is	Listed price	What the price includes
lemonreach Starter	AI SDR	€199 a month quarterly, €159 yearly	750 credits (one email is one credit), 4 campaigns, Google News enrichment
lemonreach Growth + AI Prospecting	AI SDR	€349 + €79 = €428 a month quarterly	4,700 credits a month, LinkedIn enrichment, unlimited campaigns, prospect search
AiSDR (for reference, above budget)	AI SDR	About $900 a month on the Explore team plan, billed quarterly (about $2,700 up front). Figure from our AiSDR comparison, not re-read on the day	1,200 AI messages and 1,200 lead-search credits, unlimited seats, a dedicated GTM engineer
Instantly	Sending tool plus lead database	Bundles from $94 a month ($85 yearly). Outreach-only from $47	5,000 emails a month and 1,500 database credits on the $94 bundle
Smartlead	Sending tool	$39, $94 or $174 a month ($32, $78 or $144 yearly)	6,000 to 150,000 email sends a month, unlimited mailboxes
lemlist	Sending plus multichannel	Email $69 a month ($55 yearly) or Multichannel $109 per user ($87 yearly)	50,000 emails on Email plan. LinkedIn, SMS and a call dialer on Multichannel
Apollo	Database plus sequencing	About $49 (Basic) or $79 (Professional) per user per month on annual billing, per third-party summaries	Credits per seat, figures differ by source

Sources: lemonreach pricing, AiSDR, Instantly, Smartlead, lemlist, and for Apollo Zeliq’s summary (I could not read the number on Apollo’s own page, so confirm it there). Prices are in the vendor’s own currency, with no conversion. Apart from AiSDR, they were read on 24 October 2026.

Instantly’s page showed inconsistent prices for some tiers when I read it, so check the page before relying on its upper tiers.

Which tools do not publish a price?

11x, Artisan and Alta are not in the table because I could not read a plan price on their pages today. 11x and Alta sell through a sales call. Artisan’s page lists “credit-based pricing” with plan tiers, but the numbers did not appear in the text I could read. Our own lemonreach vs 11x and lemonreach vs Artisan posts cite third-party estimates for both. Treat those as estimates, not a quote.

The practical point for a small team: if you cannot see a price without a call, you are probably not the buyer they built the plan for.

What are the differences that the price hides?

Credits are not comparable across tools. In lemonreach, one generated email is one credit, a verified email is 2 and a phone number is 4. In AiSDR the unit is an AI-researched contact, with enrichment metered separately. In Instantly it is a lead database credit plus a separate emails-per-month cap. Divide by what you will actually do: researched, sent emails to verified contacts.

Sending tools price the sending, not the work. At five minutes of research and writing per email (an assumption, use your own number), 750 emails a month is about 62 hours. A $47 tool is cheap until you count those hours. See cold email software pricing for the full monthly budget.

Seats versus volume. lemlist Multichannel is priced per user, so four reps are four seats. lemonreach charges per workspace and moves with volume, not logins.

Billing terms. AiSDR’s team plan is billed by the quarter with no free trial, so the real number to clear before you know it fits is about $2,700. Check the exit terms and what each metered action costs before you commit to any plan.

Which should a small team pick?

You want research and writing handled and have a few hundred to a few thousand emails a month: a full AI SDR. lemonreach Starter or Growth fits here. AiSDR is a fit if you have more budget and want a done-for-you setup.
You already write good emails and have a data source: Smartlead or Instantly send them cheaper.
You want sequencing across email, LinkedIn and calls for several reps: lemlist or Apollo, priced per seat.
You sell few, large deals to named accounts: a human SDR or manual research may still beat any of these. See what an SDR costs for the human side of the math.

Where lemonreach is not the best fit: if you only need sending, Instantly and Smartlead cost less, and if several reps write their own copy and want per-seat multichannel sequencing, lemlist or Apollo are built for that.

What is the cheapest total setup?

Add mailboxes (about $7 to $8.40 per user per month on Google Workspace) and domains (roughly $10 to $15 a year each) to any tool. One mailbox sends about 800 emails a month, so 750 emails needs one. The worked monthly budgets for lemonreach are in cold email software pricing, and a side-by-side with AiSDR is in lemonreach vs AiSDR.