An AI SDR is an agent that runs sales development: it finds or receives leads, researches them, writes and sends outreach, handles replies and books meetings. Eight products are worth a pilot in late 2026. They split into autonomous outbound agents, tools your reps drive, agents inside the CRM you already run, and inbound agents that talk to people who came to you. This guide scores them on autonomy, control, reach and how hard they are to buy and to leave.
What counts as an AI SDR in 2026?
Autonomous outbound agents (11x Alice, Artisan Ava, AiSDR) are sold as a digital team member: they bring contact data, sending mailboxes and sequences, and run the loop end to end. Rep-driven platforms (Regie.ai, Amplemarket) put agents and dialers in the hands of human SDRs. CRM-native agents (HubSpot's Prospecting Agent, Salesforce's Hunter) work from the customer record you already govern. Inbound agents (Qualified Piper, 11x Julian) qualify website visitors and inbound leads in real time.
Two facts shape the market. Salesforce bought Qualified, the maker of Piper, in a deal announced December 17, 2025 and completed April 1, 2026. And the category's best-known startup, 11x, was the subject of a March 2025 TechCrunch report that it had listed customers who said they were not customers; its founder stepped down as CEO in May 2025. Ask every vendor for references you can call.
How do the tools score?
Four criteria, 1 to 5 each, from vendor documentation, pricing pages and announcements through October 31, 2026. These are editorial assessments of published capabilities, not results from running the tools.
- Autonomy: how much of research, writing, sending, reply handling and booking the agent runs.
- Control: approval gates, escalation, consent and brand controls, and the vendor's trust record.
- Reach: contact data, channels (email, LinkedIn, phone, chat) and CRM integration.
- Access: published pricing, self-serve or trial, and contract terms.
| Tool | Autonomy | Control | Reach | Access | Total /20 | Model | Price (Oct 2026) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AiSDR | 4 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 16 | Outbound agent, self-serve | $1.50 per person prospected (pay as you go); team plans quoted |
| Regie.ai | 3 | 4 | 3 | 5 | 15 | Agents + dialer for reps | Free; Pro $41/mo; Team $125/seat/mo (annual) |
| HubSpot Prospecting Agent | 3 | 4 | 3 | 5 | 15 | CRM-native agent | $1 per lead recommended for outreach; Pro and Enterprise |
| Artisan (Ava) | 4 | 4 | 4 | 2 | 14 | Autonomous outbound | Custom, credit-based |
| Qualified Piper (Salesforce) | 5 | 4 | 3 | 2 | 14 | Inbound agent | Quote only |
| Amplemarket (Duo) | 3 | 3 | 4 | 4 | 14 | Sales platform + agents | Startup $600/mo (annual); Growth, Elite quoted |
| 11x (Alice, Julian) | 5 | 2 | 5 | 2 | 14 | Autonomous outbound + inbound | Alice from $3,750/mo billed annually (vendor) |
| Salesforce Agentforce Hunter | 4 | 4 | 3 | 2 | 13 | CRM-native outbound agent | Pilot; Agentforce metering $500 per 100k Flex Credits |
Access carries the same weight as autonomy on purpose. An AI SDR is a bet you can only evaluate by running it on your market, and a product you can pilot for a few hundred dollars and stop tomorrow lets you learn that cheaply. If you have already decided to buy an enterprise outbound agent, read the autonomy and control columns first.
The tools
AiSDR
AiSDR's agent, Ami, researches prospects from a database of 2B+ profiles with waterfall enrichment across 20 providers, writes sequences across email, LinkedIn connection requests, DMs, InMails and voice notes, classifies replies and syncs both ways with HubSpot (AiSDR pricing). On October 15, 2026 it replaced its monthly tiers with pay as you go at $1.50 per person prospected, billed daily, with research, lists and writing included; team plans for 1,000+ contacts a month are quoted, with up to 40% lower per-contact prices (UsagePricing). Salesforce integration, website visitor tracking and compliance reviews sit on team plans. Best fit: small teams that want to test an AI SDR without a contract. Full AiSDR review.
Regie.ai
Regie.ai combines prospecting agents (research, enrichment, drafting) with a parallel dialer that calls up to five lines at once, so the agents prepare work and reps make the calls. It publishes prices: a free plan for up to ten people with 250 one-time credits each, Pro at $41 a month and Team at $125 per seat a month on annual billing, with a two-seat minimum (Regie.ai pricing). It raised a $30 million Series B led by Scale Venture Partners and Foundation Capital in February 2025 (FinSMEs). Best fit: SDR teams that want agents to do the prep while humans own the conversation. Full Regie.ai review.
HubSpot Prospecting Agent
HubSpot's Prospecting Agent monitors buying signals, reaches out and drafts follow-ups and CRM updates for approval (HubSpot). The Fall 2026 update has it watch 40+ buying signals and assemble a buying group before drafting outreach. Since April 14, 2026 it costs $1 per lead recommended for outreach, 100 HubSpot Credits, replacing a monthly charge per enrolled contact; it is available on Professional and Enterprise (HubSpot, CMSWire). Best fit: teams already on HubSpot that want prospecting inside the CRM they govern. Full HubSpot Breeze review.
11x
11x sells Alice, an outbound AI SDR, and Julian, an inbound chat and voice agent. Its own comparison page (June 2026) lists 400M+ contacts, email, LinkedIn, phone, SMS, WhatsApp and chat, bidirectional Salesforce, HubSpot and Pipedrive sync, managed mailboxes and SOC 2 Type II, and gives starting prices of $3,750 a month for Alice and $2,417 (chat) or $5,333 (voice) a month for Julian, billed annually. Autonomy and reach are the highest in this list. The control score reflects the trust record: TechCrunch reported in March 2025 that 11x listed ZoomInfo and Airtable as customers when both said they were not, and that its contracts carried three-month break clauses (summary). Founder Hasan Sukkar stepped down as CEO in May 2025 and Prabhav Jain took over. Best fit: teams buying a fully autonomous agent on an annual budget. Full 11x review.
Artisan
Artisan's Ava 2.0, launched in May 2026 as a ground-up rebuild, runs outbound from research to booked meetings with approval gates at every stage and escalation rules for when a human steps in (Artisan). It brings 250M+ B2B contacts and 130M local businesses, waterfall enrichment across 22+ sources, intent signals, email sequences with a built-in dialer, US person-level website visitor identification and Salesforce and HubSpot integration. Pricing is credit-based and custom. Artisan raised a $25 million Series A in April 2025 (TechCrunch) and cites $36M in total venture funding. Best fit: mid-market and enterprise teams that want autonomy they can switch on in steps. Full Artisan review.
Amplemarket
Amplemarket is a full sales engagement platform with data, multichannel sequences and intent signals, plus Duo, its AI copilot, and AI agents that find buyers, research prospects, personalize outreach and monitor signals. It publishes one price: the Startup plan at $600 a month on an annual term for two users and 27,000 contacts; Growth adds Duo Voice and Elite adds Duo Inbox, both quoted (Amplemarket pricing). All plans include a free trial. Best fit: teams that want one platform for data and sequencing with agents on top, rather than a separate agent. Full Amplemarket review.
Qualified Piper
Piper is an inbound AI SDR: it greets website visitors by chat, voice or video, qualifies them, books meetings, follows up by email and serves personalized offers, and Qualified says more than 500 companies have "hired" it (Qualified). Salesforce now owns Qualified and lists Piper as a generally available Agentforce agent that works across websites and inboxes (Salesforce). Inbound earns the control score: Piper talks to people who came to you. Prices are not published. Best fit: Salesforce customers with meaningful website traffic. Full Qualified Piper review.
Salesforce Agentforce Hunter
Hunter is Salesforce's outbound sales agent. It "works a sales pipeline from research to outreach" and collaborates with sellers over weeks and months; Salesforce's September 2026 list of job-ready agents shows it in pilot with general availability planned for November 2026 (Salesforce). Agentforce usage is metered at $500 per 100,000 Flex Credits or $2 per conversation, or through per-user add-ons from $125 a month (Agentforce pricing); Hunter's own price was not announced. Best fit: Salesforce customers that want outbound agents inside the platform's permissions. Full Salesforce Agentforce review.
Also worth knowing
- Marketing agents: campaign, content and nurture agents from Salesforce, HubSpot, Adobe, Jasper, Writer and Typeface are scored in Best AI Marketing Agents.
- CRM choice: if your CRM is the bottleneck, see Best AI-Native CRM; Attio and Day AI build agents into the record itself.
How should you choose?
- Start inbound if you can. An agent answering people who came to your site carries less consent and deliverability risk than one writing to strangers.
- Decide who sends. Autonomous agents (11x, Artisan, AiSDR) send for you; Regie.ai and Amplemarket help your reps send. The first saves headcount, the second keeps judgment in the loop.
- Keep the record in your CRM. If you run Salesforce or HubSpot, price their agents first; a point tool needs bidirectional sync and must respect your suppression list.
- Protect your domain. Send from separate domains and watch Gmail's spam-rate ceiling of 0.3%. Ask who owns the mailboxes if you leave.
- Pilot on cost per qualified meeting. Count meetings sales accepts, not emails sent, and include tool fees and review time.
Related questions
- What is agentic marketing, and what are the consent risks? (partner site CTAIO)
- 11x, Artisan or AiSDR: which autonomous AI SDR fits?
- Which AI marketing agents are worth a pilot?
- Which AI-native CRM should you run agents on?
- Attio or HubSpot for an AI-first sales team?
Sources
- AiSDR, Pricing; UsagePricing, AiSDR pay-per-prospect replaces tiers (Oct 15, 2026).
- Regie.ai, Pricing and product page; FinSMEs, Regie.ai raises $30M Series B (Feb 26, 2025).
- HubSpot, Agent Hub; Now you pay when the task is complete (Apr 2026); Fall 2026 Spotlight (Sep 16, 2026); CMSWire, HubSpot shifts Breeze agents to pay-per-result pricing.
- 11x, Outreach vs 11x (Jun 17, 2026); UsagePricing, 11x customer claims controversy (summarizing TechCrunch, Mar 24, 2025); Toarn, 11x.ai competitive analysis (Q2 2026).
- Artisan, Ava 2.0 (May 26, 2026); TechCrunch, Artisan raises $25M (Apr 9, 2025).
- Amplemarket, Pricing.
- Qualified, Piper the AI SDR Agent; Salesforce, Salesforce signs definitive agreement to acquire Qualified (Dec 17, 2025; completed Apr 1, 2026).
- Salesforce, Agentforce job-ready agents (Sep 2026); Agentforce pricing.
Related reading on our partner site: agentic marketing architecture and rollout for CTOs and CMOs on CTAIO.
What is an AI SDR?
An AI SDR is an AI agent that does the work of a sales development representative: it builds or receives a lead list, researches each account, writes and sends outreach by email, LinkedIn or phone, handles replies and books meetings for account executives. Inbound AI SDRs such as Qualified Piper qualify website visitors and inbound leads instead of cold prospects.
What are the best AI SDR tools in 2026?
On our four criteria, AiSDR scores highest (16/20), followed by Regie.ai and HubSpot's Prospecting Agent (15). 11x, Artisan and Amplemarket score 14, and Qualified Piper also scores 14 for inbound. Salesforce's Hunter scores 13 while it is in pilot. The right pick depends on whether you want a fully autonomous outbound agent (11x, Artisan), a tool your reps drive (Regie.ai, Amplemarket) or an agent inside the CRM you already run (HubSpot, Salesforce).
How much does an AI SDR cost?
As published in October 2026: AiSDR charges $1.50 per person prospected on pay as you go. Regie.ai has a free plan, Pro at $41 a month and Team at $125 per seat a month on annual billing. Amplemarket's Startup plan is $600 a month on an annual term. HubSpot charges $1 per lead its Prospecting Agent recommends for outreach. 11x says Alice starts at $3,750 a month billed annually. Artisan and Salesforce price through sales.
Can an AI SDR replace human SDRs?
It can replace much of the list building, research and first-touch writing. Vendors still design for humans in the loop: Artisan offers approval gates and escalation rules, HubSpot drafts follow-ups for approval, and Regie.ai pairs agents with a parallel dialer for reps. Replies that need judgment, objections and multi-threaded enterprise deals still go to people.
Are AI SDRs legal?
The tools are legal; how you use them is regulated. Cold email must follow CAN-SPAM in the US and GDPR and ePrivacy rules in the EU, where the AI Act also requires from August 2, 2026 that people are told when they interact with an AI system. The FCC ruled in 2024 that AI-generated voices are artificial voices under the TCPA, which matters for AI dialers and voice agents. Gmail requires bulk senders to stay below a 0.3% spam rate.
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