The best AI SDR tool is the one that does the job you are short on. Pick it by scoring each candidate on seven lines, among them who it finds, who it emails from, who answers replies, who books the meeting, and what the price looks like before you talk to sales. Products sold under this name fall into five kinds, and the price for the same month of outbound runs from about $40 to a few thousand dollars depending on the kind.
Most roundups rank tools one to ten and the order tells you little, because a $39 sending tool and a demo-only autonomous agent are not competing for the same buyer. This page sorts the field by what each kind does and does not do, then gives you a scoring sheet. Rocketship is one of the options, we build it, and it is not the right answer for everyone.
The five kinds of tool sold as an AI SDR
An SDR's work has four parts: finding people, writing to them, handling the replies, and booking the meeting. Each product below covers some of those parts, and the label on the box does not tell you which.
- Autonomous agents sold through a demo. Artisan and 11x are in this group. On 2026-10-30 neither site's pricing page showed a price; Artisan's offered a demo request and 11x's said "Get a Demo." You have to talk to sales to learn the cost, and you will likely sign a contract.
- Agents with a price on the page. AiSDR and Salesforge's Agent Frank publish numbers. Both run campaigns for you, and both charge by volume of people contacted.
- Sending tools with AI added. Instantly, Smartlead and lemlist send and track cold email, and now include AI writers and some reply handling. You still decide who to target and you still check what goes out.
- Data and research tools. Clay and Apollo find people and enrich records. They do not own the conversation after the first email unless you wire that up.
- One system that runs the whole loop. Rocketship sits here: you describe the buyer, and it finds the people, reads each company's website, emails from your own Gmail, follows up, answers replies and books the meeting. It does not run a video demo or close a deal.
What each one costs, read from the vendor's own page
These are the figures shown on each vendor's pricing page when I read it on 2026-10-30. Plans change, and several pages contradict themselves in small ways, so treat the table as a starting point and open the page before you decide.
| Product | Entry price on its page | What the price covers |
|---|---|---|
| Artisan, 11x | Not published | Demo first |
| AiSDR | $1.50 per person prospected, no monthly fee | Research, lists and writing included. Team plans are priced by volume and aimed at 1,000+ people a month, billed monthly on quarterly contracts. |
| Salesforge Agent Frank | $499 a month, billed quarterly | The agent; the page lists a separate email infrastructure add-on at $416 a month for up to 1,000 active contacts |
| Instantly | $47 a month (Growth outreach plan) | 5,000 emails a month, 1,000 uploaded contacts; lead credits are sold as separate plans |
| Smartlead | $39 a month (Base) | 6,000 emails and 2,000 contacts a month |
| lemlist | $69 a month, or $55 on yearly billing (Email plan) | Up to 50,000 emails a month; lead data is a separate add-on |
| Amplemarket | $600 a month on an annual term (Startup) | Two users included; higher plans are custom |
| Rocketship | $12 a month (Starter) | 250 credits; 4 credits per person found with an email, so about 62 people. Launch is $24.99 for 500 credits; Frontier is $79 for 1,500. |
Two of those numbers are not comparable on their face. AiSDR counts people prospected, Rocketship counts credits, and the sending tools count emails. The next section puts them on one footing.
The same 375 people, priced three ways
Say a bookkeeping firm in Tulsa wants to reach 375 owners this month. At AiSDR's pay-as-you-go rate that is 375 times $1.50, which comes to $562.50. On Rocketship it is 375 times 4 credits, or 1,500 credits, which is exactly the Frontier plan at $79. On a sending tool such as Smartlead's Base plan you pay $39, and then you supply the 375 names, the emails and the writing yourself, so the real cost is the hours or a second subscription for data. The three prices are not one price. They buy different amounts of the job.
For the full cost model behind numbers like these, including the hidden costs of mailboxes and data, see AI SDR pricing.
A scoring sheet you can fill in this week
Give each candidate a score from 0 to 2 on these seven lines, then add them up. Anything under 10 out of 14 is covering fewer jobs than you need.
- Finds the people. 2 if it builds the list from a plain description, 1 if you upload names, 0 if you bring a finished list.
- Reads each company first. 2 if it visibly uses facts from the buyer's own website, 1 if it fills merge fields from a database, 0 if it sends one template.
- Sends from your own address. 2 if mail goes out of your Gmail or Google Workspace inbox, 1 if it needs a separate domain you manage, 0 if it sends from the vendor's domain.
- Stops when someone replies. 2 if the stop is automatic and you can test it, 0 if you have to pause by hand.
- Answers the reply. 2 if it reads and answers, 1 if it sorts replies into labels, 0 if it leaves them in an inbox.
- Books the meeting. 2 if it puts the time on your calendar, 1 if it sends a booking link, 0 if it stops at "interested."
- Price you can see. 2 if you can see the price and cancel without a call, 1 if the price is public but the contract is quarterly or annual, 0 if you must book a demo to learn it.
A sending tool will typically score 6 to 8, because it does lines 3 and 4 well and leaves the rest to you. An autonomous agent behind a demo can score high on lines 1 through 6 and zero on line 7. Neither is wrong. They suit different buyers: someone with a sales ops person and a budget, or a founder who wants to start this week with a card.
Four traps that roundups skip
The unit. Per person, per email, per seat and per credit are four different meters. Convert everything to cost per person reached before you compare.
The sending address. Gmail's bulk sender rules apply to anyone sending more than 5,000 messages a day to Gmail addresses, and Google's guidance says to keep the spam rate reported in Postmaster Tools below 0.10% and never reach 0.30%. A tool that sends from rented domains is playing a different game from one that sends from your own inbox, and you should know which one you bought.
The legal baseline. The FTC's CAN-SPAM guide says the law makes no exception for business-to-business email, requires a physical postal address and an opt-out you honor within 10 business days, and sets a penalty of up to $53,088 per email. Hiring a company to send does not move that responsibility off you. Ask any vendor how opt-outs are handled.
The handoff. A meeting on your calendar with a note on what was said is a finished job. A pile of "interested" labels is not. Our piece on what an AI SDR actually does goes through that gap in more detail.
Which kind fits which buyer
If you already have a person running outbound and a list, a sending tool with AI help is the cheapest way to make them faster. If you have a sales team and a budget for a managed rollout, the demo-first agents are built for you. If you are a founder or a growing business with no one in the seat, the useful question is whether you want to run the tool or have the work done, and that is the line between kinds three and five. The short answer on needing an SDR at all covers the case where the honest result of this exercise is that you should do the first 50 emails yourself.
If you want one system to do the whole loop from your own Gmail and want to see the price before talking to anyone, Rocketship starts at $12 a month with a 7-day trial that asks for a card, and the pricing page shows what each plan covers; it will not run a video demo or negotiate for you.