LinkedIn's Sales Navigator page, as published on their site in October 2026, lists Core at US$119.99 a month per license ($1,079.88 billed annually) and Advanced at US$159.99 a month ($1,799.88 annually), with Advanced Plus by custom quote. All three list 50 InMails a month, search filters and alerts. If you mostly need a list of named buyers you can write to, the question is what 100 usable contacts cost by each route, your time included.
A usable contact here means a name, a title that fits, and a working email. That definition matters, because the most common mistake in comparing list sources is counting names instead of reachable people. The estimates below use made-up time figures and a $40 hourly rate for your time. Replace them with your own.
What Sales Navigator gives you and what it doesn't
From the plan page: advanced search filters, alerts for job changes and activity, lead and account insights, and, on Advanced, team seat management and buyer intent signals. It is a way to find and watch people on LinkedIn. The features listed on that page are search, alerts, messaging and team tools. Email addresses and phone numbers aren't among them, so the step from a name on a profile to a message in an inbox is still yours. The existing guide to finding B2B leads on LinkedIn without Sales Navigator covers what the free search can do.
Cost per usable contact
Two things set the cost: the license and the minutes. Searching and reading profiles takes time, and so does finding an email. Take a target of 100 usable contacts and assume 70 percent of the people you find end up with a working email, so you need about 143 candidates.
Alternatives by source: database, directory, search
A contact database lets you filter by title, industry and location and returns people with emails attached. Pricing varies a lot; ZoomInfo alternatives covers the category. A local directory (a chamber of commerce member list, a trade association page, the map listings for a category) gives you businesses and often an owner's name, which suits local B2B better than LinkedIn does. Manual search is free LinkedIn plus company websites: slow, and cheap in cash. And there are tools that find buyers by name and email them in one step; Rocketship is one.
A directory example, so the cost row is not abstract: a county contractors' association lists 220 members with a company name and contact person. In 20 minutes you can copy 40 of the ones in your target trade into a sheet, open each website to find the owner's name and one staff email, and have a list of 40 with a pattern to guess from. That is slower per name than a database, and it gives you owners rather than job titles, which is often what a local trade buyer is. It also stays inside the public pages the association chose to publish.
From a name to an email
You have a name and a company. Finding the address means guessing the pattern (first.last@domain), checking it, or paying a finder. Guessing and checking by hand is about three minutes a contact in the estimates below. A finder charges credits; the sibling page Snov.io alternatives runs 100 contacts through three credit systems. The manual routine, for Dana Reyes at harborfreight.example: open the company site and find any staff email to learn the pattern (say, first.last@). Try dana.reyes@, then dreyes@, then dana@. Run each through a verifier and stop at the first valid one. If none passes, drop her from the list and move on, because a guessed address that bounces costs more than a skipped name. Whichever tool you use, verify before sending, as lead data you can check before paying explains.
From a list to a conversation
A list isn't a pipeline. Someone has to write the email, send it from an address people trust, follow up, and read the replies. If that someone is you, add the hours. If it's a tool, add its price. For a bigger team's version of this decision, see Outreach.io alternatives, and for how to choose between lead-finding methods by volume, the best way to find B2B leads.
The 100-contact cost test
The table follows 100 usable contacts for one month. Time is valued at $40 an hour. Every time figure is an assumption, and the database price is a placeholder, not a quote.
| Route | Cash | Your time | Total | Per usable contact |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sales Navigator Core, monthly, then guess and check emails | $119.99 | 143 x 4 min search + 143 x 3 min email = 1,001 min = 16.7 h = $667 | $787 | $7.87 |
| Manual search and company sites | $0 | 143 x 6 min + 143 x 3 min = 1,287 min = 21.5 h = $858 | $858 | $8.58 |
| Contact database (placeholder $99 a month) | $99 | 143 x 1 min review = 2.4 h = $95 | $194 | $1.94 |
| Rocketship Frontier ($79), 100 people found with emails | $79 (200 of 500 leads: 100 x 2) | 1 h reviewing the list = $40 | $119 | $1.19 |
Three cautions on the table. The Rocketship row also covers the sending, follow-up and booking that the other rows leave to you. Its allowances are real limits: Frontier includes 500 leads a month, so 100 people found with their emails at 2 leads each uses 200 of them. Phone numbers are separate phone lookups, which would add to the cost. And a database or finder only saves time if the data is right, so check 25 names first, as the 25-name check shows. The Sales Navigator row is the one that changes most if you value your time lower: at $20 an hour it falls to about $454, or $4.54 a contact.
What you need: names, emails or conversations
If you need to watch specific accounts for job changes and write to people on LinkedIn itself, you are using what Sales Navigator is built around. If you need a few hundred named buyers with emails each month, the cost per usable contact above is the number to beat. If you need those buyers contacted, followed up and booked without doing it yourself, you are buying the whole path. Rocketship finds the buyers, emails them from your own Gmail, follows up, and books the meeting on its own. Plans that get you customers start at $24.99 a month (Launch), and both Launch and Frontier start with a 7-day free trial, card required.