The cost of an SDR is the salary plus everything the seat needs to work: benefits, payroll, management time, a dialler, phone numbers, a sending tool and data. A bare-minimum multichannel outbound system costs under $1,000 a month.
That $10,000 is illustrative, and it moves with your setup. So this page gives you the lines to price your own. We get asked which one to buy first, and the answer comes down to order. Both sit inside the same B2B outbound loop: a scored list, sending infrastructure, a message, replies and the CRM.
What makes up the cost of an SDR
Start with pay. The US median for an SDR sits around $85K in on-target earnings. Matteo published the split in his post on GTM engineer scorecards: in the US, median base $60K, OTE $85K, around 54% average quota attainment.
On top of the pay sit the lines that never appear on the offer letter. Each one is real money every month, whether the seat books meetings or not.
| Cost line | What it covers | Where to find your number |
|---|---|---|
| Base salary | The fixed part of the pay | US median base $60K a year |
| Commission | The variable part, paid against a quota | US median OTE $85K a year, with around 54% average quota attainment |
| Benefits and payroll | Health cover, payroll taxes and the other costs of employing someone | Your finance team's loaded rate for a sales hire |
| Management time | Coaching, call reviews, pipeline meetings and the comp plan | The hours of whoever manages them, often a founder |
| Dialer and phone numbers | A calling seat and the numbers it dials from | Per-seat licence plus numbers |
| Sending tool | An email sequencing seat, with the domains and inboxes behind it | Per-seat or per-inbox pricing |
| Data | Contacts, verified emails and phone numbers to work through | Monthly credits or a database licence |
| Ramp | The first weeks, before the seat produces meetings | Full cost for the first weeks, with little pipeline yet |
Add it up and one SDR lands near $10,000 a month. The number shifts with region, seniority and how much of the tooling you already own. Whatever your total, keep every line in it. A comparison on salary alone makes the cost of an SDR look lower than it is.
The hidden cost of an SDR: the first weeks
The biggest line rarely shows up in a spreadsheet. In their first weeks, a new SDR builds the lists, the sequences and the sending setup. They source the accounts, guess at email formats, write the first sequence and set up the sending tool.
They are building the system you could have bought on day one. You pay a full seat for work that a set of tools does every morning. When that SDR moves on, the lists and sequences often leave with them, unless they lived somewhere the team owns.
Management time behaves the same way. Someone has to decide who the SDR calls, review what they send and keep the CRM honest. In a small company that someone is usually the founder, and their hours belong in the cost of an SDR too.
What under $1,000 a month of system buys
The other side is a short list. This is the bare minimum, and it is enough to run email and LinkedIn together against the same accounts. The full set we use, stage by stage, is on our tools page.
- Prospeo for sourcing contacts and verified emails.
- Smartlead for email and HeyReach for LinkedIn, both hitting the same accounts.
- Clay for enrichment, n8n for reply routing, Supabase for the data and Attio for the relationship.
- Claude over all of it, scoring the accounts and writing the copy.
Different combinations work at different budgets. The functions matter more than the names. What you need is one tool per job: data, two sending channels, enrichment, routing, a database, a CRM and a reasoning layer.
That figure covers the tools. Someone still has to build the system and keep it running. That is a GTM engineer on your team, or a partner who builds it with you. Their time belongs in the comparison.
A worked comparison: one SDR seat against one system
Here is the cost of an SDR beside a system, laid out month by month. The two monthly figures are our working figures, and they are illustrative. Put your own numbers in before you decide anything.
| One experienced SDR | A bare-minimum outbound system | |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly cost | About $10,000, all lines included | Under $1,000 in tools, plus the hours of whoever runs it |
| First weeks | Building lists, sequences and sending infrastructure | Once the infrastructure is warm, it builds the list, verifies it and starts sending that week |
| Working hours | Business hours, between meetings and admin | It runs at 6am, before anyone on the team logs on |
| Month four | The same person, if they stay, with the lists they built | Still running, with the list and the scoring kept in your own database |
| Month twelve | A second hire, or the same ceiling | Still running, with more volume added only to segments that book meetings |
| What it does best | Live calls, discovery, reading a room, multi-threading a deal across four stakeholders | Sourcing, verifying, scoring, writing and sending at a steady volume |
The rows show where each one earns its cost. The system does the repeatable work at a fraction of the seat. The person does the work a system cannot: a live conversation with a buyer.
Compare them on cost per meeting
Monthly cost alone does not settle it. Divide each option's total spend by the qualified meetings it booked in the same month. It is the same number behind how we measure a GTM engineer. It rewards what was produced, over how busy anyone looked.
- Count everything in the spend. Tools, data credits, seats and the loaded cost of every person's hours.
- Count only the meetings that option booked. A meeting from a referral or a conference belongs to neither.
- Use one definition of a qualified meeting. Agree it before the month starts, and keep it fixed.
- Read the trend, not a single month. Look at three months, and at what moved the number.
Run the same sum for an agency, a new SDR and a system, and the conversation gets simpler. You are no longer comparing salaries with tool invoices. You are comparing what each one costs to put a qualified buyer in front of your team.
SDR cost vs agency: what our monthly fee covers
The question we get asked most on sales calls is what makes up the monthly figure. The pricing depends on the infrastructure and the complexity of the system, so we explain the shape before any number.
- 01The setupThe first month is different, because it is the build. In the first weeks we build the list, the sending infrastructure and the first campaigns.
- 02The monthly retainerAfter the setup, a monthly retainer covers the people and the running of the system. You get a dedicated GTM engineer and a strategist on your account, weekly working sessions and a shared Slack channel.
- 03The tool costsThe tools sit on their own line, so you can see what the data and the sending cost. They are the same kind of tools listed above.
- 04What you keepWe build it so that if you walk away at some point, your team can keep running it.
That last step is where the SDR cost vs agency comparison usually turns. An SDR agency supplies reps who prospect and book meetings for you, so you rent their people and their process. A system built to be handed over stays with your team. Building that system yourself or buying it is a separate decision. Our build vs buy outbound comparison works through it.
Buy the system, then hire the person who runs on top of it
There is a real case for the SDR, and it is a strong one. Live calls, discovery, reading a room and multi-threading a deal across four stakeholders are human work. That is where deals are won, and it is what the cost of an SDR should be buying.
That work also needs something feeding it. An SDR who starts with a scored list, warm inboxes and replies already routed spends the day in conversations. An SDR who starts with a blank CRM spends the first weeks building one. So the order is the answer: the system first, and the person second.
That is the shape we build for clients through our outbound system builds. The system carries the repeatable work, and your people spend their hours where a person makes the difference.
How much does an SDR cost?
About $10,000 a month in our working figure, with every line of the seat included. It is illustrative and moves with your setup, so build your own total from the cost table above.
What does an agency's monthly fee cover?
For a system we build, it has three parts. There is a setup in the first month, a monthly retainer for the people running it, and the tool costs on their own line. The retainer includes a dedicated GTM engineer and a strategist on your account. The price depends on the infrastructure and the complexity of the system.
What is an SDR agency?
A firm that supplies sales development reps who prospect and book meetings on your behalf, usually for a monthly fee. You get their people and their process. When the contract ends, the reps go with it.
Why can't we do this ourselves?
You can. It takes someone who can build the system and decide what it should say, plus the tools listed above. Sometimes we train a client's own GTM engineer or help them hire one. Every system we build is one their team can run.
Is that the right investment for us?
Put every option on cost per qualified meeting and read it over three months. Count all the spend, count only the meetings that option booked, and keep one definition of a qualified meeting. The cheapest monthly line is not always the cheapest meeting.
Software, accelerator and startup background. Runs the GTM architecture side: how the system is designed, what it is built on, and where AI actually earns its place.
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