Best AI sales agents in 2026: AI SDRs and sales assistants compared

Published by 3Gen Internet Corporation, maker of OpenAssistant, Skej and AGNT. Comparisons use public documentation, without hands-on testing.

For outbound prospecting at scale, 11x ranks first on public information, with Artisan close behind and far cheaper to start. HubSpot’s prospecting agent and Salesforce Agentforce suit teams that already run those CRMs, and Clay is a data and workflow tool more than a sender. If you want an assistant that handles follow-up email, texts, calls and scheduling for a founder or sales lead, rather than cold outbound, OpenAssistant is a different kind of product, covered in its own section below.

Options at a glance

The five AI sales products are ranked against the site rubric: whether the documented capabilities cover the job, the vendor-published evidence and its limitations, price for what you get, where it works, and privacy, security and admin controls. These factors inform a qualitative editorial judgment; we do not calculate a performance score.

• 11x is first. It documents a set of channels (email, consented calling, LinkedIn, SMS, WhatsApp), three approval modes, SOC 2 Type II and written regional-compliance guidance. It loses ground on price: the cheapest published plan is in the tens of thousands of dollars per year.
• Artisan is second. It has public prices from a free plan up, approval and exclusion controls, and SOC 2 Type II. It ranks below 11x because calls are left to human reps, it is autonomous by default, and it published no CAN-SPAM, CASL or unsubscribe statement on the pages reviewed.
• HubSpot’s prospecting agent is third. The $1 per lead price is the simplest in this group and review-before-send is built in, but the agent’s explicit output is drafted email and it needs a HubSpot edition.
• Salesforce Agentforce is fourth. Strong if you live in Salesforce, but the sales pages describe website engagement and pipeline work more than an outbound sequence, and pricing has several routes with no separate sales SKU price.
• Clay is fifth. Good data and enrichment value, but human approval of messages is not stated and it is not an AI BDR.

OpenAssistant is not ranked against the five because it is not an AI SDR product. See its section below.

1. 11x (Alice for outbound, Julian for inbound)

11x describes itself as a platform where “Alice runs outbound prospecting end to end, Julian answers inbound leads” (11x docs).

What it does. The docs list Alice’s channels as email, consented outbound calling, LinkedIn, SMS and WhatsApp in one sequence (Alice overview). Julian answers inbound leads by phone, chat, SMS or WhatsApp (11x docs). The vendor claims a database of 400M contacts (11x outbound page; vendor claim). It has native Salesforce, HubSpot and Pipedrive connectors (integrations docs).

Approvals. There are three modes with rising autonomy: review each message, an approval workflow where a named person signs off, and autopilot with no per-message approval (brand protection docs). The docs advise against starting on autopilot (AI personalization docs). Every call is recorded, transcribed and summarized (brand protection docs).

Price. Alice Growth is listed from $3,750 per month, billed annually, for up to 5 end users and 2,000 new prospects per month (Alice pricing). That is $45,000 per year (derived: $3,750 times 12) and about $1.88 per prospect if all 2,000 are used (derived: $3,750 divided by 2,000). The FAQ on the same page says “$36,000 per year” for Growth; we follow the plan card and flag the conflict. Pro (5,000 prospects per month) and Enterprise (10,000+) are custom-quoted. Julian Growth starts at $5,333 per month for voice and $2,417 per month for chat, both annual (Julian pricing). You bring your own CRM license, and there is no published self-serve trial: the entry point is a demo (billing FAQ).

Security. SOC 2 Type II and CASA Tier 3 are listed (11x security). Region-pinning options and a retention schedule are not published (data and privacy FAQ).

Watch out for. The price conflict above; a custom quote for anything past Growth; no published overage rate; and CAN-SPAM is not named on the compliance docs reviewed. The docs also say subscribers assume full liability for communications sent through the platform (regional compliance docs).

2. Artisan (Ava, the AI BDR)

Artisan’s tagline is “The AI BDR that runs in your stack, alongside your team” (Artisan home).

What it does. Ava finds leads, enriches them, sends personalized messages across email and social, and books meetings (Artisan home). Calls are not made by the AI: the pricing page says “Ava emails, your reps dial” (Artisan pricing). Ava sends in your reps’ names from your own sending domains. The vendor claims 250M+ verified B2B contacts (vendor claim). It syncs with Salesforce and HubSpot, though the two pricing tabs disagree on which plans include Salesforce.

Approvals. You can have Ava draft every reply and wait for your click, or let her send. Controls include approve before sending, locked tone and calls to action, and banned phrases. The page also says Ava is autonomous by default (Artisan pricing). Exclusion lists cover domains and accounts Ava will not contact (Artisan home).

Price. The Startups tab lists a Free plan ($0, 300 credits per month, no card), Intern at $250 per month billed annually or $280 monthly (10K credits, about 500 leads contacted per month), and Employee at $600 annual or $660 monthly (25K credits, about 1,250 leads) (Artisan pricing). At the annual rates that works out to about $0.50 per lead contacted on Intern and $0.48 on Employee (derived: $250 divided by 500 and $600 divided by 1,250). Sending infrastructure such as mailboxes and phone numbers is billed separately, and a human power dialer add-on is $67 per seat per month annual or $75 monthly. A 30-day trial with 10K credits needs no card. Team, Scale and Enterprise plans show no price. Annual plans do not roll unused credits over.

Security. SOC 2 Type II, SSO / SAML and audit logs are listed (Artisan pricing). The vendor’s trust center blocked automated access, so its contents are not recorded here.

Watch out for. Autonomous by default; “Full self-driving Ava” is labelled “Soon” on the Employee plan; the credit math (about 20 credits per prospect enrolled) means volume is capped by your plan; and a help article says send times are randomised “to bypass spam filters” (the article is marked as last updated a year ago). No CAN-SPAM, CASL or unsubscribe statement appears on the Artisan pages reviewed.

3. HubSpot prospecting agent (shown on the page as Agent Hub)

HubSpot says its “Prospecting agent researches accounts, finds the right contacts, and drafts personalized outreach” (HubSpot prospecting agent).

What it does. It monitors buying signals, scores accounts against your ideal customer profile and drafts emails in each rep’s voice. It integrates with ZoomInfo, Apollo, Surfe and Seamless. One sentence on the page names phone calls and LinkedIn messages alongside email, but the agent’s explicit output is drafted email.

Approvals. You can review and edit AI-drafted emails before they are sent, or switch to fully autonomous mode that sends without review (HubSpot prospecting agent).

Price. HubSpot charges $1 for each lead the agent recommends outreach for. The product catalog lists 100 credits per lead at $0.010 per credit, which matches (HubSpot catalog). Extra capacity is $10 per pack of 1,000 credits (10 leads, derived). Included credits per Hub are 500 on Starter, 3,000 on Professional and 5,000 on Enterprise, or 5, 30 and 50 leads a month (derived: credits divided by 100) (HubSpot Sales pricing). Unused credits do not roll over. Sales Hub seats start at $7 (Starter), $90 (Professional) and $150 (Enterprise) per seat per month, with required one-time onboarding of $1,500 on Professional and $3,500 on Enterprise.

Security. HubSpot cites SOC 2 Type 2 audits and says third-party AI providers are contractually prohibited from training on your data (HubSpot prospecting agent).

Watch out for. Email deliverability, CAN-SPAM and GDPR for outreach are not stated on the pages reviewed. Results such as “80% more meetings with prospects booked” are a vendor claim. HubSpot’s customer agent (a support product) has its own pricing; see our customer support roundup.

4. Salesforce Agentforce (sales agents)

Salesforce describes its sales agents as covering “from prospecting and lead engagement to pipeline management and account growth” (Agentforce sales agents).

What it does. The page says Agentforce ranks prospects using intent signals from enrichment data, greets website visitors, creates lead records and answers product questions. The Agentforce home page adds handling objections and booking meetings for sales reps (Agentforce). An outbound email sequence and deliverability setup are not described on the pages reviewed.

Approvals and permissions. Pipeline updates run in Suggestive or Autonomous Mode, and the agent acts under the same permissions as the employee using it (Agentforce sales agents).

Price. There are three routes: consumption-based pricing with Flex Credits or Conversations, or per-user licensing. Flex Credits are $500 per 100,000 credits, and a standard action is 20 credits, or $0.10 (derived: $500 divided by 100,000, times 20); a voice action is 30 credits, or $0.15 (derived). Conversations are $2 each and apply to customer-facing agents. The Agentforce add-on for Sales, Service and Field Service is $125 per user per month, and Max Edition starts at $550 per user per month. A free Salesforce Foundations tier is $0 (Agentforce pricing). No separate “Agentforce for Sales” price appears; the sales agents are covered by the add-on, Max Edition or Flex Credits (our inference from the pages, not a vendor statement). A 30-day Sales Cloud trial is offered. The page says it is “for information purposes only and is subject to change.”

Security. Salesforce says its Trust Layer includes data masking, zero data retention with large language models, and that prompts and responses are never used to train third-party models (Salesforce trusted AI).

Watch out for. Several price routes that cannot be mixed (Flex Credits and Conversations are not supported in the same org); Flex Credits do not roll over; the $125 add-on is for employee use, not a price for customer-facing agents. Deliverability and CAN-SPAM for sales outreach are not stated on the pages reviewed.

5. Clay (Claygent)

Clay calls itself “Infrastructure to get any data, run agentic workflows, and launch GTM plays.” (Clay home).

What it does. Claygent is Clay’s AI agent with access to web research. You can send email with Clay’s sequencer or a sequencing integration, buy domains and emails for the sequencer on Growth, and sync your CRM. The home page cites 200+ data providers while the pricing page says 150+ data partners; we use the pricing page figure (Clay pricing).

Price. Free gives 100 data credits and 500 actions per month. Launch starts at $185 per month (2,500 data credits and 15,000 actions) and Growth at $495 (6,000 and 40,000), per the pricing FAQ. The plan cards show $167 and $446, which equal those prices less 10 percent and are likely the annual rates (derived). Data credits start at $0.05 each. Unused data credits can build up to 2x your monthly amount, actions do not roll over, and a 14-day trial is offered (Clay pricing).

Security. Clay says it is SOC 2 Type II compliant and lists opt-out and do-not-contact support (Clay pricing).

Watch out for. Human review or approval of messages is not stated on the pages reviewed. Clay is a data and workflow layer you build on, not a finished AI BDR. Costs scale with credits and actions.

OpenAssistant: a different job, and the pick for follow-up, texts, calls and scheduling

AI SDR products like the five above are built for outbound prospecting at scale. OpenAssistant is a general work assistant, not an SDR, and the specialists above win for cold outbound.

What it does. OpenAssistant acts for you through email, text (iMessage, SMS, WhatsApp), phone calls and Slack, with its own name, email address, phone number, calendar and secure computer (OpenAssistant executive assistant page). For sales work the page says it chases replies, and its pitch for sales leaders is to “Keep every lead answered and every next step on the calendar.” The homepage says it proposes times, handles the back-and-forth and sends the calendar invites (OpenAssistant).

Coordinator Mode. A help-center article says Coordinator Mode lets an assistant, executive assistant, coordinator or scheduling professional use OpenAssistant on behalf of another person, the Principal. The Principal must share their calendar and verify by email, and the article describes scheduling only (Coordinator Mode).

Approvals you set. Autonomy can be set globally or per action type, at Manual (nothing happens until you approve), Confirmation Window (it proceeds if you do nothing) or Autonomous (supervision and autonomy settings). A Confirmation Window is not the same as Manual approval (choosing your settings), and an admin can lock the settings for everyone. The trust page states SOC 2 Type II and that OpenAssistant never trains on your data (OpenAssistant trust page).

Price. The free Starter plan gives 1,000 credits at signup, then 100 bonus credits a day once used up, up to 1,000 a month. Pro is $72 per user per month, or $60 on annual billing, and Team is $120, or $100 annual, at the 5,000-credit tier; higher credit tiers cost more (OpenAssistant pricing; per-user pricing confirmed by 3Gen).

Watch out for. It does not take part in group texts or group WhatsApp chats (ways to work), not every country is supported for texting (phone number help), it does not work in Slack Connect channels with outside companies, and plan credits do not roll over. The pages reviewed do not describe a prospect database or mailbox warm-up, so use a specialist for those.

Deliverability and compliance: questions vendors should answer

Cold outreach lives or dies on whether mail reaches the inbox and whether you are allowed to send it. The vendors say little on this, so ask. Here is what their own pages state.

• 11x bundles automatic domain setup, warm-up, health monitoring and rotation of degraded domains (mailbox health docs). Messages are plain text by default with no tracking pixels, and the docs advise sending from a dedicated subdomain or separate domain (brand protection docs). Its outbound page says it honors unsubscribe requests immediately (11x outbound), and the docs list ways to opt out (opt-outs docs). Whether the sender is disclosed as AI is configured by the customer. The compliance docs say email outbound and regulated calling and texting are different things, name CASL for Canada, and put liability on the customer (regional compliance docs). CAN-SPAM is not named on the pages reviewed.
• Artisan lists deliverability monitoring and domain and mailbox purchasing on paid Startups plans (Artisan pricing). Help articles describe warm-up (warm-up article), warm-up messages to bot accounts (bot accounts article), and no sends at night, on weekends or on public holidays, with randomised timing (scheduling article). These articles are marked as last updated a year ago. No CAN-SPAM, CASL or unsubscribe statement appears on Artisan’s pages.
• HubSpot and Salesforce: deliverability and CAN-SPAM for outreach are not stated on the pages reviewed.
• Clay lists opt-out and do-not-contact support next to its CCPA badge and sells domains and emails on Growth (Clay pricing). Other deliverability detail is not stated.

For calls and texts, the FCC’s Declaratory Ruling FCC 24-17 (adopted 2 February 2024, released 8 February 2024) says the TCPA’s restrictions on artificial or prerecorded voices “encompass current AI technologies that generate human voices” and that callers must obtain “prior express consent from the called party” (FCC ruling). We have not assessed whether it applies to any product here. This is not legal advice.

What to ask each vendor

• Which domains and mailboxes will send our mail, and who handles warm-up, monitoring and replacing a damaged domain?
• How is an unsubscribe or do-not-contact request honored, across every channel, and how fast?
• Does your documentation address CAN-SPAM, CASL and GDPR for outreach, and what do you leave to us?
• Which channels are consent-based (calls, SMS, WhatsApp), and how is the AI disclosure set?
• What is the default approval mode, and can we require a named person to sign off before anything sends?
• What is the full annual cost at our volume, including mailboxes, dialer seats, overage and CRM licenses?
• What stops text in a prospect’s reply, a web page or an enrichment record from changing what the agent says or does (prompt injection)? See are AI agents safe.
• Which of your claims about meetings booked or reply rates come from customers, and can we see the basis?

What to keep for humans

• The target list and exclusion list: who the agent may never contact.
• First batches and new campaigns: review every message before moving to autopilot.
• Phone calls, where the vendor leaves them to reps (Artisan) or requires consent (11x).
• Pricing, discounts, contract terms and anything legal.
• Angry, sensitive or high-value replies, and any request to speak to a person.
• Compliance sign-off on consent, opt-outs and sending domains.

For the wider picture, see our best AI agents hub and agents that send emails, make calls and text.

Related reading

• Best AI agents that send emails, make calls and text for you in 2026: Six picks for agents that send emails, make calls and text, ranked on prices, approval controls and consent rules.
• Best AI customer support agents in 2026: prices per resolution and per seat: Seven support agents compared, with per-resolution and per-seat prices explained.
• Best AI agents for small business in 2026: top picks and prices: Eight agents for a 5 to 50 person business, with list prices, a ten-person seat cost and what each will not do.
• Are AI agents safe? Prompt injection, permissions and approval settings: Real risks from prompt injection to excess access, the controls to look for and a 10-question checklist.
• How to choose an AI agent: 10 questions to ask before you buy: Ten questions on job fit, channels, approvals, price, data and exit, with a job-to-product table.

Frequently asked questions

What is an AI SDR or AI BDR?

It is software that finds prospects, writes outreach and books meetings. Artisan describes Ava as finding leads, enriching them, sending personalized messages and booking meetings (Artisan home), and 11x says Alice runs outbound prospecting end to end (11x docs).

How much do AI sales agents cost?

Prices differ widely. Artisan starts free and lists $250 per month billed annually for Intern, 11x Alice Growth is from $3,750 per month billed annually, HubSpot charges $1 per lead recommended, and Agentforce actions work out to $0.10 each at the Flex Credit rate. Check each vendor page, because sending infrastructure, dialer seats and CRM licenses are often extra.

Can an AI sales agent send emails without my approval?

Yes on the products we cover that offer an autonomous mode. Artisan is autonomous by default, 11x offers autopilot, HubSpot offers fully autonomous mode and Agentforce offers Autonomous Mode for pipeline updates. Use the documented review or suggest controls where available before you start. Clay’s approval controls are not stated.

Is OpenAssistant an AI SDR?

No. AI SDR products are built for outbound prospecting at scale. OpenAssistant is a general work assistant for follow-up email, texts, calls and scheduling, with approvals you set per action type.

Try OpenAssistant

If you need an assistant that follows up with leads, texts and calls on your behalf and schedules the next step, with approvals you control, try OpenAssistant. The free Starter plan has no credit card requirement, and plans are listed on the pricing page.