Artisan vs 11x vs a Clay + Smartlead build: what an AI SDR costs per meeting
AI SDR vendors sell a seat. What you are actually buying is meetings. So we priced the same month of outbound four ways for a 10-person team: Artisan, 11x, AiSDR, and the Clay + Smartlead stack we run ourselves. Then we turned each bill into a cost per prospect and a cost per booked meeting, and took a side.
By Ishan Vats · Founder of IV Consulting · builds outbound systems in Clay, Smartlead and n8n
Clay + Smartlead~$64 a meeting
For a 10-person team contacting 1,000 prospects a month, an AI SDR costs roughly $1,000 to $2,500 a month on Artisan, about $3,750 a month on an annual 11x contract, and $1,500 a month on AiSDR's pay-as-you-go rate of $1.50 per prospect. A Clay + Smartlead build with your own inboxes runs about $320 a month, or about $630 if you need Clay's CRM sync. At a planning rate of 5 meetings per 1,000 prospects, that is about $64 to $126 per meeting for the build, $200 to $500 on Artisan, $300 on AiSDR and $750 on 11x. Artisan and 11x figures are third-party estimates because neither publishes a price. Our verdict: at 10 people, build on Clay + Smartlead if someone can own it, test AiSDR pay-as-you-go if nobody can, and do not sign an annual 11x contract.
The options
Artisan vs 11x vs AiSDR vs a Clay build: what are you actually buying?
Artisan, 11x and AiSDR sell an AI SDR as a finished product: a database, a research agent, a writer and a sender behind one login. A Clay + Smartlead build is the same four jobs bought as separate tools you wire together. The difference that matters for cost is not features. It is the billing unit and the contract.
| Option | How it bills | Price signal | Contract | The catch |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Artisan (Ava) | Seat plus a contact or credit allotment | Third-party estimates mostly $1,000 to $2,500 a month; sales-quoted | Reported annual | No public price list, so you negotiate blind. Volume above the allotment costs more |
| 11x (Alice) | Annual platform fee with a prospect allotment | Reported $3,750 a month ($45,000 a year) for up to 2,000 prospects a month; buyer reports of $5,000 | Annual, paid before a pilot per several reviewers | You pay for 2,000 prospects whether you use 1,000 or 2,000 |
| AiSDR | $1.50 per person prospected, charged daily, since 15 Oct 2026 | $1,500 at 1,000 prospects; sales-priced Team plans above 1,000 a month | None on pay-as-you-go | A warmed mailbox is a $33 add-on if you do not bring your own |
| Clay + Smartlead build | Tools billed separately: Clay plan, Smartlead plan, inboxes, model API | About $320 a month at 1,000 prospects, $630 with Clay Growth | Monthly on every line | Someone has to build it and keep it running |
Sources, read 29 October 2026. Artisan and 11x do not publish prices; the figures are third-party estimates from pricing roundups such as Landbase and MarketBetter, several of which are published by competing vendors. Treat them as a negotiating range, not a quote. The AiSDR change from its Solo ($250), Explore ($900) and Scale ($2,500) tiers to $1.50 per prospect is recorded by UsagePricing on 15 October 2026; AiSDR's own page renders client-side, so confirm it there. Smartlead from smartlead.ai/pricing and Clay from clay.com/pricing. We have no commercial relationship with any vendor here.
Look at the billing column, not the logos. 11x sells capacity in advance, Artisan sells a seat with an allotment, AiSDR sells each prospect, and the build sells each tool. Which one is cheapest depends almost entirely on how many prospects you really contact each month and how sure you are of that number before you sign.
The arithmetic
What does one month of AI SDR outbound cost a 10-person team?
Fix the job, then price it four ways. The job: research and contact 1,000 new prospects a month with a three-step email sequence, about 3,000 sends. On that job the build costs about $320 a month, AiSDR $1,500, Artisan an estimated $1,000 to $2,500, and 11x about $3,750.
This is list-price and estimate arithmetic, not a bake-off: we did not run the same 1,000 prospects through all four for this post. Stated assumptions: 1,000 prospects contacted a month, a three-step sequence, about 1,700 records enriched to get 1,000 verified emails at a 60% find rate, roughly 6 Clay Actions per record (waterfall, verify, AI research, push), and monthly billing wherever a vendor allows it. The build's model API line is our estimate of about 1 to 2 cents per prospect for research and a drafted first line at current mid-tier model prices. Change any input and the method still holds.
| Line | Artisan | 11x | AiSDR | Clay + Smartlead build |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Platform | $1,000 to $2,500 (est.) | $3,750 (est., annual) | $1,500 ($1.50 x 1,000) | Clay Launch $185, about 10,200 of 15,000 Actions used |
| Sequencer | Included | Included | Included | Smartlead Pro $94 |
| Inboxes and domains | Included or add-on, varies by quote | Included or add-on, varies by quote | Own mailbox, or $33 add-on | 6 reseller inboxes on 2 domains, about $20 |
| AI research and copy | Included | Included | Included | Model API, about $20 |
| Month total | ~$1,000 to $2,500 | ~$3,750 | ~$1,500 to $1,533 | ~$320, or ~$630 on Clay Growth |
| Cost per prospect | $1.00 to $2.50 | $3.75 ($1.88 if you use all 2,000) | $1.50 | $0.32 to $0.63 |
| Least you can commit to | Reported 12 months | 12 months, about $45,000 | One day | One month |
Clay Growth ($495) is the plan with CRM auto-sync and the HTTP API; Launch does not write into HubSpot or Salesforce. We priced both because it is the biggest swing in the build column. Inbox math follows our cold email inbox cost breakdown: about 3,000 sends a month at 30 a day per inbox needs 5 inboxes, plus one spare. Smartlead Base ($39) would cover 3,000 sends, but its 2,000-contact cap fills in two months, so we priced Pro.
The bottom row is the one most comparisons skip. A month of the build or a day of AiSDR is a cheap way to find out your real meeting rate. An annual 11x contract is a $45,000 bet that you already know it.
The real unit
What does an AI SDR cost per booked meeting?
Cost per meeting is cost per prospect divided by your meeting rate. At a planning rate of 5 meetings per 1,000 prospects, a meeting costs about $64 on the build ($126 on Clay Growth), $200 to $500 on Artisan, $300 on AiSDR and $750 on 11x. Double the meeting rate and every number halves; the order does not change.
| Meetings per 1,000 prospects | Clay + Smartlead | AiSDR | Artisan (est.) | 11x (est.) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3 (weak list) | ~$107 to $210 | ~$500 | ~$333 to $833 | ~$1,250 |
| 5 (planning rate) | ~$64 to $126 | ~$300 | ~$200 to $500 | ~$750 |
| 10 (signal-led list) | ~$32 to $63 | ~$150 | ~$100 to $250 | ~$375 |
5 meetings per 1,000 is a planning assumption, not a benchmark and not a promise. Your rate depends on the list, the offer and the market. Plug in your own; the table is just cost per prospect divided by it.
The meeting rate belongs to the list
Every option here sends email from an inbox to a prospect. None of them can fix a list of people who were never going to buy. Vendors that quote higher meeting rates are mostly quoting better lists.
11x only gets close at full use
Contact all 2,000 prospects 11x reportedly allots and its cost per meeting falls to about $375 at 5 per 1,000. Still above everything else, and only if you can feed it 2,000 good prospects every month.
AiSDR is the honest meter
$1.50 a prospect with no contract means cost per meeting is visible from day one. That is worth more than the gap to the build when nobody on the team can own a Clay table.
The build's real cost is a person
The $320 does not include the hours to build the tables, write the prompts and watch deliverability. If you hire that out, add the fee. If nobody owns it, the cheap column is the one that quietly stops sending.
The verdict
Our verdict: Artisan, 11x or a Clay + Smartlead build for a 10-person team?
Build on Clay + Smartlead if one person can own it, or if you hire someone who will. If nobody can, start AiSDR on pay-as-you-go and measure your meeting rate before committing to anything. Consider Artisan only with a pilot or exit clause in writing. Do not sign an annual 11x contract at 10 people. We take that side for three reasons.
1. Same jobs, a fifth of the price
An AI SDR is a database, a researcher, a writer and a sender. Clay, a model API and Smartlead do the same four jobs for about $0.32 to $0.63 a prospect against $1.00 to $3.75. At 1,000 prospects a month that gap is $700 to $3,400 a month.
2. You do not know your rate yet
An annual contract prices in a meeting rate you have not measured. Monthly tools let you find it, then decide. Paying $45,000 up front to learn it is the most expensive experiment on this page.
3. You keep the system
When you cancel a packaged AI SDR, the prompts, scoring and signal logic leave with it. In a build, the Clay tables, the sequences and the inboxes are yours.
Where we would change the answer: if your team sends to 2,000 or more well-qualified prospects every month, has no one who will touch a Clay table, and wants one vendor to blame, a packaged AI SDR on a negotiated contract can be the sensible buy. And whichever you pick, keep a human on the replies; we made that case in why an AI SDR should augment your reps, not replace them.
We run this build for IV's own outbound, so the build column is not hypothetical. When we audited our four Clay outbound systems on 13 October 2026, the bottleneck was not the AI or the copy. Three inboxes at 20 emails a day gave a 60-email daily ceiling shared by 14 live campaigns, so about 42 researched leads sat in the queue every day while the feeds kept paying to research more. The fix was 9 more inboxes on three fresh domains. That is the trade you make with a build: it is cheap, and nobody warns you when a limit is hit unless you watch it.
Whatever you buy, the meeting rate in the table above is set by the list, not the tool. Before you sign anything, decide which accounts show a buying signal worth a message and how many of them exist each month. See how we map the buying signals for your ICP, then size the tool to that number instead of the vendor's allotment.
The signals worth watching are in buying signals worth acting on, and the cost of the contact data that feeds the build is priced in Clay vs FullEnrich vs an n8n waterfall.
The build
What does a Clay + Smartlead AI SDR build actually include?
Four stages: a list from a buying signal, enrichment and verification in Clay, an AI research step that writes the reason to reach out, and a Smartlead sequence on inboxes you own. It is the same pipeline a packaged AI SDR runs, with every stage visible.
Signal and list
Start from an event, such as a hire, a funding round or a tool change, rather than a static list. This is where the meeting rate is won or lost.
Enrich and verify
A Clay waterfall finds and verifies the work email. Every record enriched costs a Clay Action, even on your own API keys, so filter before you enrich.
Research and first line
An AI step reads the signal and the company and drafts one specific opening line. Keep it to the reason you are writing; long generated emails read as generated.
Send and hand off
Push to a Smartlead campaign on warmed inboxes, three to a domain, and route every reply to a person. Smartlead includes unlimited mailboxes on every plan.
If LinkedIn is part of the motion, read what is actually safe after the HeyReach ban before you automate it; packaged AI SDRs that add LinkedIn steps carry the same account risk.
FAQ
Questions about AI SDR pricing
How much does an AI SDR cost in 2026?
Roughly $1,000 to $2,500 a month for Artisan and about $3,750 a month on an annual contract for 11x, both third-party estimates because neither vendor publishes a price. AiSDR charges $1.50 per person prospected since 15 October 2026. A self-built Clay + Smartlead stack costs about $320 a month at 1,000 prospects, or about $630 with Clay's CRM sync.
Is Artisan cheaper than 11x?
On reported figures, yes. Third-party estimates put Artisan at roughly $1,000 to $2,500 a month and 11x at about $3,750 a month billed annually, with buyers reporting quotes near $5,000. Both are sales-quoted, so the real comparison is the written quote, the prospect allotment and the exit clause.
What does an AI SDR cost per meeting?
Divide the cost per prospect by your meeting rate. At 5 meetings per 1,000 prospects, a meeting costs about $64 to $126 on a Clay + Smartlead build, $200 to $500 on Artisan, $300 on AiSDR and $750 on 11x. The meeting rate depends on your list and offer more than on the tool.
Can I build my own AI SDR with Clay and Smartlead?
Yes. Clay handles the list, enrichment, verification and an AI research step; a model API drafts the first line; Smartlead sends from inboxes you own. It costs a fraction of a packaged AI SDR, but someone has to build it and watch capacity and deliverability.
Should a small team sign an annual AI SDR contract?
Not before measuring a meeting rate. A month on a Clay + Smartlead build or on AiSDR's pay-as-you-go pricing tells you what a meeting costs for your list. Commit to a year only once that number is known and the vendor's allotment matches your real volume.
Ishan Vats
Founder, IV Consulting · GTM engineering & automation
I build outbound systems for small sales teams in Clay, Smartlead and n8n, and run the same stack for IV's own outbound. The Clay and Smartlead numbers come from their pricing pages; the Artisan and 11x numbers are third-party estimates, labelled as such, because neither publishes a price. We have not run Artisan or 11x ourselves, so swap in your own quotes and meeting rate.
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Read the comparison →Not sure an AI SDR is worth it for your list?
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