AI SDR: what it really does, what it costs, and where a human SDR stays

This page is part of the AI prospecting guide, which explains the method; this one is about the products sold to run it on their own. Tulina does not sell an AI SDR, but it does sell agents that do part of the same job, so it has an interest in the answer. The prices below were read on each vendor's own page on 29 October 2026, and each claim about what a product does is the vendor's own description unless the page says otherwise.

What is an AI SDR?

An AI SDR is software that does the job of a sales development representative without one: it chooses whom to contact, researches them, writes the messages, sends them from mailboxes in your reps' names, answers the replies it can, and puts meetings on a rep's calendar. The vendors describe their products as employees: 11x sells Alice "the SDR", Artisan sells Ava "the AI BDR", AiSDR sells an agent called Ami that "runs your outbound".

What separates an AI SDR from the other AI tools in a sales stack is the send. A research assistant, a copilot or a prospecting agent prepares work for a person. An AI SDR sends under your company's name by default, with approvals as an option you switch on. Artisan's own pricing page says it plainly: "Autonomous by default, adjustable by design."

It is one kind of AI sales agent, the outbound kind. The broader term also covers inbound agents that answer the phone or the website chat, which 11x sells separately as Julian.

What does an AI SDR actually do?

Set against the job description, the products cover the steps of an SDR's day unevenly. The middle column is what the vendors list; the last column is what to check before believing it.

The pattern across the products is the same: the research and the writing are the strong part, because that is where language models are good and the work is checkable. The weak part is everything after the send, where a wrong answer is visible to a buyer.

Do AI SDRs actually work?

They work when the inputs are good and the volume is held back, and they fail in the same three ways when they are not. The threads on this search say both: on r/SaaS, "Has anyone found an AI SDR that actually works?" collects mixed experiences, and an r/MarketingAutomation roundup of AI sales agents concludes that AI "can save you time and effort, but it won't replace your sales team."

The three failures:

• The personalisation is generic. A model told to personalise without a dated fact to cite writes a compliment, and buyers have learned to read it as automated.
• The list is the wrong list. An agent sends to whoever the targeting returns. A loose ideal customer profile at a few thousand prospects a month burns through a market faster than a human team could, and the people it reached will not open the next email either.
• Deliverability goes first. Volume from new domains lands in spam, and spam complaints follow the domain, not the tool.

None of these is the model's fault, and none is fixed by switching vendor. They are fixed by the inputs: a written rubric, a dated reason to write on every message, and a send volume set by a person.

How much does an AI SDR cost?

Less than a salaried SDR, more than a sequencer, and almost always on an annual contract or a per-contact meter. Read on 29 October 2026:

For comparison, 11x's own FAQ puts a fully loaded SDR at $8,000 to $12,000 a month in salary, benefits, tooling and management, which is the number every AI SDR price is pitched against.

The unit that matters is cost per prospect reached. 11x Growth at $3,750 for 2,000 new prospects is about $1.88 a prospect; AiSDR is $1.50. To see what 2,000 a month means, the AI prospecting guide measured one segment on 29 October 2026: 769 US companies of 51 to 500 people running HubSpot posted an SDR or BDR job in the last 30 days. At three people each, that is about 2,300 prospects, a little over one month of 11x's Growth allowance. For a segment that size, the question is less the price per prospect than what happens in month three, when the segment has been contacted once.

Will SDRs be replaced by AI?

The part of the job that is research and first drafts already is, wherever teams have set it up. The part that is judgment and conversation is not, and the vendors' own pages say so: Artisan's FAQ answers "Does Ava replace our BDR team?" with "Ava runs the repetitive outbound work [...] so your reps spend their time on live conversations", and Artisan sells a dialer for the reps, since "Ava emails, your reps dial".

What stays with people, in practice:

• Replies that are not a yes or a no. "Not now, try in Q2", "talk to my colleague", "how is this different from what we have". Each is a judgment about the account, not a template.
• Calls. Several products prepare calls for reps rather than placing them (Artisan's dialer, AiSDR's call steps through Aircall), and AI voice calls carry their own legal limits.
• The ideal customer profile and the offer. An agent executes a rubric; someone has to know why the last ten deals closed.
• Multithreading inside accounts that matter. The ten accounts that would change the quarter are worth a person's research, not a sequence.
• Owning the list's reputation. Someone has to decide not to send this week, because a market has heard from you enough.

How do you run an AI SDR's work with Tulina?

Not as an AI SDR. Tulina is an agentic RevOps workflow builder: AI agents that run sales and GTM processes on a schedule or a webhook, across the tools a team already uses, with every step and its cost visible. For an SDR team, it runs the research half of the job over the tools you already pay for, every morning, and stops at a paused campaign: signals in, accounts scored on your rubric, the CRM and running sequences checked, buyers found, one opener each with its source and date, loaded into your sequencer for a person to launch. It does not send on its own and it does not answer replies, so the mailbox, the volume and the conversation stay with your team.

Paste this into Claude or ChatGPT once your signal source, CRM and sequencer are connected:

Run this morning's outbound prep.

1. Find companies that, since yesterday, posted a job for an SDR,
   BDR or sales development manager, or started using HubSpot, in the
   US, 50 to 500 employees.
2. Score each one against our rubric in the doc "ICP rubric". Give
   every score its evidence and a probability. Keep the sure yes,
   drop the sure no, and list the unsure ones for me.
3. Drop any company that is a customer, has an open deal, or has
   anyone in a running lemlist campaign or claimed by a rep.
4. For each company kept, pick the one or two people who own sales
   development, and find a verified work email, cheapest provider
   first. Show me the cost for one before running the rest.
5. Write one opener per person that cites the signal with its date
   and URL. No compliments, no claims about results.
6. Add them to the paused lemlist campaign "Signals - daily" with the
   opener as a variable. Do not launch it.
7. Post a summary in Slack: kept, dropped and why, unsure, cost.

The process behind that prompt, with every step and the tools it uses:

Le processus dans Tulina

Outbound à partir de signaux d'achat

Déclencheur · Planifié

Planification quotidienne

Chaque matin l'exécution démarre sur les signaux de la veille, pour qu'une entreprise qui a adopté mardi l'outil auquel vous vous branchez soit en séquence mercredi.

Claude exécute la suite en autonomie

1. 1

   Construire l'univers sur la stack et le recrutement

   TheirStack

   TheirStack

   Les entreprises qui ont commencé à utiliser les outils auxquels vous vous branchez, étayées par plus d'une offre, et celles qui recrutent pour le problème que vous résolvez reviennent en une liste avec les détections derrière.

   Apollo.io

   Apollo.io

2. 2

   Noter sur votre grille

   Jev

   Jev

   Chaque entreprise est notée sur votre profil écrit en questions fermées, avec une probabilité à côté de chaque réponse, et la bande du milieu va à une personne plutôt qu'à une étiquette.

3. 3

   Écarter ce que le CRM ou une séquence détient

   HubSpot

   HubSpot

   Un client, un deal ouvert, une réservation d'un autre commercial, une entreprise en délai de repos ou une personne déjà dans une séquence quitte la liste avec sa raison, avant tout achat.

   Lemlist

   Lemlist

4. 4

   Lire pourquoi maintenant, désigner l'acheteur

   TheirStack

   TheirStack

   Les offres et l'actualité de chaque entreprise reviennent en signaux avec la phrase exacte derrière, et le signal désigne auquel de vos rôles acheteurs écrire.

   Serper

   Serper

5. 5

   Trouver les acheteurs, enrichir leurs emails

   Apollo.io

   Apollo.io

   Deux personnes par entreprise reviennent avec un email professionnel vérifié, les fausses affiliations purgées, et quiconque est déjà en séquence arrêté.

   FullEnrich

   FullEnrich

6. 6

   Choisir la tactique, écrire chaque accroche

   Votre playbook outbound décide à combien de personnes écrire et dans quel ordre, et une accroche par personne est écrite à partir du signal, avec seulement des chiffres citables.

7. 7

   Remplir la campagne, mettre le CRM à jour

   Lemlist

   Lemlist

   Chacun qui a un email rejoint la campagne en pause avec son accroche, chaque entreprise reçoit une note avec son signal et sa note, et l'équipe reçoit le récap avec chaque entreprise écartée et pourquoi.

   HubSpot

   HubSpot

   Slack

   Slack

Voir le processus complet

The inbound side has its own process: Qualify inbound leads scores each new lead on real company data and writes the reason back to the CRM.

Should you build or buy an AI SDR?

It depends on who you want to own the send. A short way to choose:

Teams often run two of the three: agents for research and drafting, people for the send and the replies, and an AI SDR on one segment that is wide enough to absorb the volume.

What an AI SDR can't do, and what gets you in trouble

• It cannot be cheaper than the market it burns. At a few thousand prospects a month, a narrow market is contacted in a quarter. Ask what the product does in month four.
• Your domain carries the reputation. Whoever sends, the spam complaints and the blocklists follow the sending domain. Use separate sending domains, warm them, and cap daily volume.
• AI voice calls are regulated. In the US, the FCC ruled in February 2024 that calls with AI-generated voices count as "artificial" under the TCPA, so they need the same prior consent as robocalls. Check the rules in every country you call.
• GDPR applies to the data and the message, not the tool. For EU prospects you need a lawful basis, usually legitimate interest, a record of where each contact came from, and an easy way to object. An agent that keeps the source and date on every row makes that record easier; one that does not makes it impossible.
• Annual contracts outlast experiments. 11x's default is annual, and multi-year terms carry the discounts. Run a paid pilot on one segment before committing a year.
• The brand is in every message. An AI SDR writing in a rep's name makes claims in your company's name. Lock the claims it may make, and read a sample every week.

For the products that do one part of the job each (databases, research agents, sequencers, agents inside the CRM), with their prices, read AI prospecting tools, sorted by job.

Common questions

Is an AI SDR the same as an AI BDR?

Yes, in practice. Vendors use both names for the same product: an agent that sources leads, writes and sends outreach and books meetings. Artisan calls Ava an AI BDR, 11x calls Alice an AI SDR, and the jobs described are the same. In companies that split the roles, SDRs work inbound and BDRs outbound, and the AI products cover outbound first.

Do AI SDRs send from my domain?

Usually from mailboxes set up for the purpose, under your reps' names. Artisan says Ava sends from your own sending domains in your reps' names; 11x includes managed Gmail mailboxes with warmup and rotation on every plan. Either way the reputation at risk is your company's, so the mailboxes, the daily volume and the opt-out handling deserve the same review as any cold email program.

How long does an AI SDR take to set up?

The software is quick; the inputs are not. Vendors quote onboarding in weeks (11x lists two to four depending on the plan), and most of that time goes to things only the buyer can supply: the ideal customer profile, the offer, the proof points, mailboxes that are warm enough to send, and the rules for when a person takes over a thread.

Can an AI SDR make cold calls?

Some can place or prepare calls, and the field is split on whether they should. Artisan sells an AI dialer for reps and says Ava emails while reps dial; 11x lists consented outbound calling. AI voice calls to consumers are restricted in the US under the TCPA since the FCC's 2024 ruling, and B2B rules vary by country, so check the law where your prospects sit before switching voice on.