We Compared the 11 Best AI SDR Tools and Their Agents for B2B Outreach

AI SDR tools now do far more than send cold email. The best ones research prospects, qualify inbound leads and book meetings on their own. ZoomInfo is one of the best places to run AI SDR agents, with Agent Teams running complete AI SDR plays for you, with no need to babysit it.

Below, we compare 11 AI SDR tools on their agents, data, pricing and G2 ratings. Most lean outbound, so it also helps to know how AI SDRs fit into outbound sales before you build a shortlist.

What Is an AI SDR Tool?

An AI SDR tool is a type of AI sales agent that does the work of a sales development rep with little or no manual effort. It finds prospects that match your ideal customer profile, researches each account, writes and sends personalized outreach, qualifies replies and books meetings for account executives.

Basic workflow automation follows a fixed sequence. AI SDRs make decisions as they go. They read how prospects respond, adjust timing and messaging and decide when a lead is ready for a human. Most combine a B2B contact database with large language models, so the quality of their work depends heavily on the data underneath.

Core capabilities include:

• Prospecting. Builds target lists from firmographics, technographics and buying signals such as funding rounds, hiring or job changes, the same job AI prospecting tools focus on.

• Research. Pulls company news, tech stack and role context so each message has a real reason to reach out, the same job our roundup of prospect research tools covers.

• Personalized outreach. Writes unique emails and LinkedIn messages, then manages multi-touch sales email sequences.

• Qualification. Reads replies, handles common objections and scores interest, a job covered in our guide to lead qualification.

• Meeting booking and handoff. Schedules meetings and passes context to the rep who takes the call.

AI SDR vs. AI BDR: What’s the Difference?

The terms AI SDR and AI BDR are often used interchangeably, and most tools on this list do both jobs. The difference comes from how human sales development teams split the work.

An AI BDR (AI business development rep) focuses on outbound prospecting, which means finding net-new accounts, mapping the buying group and starting conversations with people who haven’t raised their hand yet. An AI SDR (AI sales development rep) traditionally leans toward inbound lead generation, which means following up on form fills and demo requests fast, qualifying the buyer and routing them to the right rep.

In practice, vendors blur the line. Artisan calls its agent Ava an AI BDR, while 11x pairs an outbound agent with an inbound phone agent. The useful question is which jobs you need covered and whether one platform can run both without separate tools. AI SDRs also differ from AI sales assistants, which suggest next steps while a rep does the work. For a dedicated comparison of outbound-first tools, see our roundup of AI BDR software.

How We Evaluated These AI SDR Tools

We assessed each tool against the six criteria that most affect results in real deployments, using G2 reviews and vendor documentation:

• Agent depth. Which jobs do the tool's named agents own, from research to reply handling, and how much runs without a rep?

• Data quality. Is outreach built on verified contacts, or on data the tool scrapes or rents? Bad data means bounced emails and wrong-person outreach at machine speed.

• Inbound and outbound coverage. Can the tool qualify inbound leads, prospect outbound or both?

• Personalization. Does it use real account context, such as news, intent signals and CRM history, or fill in templates?

• CRM and stack integration. Does it sync natively with Salesforce or HubSpot and work with the sales engagement tools you already run?

• Governance. Can you monitor what the AI does, control who uses it and see what it will cost?

AI SDR Tools Comparison

1. ZoomInfo

G2 rating: 4.5/5

ZoomInfo is an all-in-one AI GTM Platform and one of the best places for sales, marketing and RevOps to run agentic workflows. And we're not just saying that, over half the Fortune 500 trust ZoomInfo to run GTM.

Its agentic capabilities sit on three layers.

1. Data is the foundation, with 500M contacts and 100M companies, including 135M+ verified phone numbers, 120M+ direct dials and 200M+ verified business emails, kept current by 300+ human researchers with up to 95% accuracy on first-party data.

2. That data is structured as the GTM Context Graph, ZoomInfo's context layer for AI agents, which processes 1.5B+ data points daily and fuses it with your CRM records, conversation intelligence and behavioral signals, so every agent knows why an account matters now along with who to contact.

3. Agent Orchestration is the execution layer, where AI agents read that context, act on it and write the results back. Universal Access is how teams reach it, through GTM Workspace for sellers, GTM Studio for RevOps, marketers and GTM engineers, and GTM.AI as the core route for any tool or agent.

Run whole GTM plays with Agent Teams

At the heart of our execution layer is Agent Teams. Give your agents an outcome, not a task, such as converting a qualified inbound lead, and specialist agents carry the play while a supervisor agent checks each step against your rules. A form fill, intent spike, CRM event or job change opens or resumes a play, and at each step the Agent Team decides whether to act, wait, suppress or escalate. Agents act natively in Salesforce, HubSpot, Outreach, Salesloft, Slack and Gmail, so plays run in the systems reps already use.

Every play comes with governance guardrails built in:

• Every play is monitored, so mistakes are caught and fixed before they affect the business.

• AI credit usage is estimated before a play starts and tracked for each Agent Team.

• Organization-wide admin dashboards and role-based access decide who builds and runs Agent Teams.

• Organization-level knowledge bases keep agents aligned with your ICP, brand and SOPs.

• Real-time evaluations check each step, so a play runs the same way every time.

• Every step is written back to Salesforce or HubSpot, with every decision recorded in one audit trail.

ZoomInfo maintains SOC 2 controls and is ISO 27001 and ISO 27701 certified.

Build your own agents through GTM.AI

GTM.AI is ZoomInfo's headless option. Its API, CLI and MCP server let any tool or AI agent, including Claude, ChatGPT and custom agents, connect to verified B2B intelligence and run whole GTM motions from wherever your team already works. Developers and GTM Engineers build on the data directly, and teams that don't code start from pre-built workflows, templates and prompts.

Your agents can call ZoomInfo's Context Agents for finished research, such as an account brief that combines ZoomInfo data with your CRM and conversation history, and GTM Optimized Skills for repeatable SDR jobs such as building a list or choosing the next best action. Agent Teams can run through GTM.AI too, so a complete play can start from a prompt in Claude. GTM.AI is free to start, with consumption-based credits, and you can connect your first agent from Claude, Codex or your own code.

Agentic capabilities:

• Agent Teams templates. Ready-made inbound lead activation and outbound prospecting plays for AI SDR and AI BDR work, broken down after the list below.

• Champion activation. When a past buyer joins a target account, the Agent Team rebuilds their role in the original deal, drafts outreach grounded in that relationship and briefs the account owner in Slack.

• Supervisor agent. Checks every specialist agent's step against your rules, so a play stays inside the bounds you set.

• Plain-language play builder. Describe a new play in plain English and Agent Teams generates the workflow from 50+ ready-made agents.

• Native connectors. Salesforce, HubSpot, Outreach, Salesloft, Slack and Gmail, with every step written back to the CRM.

• GTM.AI Context Agents. Account Research, Contact Research, Conversation Intelligence, Signals, Web Research and Business Context agents your own AI SDR can call.

• GTM.AI API, CLI and MCP. Works with Claude, Claude Code, Codex, Perplexity, Vertex AI and Amazon Quick, with MCP available through partners including Anthropic's Claude and Google.

Pros:

• An Agent Team can take on a complete GTM motion

• Works from current state and context, not stale signals that happened months ago

• No babysitting needed; real-time evaluation architecture

• Connects to your apps and CRM

Cons:

• AI credits need scoping against your real volume

• Built for teams vs. solo founders (but GTM.AI is a good option for them too)

Best for: RevOps, marketing ops and sales leaders at mid-market and enterprise companies on Salesforce or HubSpot who still run high-value plays by hand and want agents to run them end to end. GTM engineers can build their own agents on the same data through GTM.AI.

Pricing: Flexible packages built around your needs. Agent Teams is part of GTM Studio with no new SKU or contract, and GTM.AI is free to start, with consumption-based credits.

"We've built out account briefs that tell our sellers exactly what they need to know. For our AEs, who are in meetings all day, this makes it so they'll actually pick up the phone and make the call."

Amber Thompson, Marketing Operations Director at Nerdio

Reps spendlesstime on research, more time on the phone

Read case study

2. Artisan

G2 rating: 4.2/5

Artisan is an outbound sales platform that bundles B2B contact data, multichannel sequencing, a dialer and deliverability tools around one AI agent, Ava, “the AI BDR.”

Artisan says Ava “books meetings for your reps autonomously,” and Ava 2.0 works the full outbound loop. She sources leads from 250M+ verified B2B contacts, enriches them through a waterfall across 22+ data sources, writes one-to-one emails from your reps’ names and domains, handles replies and books meetings. An AI research agent first checks each lead against your criteria, so hard disqualifiers never get enrolled.

Ava also tunes her own campaigns, testing subject lines, copy, calls to action and send times and shifting volume toward what converts. Teams decide how much she does alone through approval gates at each stage and escalation rules written in plain text, such as handing every pricing question to a rep.

Agentic capabilities:

• Lead research and qualification. Ava's research agent checks each lead against your criteria and asks leads it can't verify upfront before booking a meeting.

• Signal-triggered campaigns. Funding rounds, leadership changes, new hires, investor activity and tech-stack changes enroll matching prospects automatically.

• Website visitor identification. Person-level in the US and company-level globally, with auto-enrollment into campaigns.

• Self-optimizing messaging. Continuous multivariate testing that moves volume to the best-performing copy and send times.

• Autonomous reply handling. Answers questions and objections from your knowledge base, adjusts for out-of-office replies and books the meeting.

• Approval gates and escalation rules. Set at every stage of the workflow, in plain language.

• Chat with Ava. A conversational interface for setting up and managing campaigns.

• Built-in dialer. Parallel dialing, call tasks triggered by engagement and Blitz rooms for live team dialing, with a pre-call brief for each rep.

Pros:

• Fully autonomous outbound from list to meeting

• Strong message controls for brand safety

• CSM support and onboarding on every plan

• SOC 2 Type II certified, with SSO and SAML

Cons:

• No public pricing

• Focused on outbound more than inbound qualification

• Calls stay with human reps

Best for: Teams that want an autonomous AI BDR to run outbound alongside their reps.

Pricing: Custom. Plans are scoped to lead volume, mailboxes and dialer seats, with Team covering about 2,500 leads contacted a month, Scale about 6,000 and Enterprise set to custom volume.

Weighing Artisan against other AI BDRs? Compare your options in our guide to Artisan alternatives.

3. 11x

G2 rating: 4.4/5

11x is an AI sales platform that covers outbound and inbound with two agents it calls digital workers.

Alice is the outbound AI SDR. She prospects around the clock from a 400M+ B2B contact database fed by 21+ data providers, researches each account with Live Web Search and a Deep Research agent that cites its sources, and writes channel-aware messages across email, LinkedIn, phone, SMS and WhatsApp.

Julian is the inbound and voice rep. He engages a new lead within 60 seconds, qualifies it through a call flow built on conversation objectives, then routes the lead or books the meeting in the same conversation.

11x packages Alice’s work as plays, from Closed-Lost Revival and Competitive Takeout to Website Visitor Retargeting and PLG Conversion. Smart Replies then decide whether Alice responds to, skips or escalates each reply.

Agentic capabilities:

• Alice Deep Research. Cited account research driven by your research directives, plus Custom Deep Research that combines your own data sources with the knowledge base and CRM fields.

• Alice Qualification Agent. Scores leads from CRM lists, CSVs or website visitors against your ICP.

• Smart Replies. Respond, skip or escalate rules for each reply category, testable in simulation.

• Alice Playbooks. One-click plays for event campaigns, win-backs and lead reactivation.

• Julian Speed to Lead. Engages inbound leads within 60 seconds, with follow-up on unanswered attempts.

• Julian Live Chat. Qualifies website visitors and books meetings on-site.

• Dynamic Triggers. Start Julian conversations from CRM field changes, product signals, form submissions or API calls.

• Mailbox Health. Domain warmup, inbox placement testing, blacklist detection and rotation of degraded domains.

Pros:

• Covers outbound, inbound voice and website chat in one vendor

• Wide channel coverage, including SMS and WhatsApp

• Built-in deliverability and mailbox health tools

Cons:

• No public pricing

• Two separate agents to configure

Best for: Teams that want an outbound AI SDR plus an AI agent answering inbound calls.

Pricing: Custom, through a demo.

4. AiSDR

G2 rating: 4.6/5

AiSDR is an AI SDR platform for email and LinkedIn outbound that positions itself as “an AI agent that focuses on lead quality over volume.”

Its agent, Ami, plans the outbound before it runs it. Ami reads your website and about 20 minutes of your input, proposes the target profile, buying signals, messaging angle and sequence, then builds a launch-ready campaign. Your first campaign stays in draft until you approve it.

Once campaigns run, Ami keeps managing them. It flags a campaign that stalls, fixes it or proposes a new play and sends a Monday recap. Replies get an answer within 5 to 10 minutes around the clock, or a draft for approval in co-pilot mode, and Ami works through standard objections before booking the meeting or handing complex conversations to a person.

Agentic capabilities:

• Campaign planning. Ami proposes the ICP, signals, angle and sequence from your website, and learns your voice from one of your real emails.

• Custom signal tracking. Watches any public signal you define, such as a keyword in a LinkedIn post, a hiring spree, a funding round, a job change or a competitor named on an earnings call.

• Per-lead research. Reads each lead’s LinkedIn activity, company news and job posts before writing.

• Reply handling. Responds within 5 to 10 minutes, handles common objections, follows up on inbound leads and books through Calendly or HubSpot.

• Campaign monitoring. Flags stalled campaigns, proposes fixes and sends a weekly recap.

• Call talk tracks. For phone steps run through Aircall, Ami writes the talk track and the follow-up.

• AI video and LinkedIn voice notes. Available on the Scale plan.

Pros:

• Published pricing

• Handles inbound and outbound conversations

• Strong G2 rating for a newer tool

Cons:

• Salesforce sync only on the top plan

• Contact limits on each plan

• Explore and Scale use quarterly contracts

Best for: SMB and mid-market teams that want an AI SDR for email and LinkedIn with transparent pricing.

Pricing: Solo at $250 a month (200 AI-researched contacts), Explore at $900 a month (800 contacts) and Scale at $2,500 a month (2,500 contacts), all billed monthly. Solo runs month to month, Explore and Scale have quarterly contracts, and annual plans save 20%, as our AiSDR pricing breakdown explains.

Shopping around? See how it stacks up in our roundup of AiSDR alternatives.

5. Apollo

G2 rating: 4.7/5

Apollo is a sales platform that combines a database of 240M+ contacts and 30M+ companies with sequencing, dialing and an AI Assistant that runs multi-step work from a plain-language request.

Ask it to find accounts with strong buying intent, draft personalized emails and launch a campaign, and it builds and runs that workflow across the platform. It works from your saved company context, with human-in-the-loop controls on top.

Behind the Assistant, Apollo describes GTM Harness as the orchestration layer that turns a business outcome into a series of GTM actions. For AI SDR work, Apollo’s strength is bundling. Its feature set can replace a separate prospecting database, sequencing tool and dialer, and the free plan makes it easy to test.

Agentic capabilities:

• AI Assistant. Builds and runs multi-step prospecting, research, outreach and reporting workflows from one natural-language request.

• GTM Harness. Turns a goal into GTM actions with goal-based execution and supervised agentic behavior.

• Slack app agents. Run on a schedule on Professional and Organization plans and send recommendations, such as new leads or sequence fixes, to Slack for you to approve.

• Apollo Workflows. Triggers, conditions and actions for list building, sequence enrollment, lead assignment and data updates.

• MCP server, CLI and API. Search, enrich, sequence and save records from ChatGPT, Claude, Codex, Cursor and other AI assistants.

• AI sequence assistance. Creates and personalizes multichannel sequences across email, phone and LinkedIn.

• Conversation intelligence. Meeting summaries, objections, action items and deal context from recorded calls.

Pros:

• Data, sequencing and dialing in one license

• Permanent free plan

• Accessible per-seat pricing

Cons:

• Per-seat costs add up as teams grow

• The Advanced Dialer and Inbound features are paid add-ons

• Data and AI features draw on per-seat credits

Best for: SMB and mid-market outbound teams that want data and sequencing with AI assistance in one tool.

Pricing: Free plan with 900 credits a year, then Basic at $49, Professional at $79 and Organization at $119 (minimum three seats), per seat per month billed annually. Annual billing saves 24% over monthly, and our Apollo pricing breakdown covers credits and add-ons.

Considering Apollo? See how the two platforms compare in Apollo vs. ZoomInfo.

6. Reply

G2 rating: 4.6/5

Reply is a sales engagement platform with an AI SDR called Jason AI. Jason sources contacts, researches each one, writes the outreach and answers replies inside Reply’s email and LinkedIn sequences.

Before writing, it checks the prospect’s recent news, LinkedIn activity from the past three months and company website. Its AI Strategist generates up to 15 sequence ideas per run, each with its own audience, offer and playbook.

Jason runs in Approval mode, where every message waits for review, or Automatic mode, where it sends on its own. For replies, teams set a handler for each question type that answers automatically, drafts a response or stops and notifies a rep. Reply’s core features cover mailboxes, warmup and deliverability, and like other sales cadence tools, Reply sells two core plans. Email Volume covers high-volume email with LinkedIn and calls as paid add-ons, while Multichannel bundles email, LinkedIn, calls, SMS and WhatsApp.

Agentic capabilities:

• Autopilot sourcing. Builds lists from ICP filters or a pasted Sales Navigator URL, with an ICP score and a LinkedIn Activity score for each contact.

• Intent signals. Hiring, technology used, company growth, job changes in the last 90 days, LinkedIn post engagers and competitor followers scanned daily.

• AI Strategist. Up to 15 sequence ideas per run, with audiences and filters pre-filled.

• Approval and Automatic modes. Review every message before it sends, or let Jason send on its own.

• Reply handlers. Auto, Draft or Stop and notify for each question type, answered from your knowledge base.

• Meeting booking. Books meetings on meeting-intent replies through your calendar or booking link.

• AI Learnings. Learns your style from likes, dislikes and edits, stored as rules you can view and change.

Pros:

• Choice between approval and automatic modes

• Wide multichannel coverage

• Published pricing

Cons:

• LinkedIn and calling cost extra on Email Volume

• Jason AI SDR is priced separately from the core plans

• Email Volume caps active contacts, starting at 1,000 a month

Best for: Teams that want multichannel sequences with an AI SDR they can switch between approval and automatic modes.

Pricing: Jason AI SDR starts at $500 a month. Email Volume starts at $49 per user per month and Multichannel at $89 per user per month, both billed annually.

7. Salesforce Agentforce

G2 rating: 4.3/5

Salesforce Agentforce is Salesforce’s platform for building and running AI agents on your CRM data, and two of its agents cover SDR work.

The Prospecting Agent ranks prospects by intent signals, researches them across Salesforce, call recordings and the web, drafts personalized outreach and delivers lead lists in Slack. Agentforce for Sales Development covers inbound. It greets website visitors, creates lead records, answers product questions, follows up and books meetings.

ZoomInfo works alongside Agentforce. ZoomInfo data now powers the Salesforce Agentforce Prospecting Agent, giving mutual customers verified contact, company, intent and Scoops data inside Agentforce by default. The integration runs through GTM.AI over API and MCP, so every agent recommendation traces back to a cited, verified signal.

Agentic capabilities:

• Prospecting Agent. Intent-ranked prospects, research across Salesforce, calls and the web, drafted outreach and lead lists in Slack.

• Agentforce for Sales Development. Inbound engagement, lead creation, product Q&A, follow-up and meeting booking.

• Pipeline management agent. Updates Stage and Next Steps from calls, meetings and emails, in suggestive or autonomous mode.

• Account management agent. Builds account plans and meeting briefs in Slack, ChatGPT and mobile.

• Agentforce Sales Coach. Pitch practice and role-plays tailored to deal stage, with consistent feedback.

Pros:

• Works natively inside Salesforce

• No separate tool for Salesforce-centric teams

• Strong ecosystem of partners and data providers

Cons:

• Designed for teams that run on Salesforce

• Flex Credit usage needs forecasting against agent volume

• Works best on clean, verified CRM data, which is where ZoomInfo data helps

Best for: Sales teams standardized on Salesforce that want SDR agents inside their CRM.

Pricing: Sold through Salesforce, either on Flex Credits at $500 per 100,000 credits (a standard agent action uses 20 credits) or as Agentforce add-ons for Sales from $125 per user per month.

8. Clay

G2 rating: 4.6/5

Clay is a GTM data and workflow platform built around spreadsheet-style tables. Its agents start with Claygent, an AI research agent that searches the web, scrapes sites and reads job postings to answer custom questions about any company or contact.

As our guide to what Clay is explains, Claygent sits next to waterfall enrichment across 200+ data providers, so one table can enrich a list and research every row in the same run. With Claygent Builder, teams describe a custom Claygent in natural language through Sculptor, then test, deploy and version it.

Clay is pushing further into agents. Account Research Agents keep account intelligence current for expansion and re-engagement, and at Sculpt in October 2026 Clay showed an agent that takes an outcome and uses your ICP, personas and positioning to source contacts, spot signals and draft sequences.

Even so, Clay is less an AI SDR than the toolkit GTM engineers use to build one. Teams that have a GTM engineer can design highly custom research and outreach, while teams without one often find it hard to maintain, a theme in many Clay reviews.

Agentic capabilities:

• Claygent. Custom web research on any company or contact, from hiring velocity to tech stack, with lower-cost open-weight models for long-running tasks.

• Sculptor and Claygent Builder. Build Clay workflows and custom Claygents by describing them in plain English.

• Account Research Agents. Always-on account intelligence for expansion or re-engagement.

• Workflows (beta). A visual canvas where steps branch, loop, run code or call an agent across millions of records.

• Signals. Job changes, promotions, website visits and other account signals that can trigger plays.

• Sequencer. Lead sourcing, enrichment and email sequencing in one place.

• Clay MCP, API and CLI. Reps use Ops-built functions from AI assistants, and builders work in Clay from coding agents.

Pros:

• Maximum flexibility for custom research

• Combines many data sources in one place

• Public pricing with a free plan

Cons:

• Needs a GTM engineer to build and maintain

• Actions and data credits are hard to predict at scale

• Data quality depends on which providers a waterfall reaches

Best for: RevOps and GTM engineering teams that want to build their own AI SDR workflows.

Pricing: Free plan, then Launch from $167 a month and Growth from $446 a month, both billed annually, with custom Enterprise pricing.

See how Clay compares head to head in Clay vs. ZoomInfo, or browse more Clay alternatives.

9. Outreach

G2 rating: 4.3/5

Outreach is an enterprise sales engagement platform that now describes itself as an agentic AI platform for revenue teams.

For SDR work, two agents matter most. Outreach Omni is a conversational agent that runs across the platform, in Slack and on mobile, so sellers move from a question to an action in one chat. The Personalization Agent writes buyer messages from the persona guides admins load into Knowledge, and the Revenue Agent runs persona-based plays from the same context.

Agent Studio gives admins ready-to-run workflows for inbound lead engagement, closed-lost reactivation and deal alerts. Further down the funnel, the Meeting Prep Agent builds briefs from attendee profiles, account context and recommended talking points, and the Deal Agent sends opportunity updates to Slack for sellers to accept, reject or edit.

Outreach is also one of the sales engagement platforms Agent Teams connects to natively, so teams can keep their Outreach sequences and let Agent Teams enroll qualified buyers into them. Smaller teams often weigh it against lighter engagement tools, as in our Outplay vs. Outreach comparison.

Agentic capabilities:

• Outreach Omni. A conversational agent across the platform, Slack and the mobile app that can pick up earlier threads.

• Personalization Agent. Writes messages grounded in the persona guides stored in Knowledge.

• Revenue Agent. Runs persona-based plays.

• Agent Studio. Ready-to-run workflows for inbound lead engagement, closed-lost reactivation and deal alerts.

• Meeting Prep Agent. Pre-meeting briefs with attendee profiles and talking points.

• Deal Agent. Opportunity field updates and AI deal summaries, reviewed in Slack.

• Smart Kaia Coach. Scores coach cards against your meeting criteria automatically.

Pros:

• Deep enterprise sales engagement platform

• AI agents across the full sales cycle

• Strong security, SSO and role-based access

Cons:

• No public pricing

• More platform than most SDR teams need on day one

• Agent features sit inside a broad platform, so rollout takes planning

Best for: Enterprise sales organizations that want AI agents inside an established sales engagement platform.

Pricing: Custom.

10. Instantly

G2 rating: 4.8/5

Instantly is a cold email platform built for volume and deliverability, with unlimited email accounts and warmup, a 450M+ B2B lead database and a growing set of AI agents. Its AI Copilot uses your saved business context, ICPs and tone rules to build sequences and campaigns, and WARP Mode runs the whole workflow from finding leads to staging a launch. Copilot Tasks repeat that work on a schedule, such as daily campaign creation or weekly analytics, with updates in Slack.

The AI Reply Agent handles the inbox in two modes. In Human-in-the-Loop mode it drafts each reply for approval, and in Autopilot it answers questions and objections on its own, books meetings through Calendly and escalates unresolved conversations to Slack. Instantly suits teams whose main channel is email at scale, with less depth on account research and CRM integration than platforms built around verified data. Teams can connect it to their own systems through the Instantly API.

Agentic capabilities:

• AI Copilot. Builds sequences and campaigns from your ICP and tone rules, with WARP Mode running the full workflow.

• Copilot Tasks. Scheduled campaign creation, lead finding and reports, with Slack notifications.

• AI Reply Agent. Human-in-the-Loop or Autopilot replies, Calendly booking and Slack escalation.

• AI Web Research and Email Agents. Pull context from company websites and LinkedIn, then write personalized emails from it.

• AI Inbox Manager and Smart Pause. Schedules replies within five minutes and pauses outreach to out-of-office leads until they return.

• Deliverability tools. Unlimited accounts, warmup, inbox placement tests and an AI spam words checker.

Pros:

• Low entry price

• Strong deliverability tooling

• Highest G2 rating on this list

Cons:

• Email-first, with limited multichannel depth

• Lighter CRM integration than enterprise tools

• AI features run on separate Instantly Credits

Best for: Teams and agencies running high-volume cold email.

Pricing: Outreach plans start at $47 a month (Growth), with Hypergrowth at $97 and Light Speed at $358 on monthly billing. AI features use Instantly Credits from $9 a month, and the lead database and CRM are priced separately.

11. Amplemarket

G2 rating: 4.6/5

Amplemarket is an AI sales platform that bundles B2B data, multichannel sequences, a dialer and deliverability tools around one AI copilot, Duo. Duo Copilot watches buying signals across your accounts, models likely buyers from external and CRM data and suggests one-to-one sequences, while Duo Copywriter writes the first touch for each prospect.

For AI SDR work, the most agentic piece is instant autopilot, which enrolls leads into sequences the moment a qualifying signal fires. When prospects answer, Duo Inbox drafts replies from scenarios you define, such as pricing or competitor questions, and a rep reviews each draft before it sends. Our Amplemarket review covers its data and deliverability tools in more depth.

Agentic capabilities:

• Duo Copilot. Signal discovery, buyer modeling and suggested one-to-one sequences.

• Instant autopilot. Enrolls leads into sequences as soon as a qualifying signal fires.

• Duo Copywriter. Tailored first-touch messages for each prospect.

• Duo Inbox. Reply drafts from your scenarios, with sources to check before a rep sends.

• Duo Voice. Voice messages in your own voice at scale.

• Deliverability tools. Domain Health Center, Deliverability Booster, mailbox recommendations and a spam checker.

Pros:

• Data, signals and sequencing in one tool

• Strong deliverability tooling

• Reps keep control over replies

Cons:

• Annual terms on the Startup plan

• Duo Inbox drafts replies, so reps still send each one

• Duo Voice and Duo Inbox sit on higher tiers

Best for: Growth-stage teams that want AI-assisted multichannel outbound in one platform.

Pricing: Startup costs $600 a month on an annual term for two users, with Growth and Elite priced on request. Every plan includes a free trial.

Comparing it directly?

How ZoomInfo Agent Teams Compares to Other AI SDR Tools

Most tools on this list give you one agent that handles one part of the job, such as writing outbound email or answering replies. Agent Teams works differently, as an orchestration layer, the same idea behind revenue action orchestration tools, coordinating a team of specialist agents that hand each other the full story, from research to deal history, with a supervisor agent checking every step against your rules.

Two plays for SDR and BDR work

Inbound Lead Activation (the AI SDR job). A form fill from a qualified buyer starts the play. The Agent Team researches the lead, creates the CRM record, routes it to the right rep and sends a Slack update, so every qualified buyer reaches the right rep with the full picture. In a fuller version of the play, a new lead in Salesforce or HubSpot triggers enrichment, scoring and qualification, then enrollment in the right sequence in Salesloft or Outreach. That goes further than routing a lead, because the goal is converting the buyer.

Outbound Prospecting (the AI BDR job). The Agent Team researches a target account, builds a structured list of the key buying group contacts and writes a complete account brief, so outbound starts from real context.

Teams can deploy either template as-is, customize it in plain language or code, or describe a new play in plain English and let Agent Teams generate the workflow. With 50+ ready-made agents to draw on, teams can be live in a day.

Why adaptive plays beat fixed sequences

A form fill, intent spike, CRM event or job change opens or resumes a play, and plays can also run on a schedule, from webhooks or after completed meetings. Because each play works from the account’s current state, a two-week pause in a deal never resets the plan, which keeps deal progression on track. A fixed sales automation sequence can’t do that, and it’s what lets the same platform run plays well beyond SDR work, from champion tracking and MEDDIC capture after calls to closed-won handoffs, closed-won lookalikes and closed-lost win-backs.

Along the way, agents research accounts, update CRM records, enroll prospects in sequences and send emails and Slack messages. Every step is written back to the CRM, which keeps CRM data enrichment current without manual entry.

Agent Teams is built on technology from DoubleO.ai, now part of ZoomInfo. It’s part of GTM Studio with no new SKU or contract, runs on consumption-based AI Credits and shows a credit estimate before each play is activated. Teams that want to work outside the interface can run plays headless through GTM.AI’s API, CLI and MCP, including from AI assistants such as Claude.

How to Choose AI SDR Software

Your choice depends on your data, your stack and whether you need inbound, outbound or both. These five questions cover the decisions that matter most.

How good is the data underneath? AI SDRs amplify whatever data they run on. Ask how often contacts are re-verified and how the tool handles B2B data decay, then test a sample against your own pipeline. Platforms with verified data avoid the bounced emails and wrong-person outreach that damage domains, and our guide to data enrichment tools covers what to test.

Do you need inbound, outbound or both? If speed to lead matters most, look for an AI SDR that responds to inbound leads in minutes and routes them correctly. If you need new pipeline, prioritize research and buying-group mapping for outbound lead generation.

Is the personalization real? Check whether the AI references company news, intent data and CRM history, or fills in templates, the gap that separates the best generative AI sales tools from the rest. Ask for sample messages written for your own target accounts.

Does it fit your stack? Native integrations for Salesforce data enrichment or HubSpot keep records current, and support for sales engagement platforms such as Salesloft and Outreach means you don’t have to rebuild sequences. Check whether the tool writes its actions back to the CRM.

Can you govern it? You’ll want to see what every agent did, control who can build and run plays and know the cost before anything runs.

AI SDR vs. Human SDR

The most effective teams combine both. AI handles volume and speed, while people handle judgment and relationships.

AI SDRs are strongest at:

• Volume. Researching and reaching thousands of prospects without fatigue.

• Speed. Responding to inbound leads in minutes, at any hour.

• Consistency. Following up on every lead on schedule.

• Signal processing. Spotting intent, job changes and other triggers across many sources.

Human SDRs are still essential for:

• Complex conversations. Nuanced objections and multi-stakeholder deals.

• Relationships. Building trust with senior and strategic buyers.

• Judgment calls. Situations no playbook covers.

Whether your team is in-house or works with outsourced SDR companies, AI SDRs free reps to spend more time on the conversations that close.

Choose an AI SDR That Runs the Whole Play

The right AI SDR depends on which jobs you want an agent to own. Artisan’s Ava and 11x’s Alice suit teams that want an autonomous outbound rep, Reply’s Jason and Apollo’s AI Assistant add agents to the outreach you already run, Clay’s Claygent suits teams with a builder and Instantly suits high-volume cold email. For a broader view, our roundup of AI sales agent platforms covers agents beyond sales development.

Teams that want AI agents to run complete inbound and outbound plays on verified data, inside the tools reps already use, should start with ZoomInfo Agent Teams. Teams building their own AI SDR agents in Claude, ChatGPT or their own stack can reach the same data and plays through GTM.AI.

Meet with a GTM expert to see Agent Teams run an inbound or outbound play on your own accounts.

AI SDR Software FAQ

What is an AI SDR tool?

An AI SDR tool is software that does the work of a sales development rep. It finds and researches prospects, writes and sends personalized outreach, qualifies replies and books meetings, adjusting its approach based on how prospects respond. Some tools sell a single AI rep, while platforms like ZoomInfo Agent Teams coordinate several specialist agents to run a complete play.

What are the best AI SDR tools?

ZoomInfo is the best place to run AI SDR agents, with Agent Teams running complete inbound and outbound plays inside Salesforce or HubSpot on verified B2B data. GTM.AI brings the same data and plays to agents built in Claude, ChatGPT or your own code. Artisan’s Ava and 11x’s Alice suit autonomous outbound, AiSDR suits smaller teams that want published pricing, Clay suits teams with a GTM engineer and Instantly suits high-volume cold email.

Do AI SDRs actually work?

Yes, for research, first touches, follow-up and fast inbound response, where speed and consistency matter most. Results depend on the data underneath, since stale contacts and generic templates lead to bounced emails and low reply rates. Complex enterprise deals still need people.

Is AI replacing SDRs?

Not fully. AI SDRs handle research, first touches, follow-up and qualification at volume, while people handle complex objections, strategic accounts and relationships. Most teams use AI to give each rep more qualified conversations.

How much do AI SDR tools cost?

Apollo and Clay offer free plans, Instantly starts at $47 a month, AiSDR at $250 a month, Reply’s Jason AI SDR at $500 a month and Amplemarket at $600 a month. Agentforce is priced through Flex Credits or per-user add-ons, while Artisan, 11x and Outreach use custom pricing. ZoomInfo offers flexible packages built around your needs, and GTM.AI is free to start, with consumption-based credits.

Which AI SDR tool is best for pricing?

Apollo and Clay have the lowest entry cost with free plans, and Instantly and AiSDR publish plans from $47 and $250 a month. GTM.AI is free to start, with consumption-based credits, and Agent Teams shows each play’s credit cost before it runs.

How quickly do AI SDR tools show results?

Email-first tools need new sending domains to warm up, which AiSDR says takes around 30 days. Platforms that work on your existing data and systems move faster, and ZoomInfo says teams can have Agent Teams running in a day.

What is the difference between an AI SDR and an AI BDR?

An AI BDR focuses on outbound prospecting into new accounts, while an AI SDR traditionally focuses on following up and qualifying inbound leads. Most tools do both. ZoomInfo Agent Teams covers the two jobs with separate templates, Inbound Lead Activation for SDR work and Outbound Prospecting for BDR work.

Can AI SDRs handle inbound leads?

Yes. Several tools on this list handle inbound. ZoomInfo’s Inbound Lead Activation play researches a new lead, creates the CRM record, routes it to the right rep and sends a Slack update, while 11x’s Julian engages inbound leads within 60 seconds and AiSDR follows up on inbound leads by email.

Which CRM integrations matter most for an AI SDR?

Native, two-way sync with your CRM, usually Salesforce or HubSpot, so data stays current and every AI action is logged. If reps already use Salesloft or Outreach, check that the AI SDR can enroll prospects into your existing sequences.

What is the best AI SDR tool for qualifying leads and booking meetings?

Look for one that responds in minutes, researches the lead, routes it and books the meeting. ZoomInfo’s Inbound Lead Activation play researches each lead, creates the CRM record and routes it to the right rep, 11x’s Julian qualifies and books by phone and AiSDR follows up on inbound leads by email and LinkedIn.

What is GTM.AI?

GTM.AI is the headless layer for ZoomInfo’s agentic capabilities. It’s ZoomInfo’s API, CLI and MCP server, so agents built in Claude, ChatGPT or your own code can connect to verified B2B intelligence and run Agent Teams plays headless, from wherever your team already works. GTM.AI is free to start, with consumption-based credits.

What is ZoomInfo Agent Teams?

Agent Teams is ZoomInfo’s multi-agent product for running complete GTM plays, from signal detection and qualification through enrichment, routing, outreach and CRM updates. It runs in GTM Studio with no new SKU, or headless through GTM.AI, on consumption-based AI Credits.