6 Best AI Sales Employees (and When a Human Still Closes)

This list is for a founder or small team that wants an AI to do the repeat work of an outbound sales rep: find the people, write the first message, chase the follow-up, and read the replies. The criteria are three. Does it keep working on a weekday morning without anyone opening it? Can you see why it picked each person? And who presses send? I read each product's live pages, priced the plans on the day of writing, and looked at the free route where one exists.

Updated November 2026. Prices below are as of November 2026.

What counts as an AI sales employee?

A lot of products get called AI SDRs. Some of them write a decent cold email when you ask. That is a writing tool. An AI sales employee has a job: it owns a list, a cadence and a reply inbox, and it shows up on a schedule whether or not you remember it exists.

I use the schedule test. Does the follow-up that was due on Thursday go out on Thursday, or get drafted for approval on Thursday, without you prompting anything? If you have to open a chat window to start the work, it is an assistant. If the work is waiting for you with the reasoning attached, it is closer to an employee.

There is a second question that matters more for sales than for any other role: who sends? A bad email from a support agent costs you one unhappy customer. A bad email from a sales agent goes to hundreds of strangers under your name and your domain. I will come back to that near the end.

1. 11x: the hosted SDR for teams that want it handled

Model: Hosted, sold through a demo.

Starts at: No public price. The site sends you to book a demo.

Free tier: None that I could find.

Best for: A revenue team with budget that wants outbound, inbound and voice agents run for them.

11x sells digital workers for revenue teams, with voice, email, social and text agents, plus a set of plays such as speed to lead, lead reactivation and meeting scheduling. It is the most complete hosted answer on this list for a company that wants to hand the whole motion to a vendor.

The strength is coverage. Voice agents that answer inbound leads, and outbound sequences, in one product. The limit is that you cannot see the price or try it before talking to a sales team, and everything lives in the vendor's platform, so you do not end up with files you own. For a founder doing their first hundred conversations, a demo-gated platform is usually more than the job needs.

2. AI Employees Sales Employee: the outbound desk that drafts and leaves the sending to you

Model: Self-hosted, open source, runs in a desktop agent app such as the Claude desktop app's Code tab.

Starts at: Nothing beyond the agent plan you already pay for.

Free tier: The whole repository is free under the MIT license.

Best for: A founder who wants a reasoned prospect list and unsent drafts they can read, and who is happy to be the one who presses send.

The Sales Employee is one of eight scheduled roles in the AI Employees repository. It runs seven routines on your own machine. A weekday sweep reads the sources you named and scores each person against three to six qualification tests, and every row carries the exact words on the page that qualified it, with the URL and the date. It drafts the first message for people who have never been written to, reads replies before anything else, drafts the follow-up when one is due, and on Friday tells you which of your qualification rules is actually selecting the people who answer.

I put it second, not first, and I want to give the reason plainly. A hosted SDR that actually sends will out-run it. Ours ships with every channel held: each message becomes text in a queue file and an unsent draft in your own mailbox, and a person sends it. That is the design, not a gap. If you want volume with no human in the loop, the tools around it are the better pick. If you want a list you can defend, drafts in your voice and no surprise sends, this is the one to start with. The role page on the club site lists all seven routines.

Cost is a measured share of an agent seat, not a separate subscription.

3. Artisan: Ava, the hosted AI BDR

Model: Hosted.

Starts at: Pricing is scoped to your plan. The page lists a Team tier for roughly 2,500 leads contacted a month and a Scale tier for roughly 6,000, both with a talk-to-sales button instead of a number.

Free tier: None that I found. You ask for a demo.

Best for: A sales team that wants a database, sequencing and an AI BDR in one platform.

Artisan built Ava, an AI BDR that finds leads, runs email and social campaigns, books meetings and queues calls for your reps. The page says it can sit beside your existing stack or replace it, and it syncs with the common CRMs. It also offers a dialer add-on priced per seat.

The strength is that it bundles the data with the outreach, so you are not stitching together a lead source, an enrichment tool and a sender. The limit is the pricing model. Plans are sized to lead volume, mailboxes and dialer seats, and no number is published, so you cannot budget before a sales call. Expect to learn the price from a person.

4. Teammates: Adam, the sales teammate with a public price

Model: Hosted.

Starts at: A free plan, then Pro at $25 a month with 50 credits, Business at $50 a month with 100 credits and Scale at $100 a month with 200 credits. Extra credits are $50 per 100.

Free tier: Yes, a free plan with no card required.

Best for: A small team that wants a priced, cheap way to test an AI sales teammate before committing.

Teammates deploys three AI teammates that share memory across the business: Raya for customer service, Adam for sales and Sara for recruiting. The pricing is credit based, and the Pro plan quotes about 500 replies a month.

The strength is the open price list and the free start. You can test Adam on real conversations for nothing. The limit is that credits meter the work, so a busy month costs more than the plan price, and Adam is one third of a product that is also trying to be a support and recruiting tool. Read what a credit buys before you size a plan.

5. Lindy: build your own sales agent on hosted rails

Model: Hosted.

Starts at: The free plan gives $50 in credits that last 7 days. The Team plan is $49.99 a month for 5,000 credits, with larger steps up to hundreds of dollars a month. Extra credits are $10 per 1,000.

Free tier: Yes, the 7-day credit allowance, no card required.

Best for: A team that wants to assemble its own lead-research-and-follow-up flow without running anything itself.

Lindy is a general agent builder, so a sales agent is something you assemble: a lead watcher, a reply classifier, a follow-up drafter. It is Slack native, lets you pick the model per task and bills every active user in the workspace.

The strength is flexibility with no infrastructure. You can have a working flow in an afternoon. The limit is that credits move with usage, every seat is billed, and the agents live inside the vendor's platform, so the reasoning behind a lead and the history of a campaign stay there. It also does not hand you a ready-made qualification system. You design that yourself.

6. CellCog: hire by role and pay for the work

Model: Hosted.

Starts at: No subscription needed. Top-ups start at $10 for credits that last 12 months, at roughly 90 credits per dollar. Monthly plans give about 11 percent more credits per dollar.

Free tier: The page offers a free try, no card.

Best for: Someone who wants to hire a sales outreach role by the task and not sign up for a seat.

CellCog lets you hire AI employees by role, and the roles on its page include a sales outreach lead, an AI SDR and a cold outreach rep. You pay credits for the work, so a quiet month costs little.

The strength is the pay-as-you-go shape, which fits a founder who is not sure outbound is worth a subscription yet. The limit is that credit use is hard to predict until you have run a few real jobs, and like the other hosted tools, the data and history stay on the vendor's side. I would not point it at a list of strangers without reading each draft first.

When does a human still close?

Every tool above can find a lead and write a message. None of them should be the one to close a deal. A reply that asks about price, pushes back on scope or asks for a call is a decision that belongs to the person whose name is on the business. Sales agents are best at the part before that: the sourcing, the first touch, the chase that people forget on Thursday.

So the practical rule I use is simple. The agent drafts and tracks. A person sends the first message to anyone who has not heard from you. A person answers every reply that is not a plain yes or no. A person handles any pricing or contract talk. If you want to loosen that over time, do it channel by channel after the drafts have earned it, and keep a record of what was sent.

Bulk outbound also carries legal weight. The FTC's CAN-SPAM compliance guide for business spells out what a commercial email must include, and it applies to messages an agent writes the same way it applies to ones you write. If you let an agent send, read it before it does.

How I picked

I picked these as I would pick them for my own business. I read each live product page, priced the plans on the day of writing, and looked at the free route where one existed. I left out anything I could not price or reach, and anything that was a cold email writer with an agent label on it. Six entries I can stand behind beat a padded seven.

Which AI sales employee should you start with?

If you want zero setup and you have a budget, look at 11x or Artisan, and expect a demo call. If you want a public price and a free start, try Teammates or Lindy. If you want a prospect list you can defend, drafts in your own mailbox and files you own, start with the Sales Employee.

Whatever you pick, write down what the role owns and where it stops before you give it access. A one-page job description does that, and a follow-up process where the agent reads the reply first shows the order of work. Put an approval step in front of anything that leaves your machine, and know how to stop a scheduled agent before you need to. For the other roles, the roundup of the best AI employees covers the field, and what AI employees cost prices it.

I walk through how the roles fit together in the Hire Your First AI Employee session, and the full replay is available instantly.

Frequently asked questions

What is an AI sales employee?

It is an agent with a standing sales job: it owns a prospect list, a follow-up cadence and a reply inbox, and works on a schedule without being prompted. The difference from a cold email writer is that it keeps going after the first message.

Can an AI sales employee replace an SDR?

It can do the repeat parts of the job, such as sourcing, first-touch drafts and follow-up. It should not replace the judgment on replies, pricing or fit. Most small teams get more from an agent that handles the routine work and leaves the conversations to a person.

Should an AI agent send cold emails on its own?

I would not start there. Let it draft into your own mailbox for the first few weeks, read what it writes, and release sending only for the channels whose drafts have earned it. One bad run under your name and domain costs more than the time you save.

How much does an AI sales employee cost?

Public prices on this list run from a free start to about $50 a month for a hosted plan, with larger credit tiers above that. Some vendors publish no price at all and sell through a demo. The open source route costs nothing beyond the agent plan you already pay for.

Run a Sales Employee on your own list

If you want the Sales Employee and the other seven roles as files you own, the Agent Ops Club has a free plan and walks you through setting them up. Start with the free plan and read the role page first.