Outsourced SDR Cost in 2026: Retainers, Per-Meeting Rates and the Real Price of a Booked Meeting

Managed outsourced SDR teams: $4,000 to $18,000 a month, with the mainstream at $5,000 to $10,000 for a dedicated rep plus management, tooling and data. Terms of three to twelve months are standard; setup or onboarding fees of $1,000 to $5,000 are common. Published examples: SalesHive lists US-based programs around $7,000 to $12,000 a month and offshore from about $4,500. Full vendor-by-vendor detail is in SDR as a Service Pricing.

Offshore and nearshore SDR seats: $2,000 to $4,500 a month for a full-time trained rep in the Philippines, Latin America or Eastern Europe, managed by you. HireSDRs publishes $1,999 a month for a full-time remote rep. Tooling, data and your manager's time are extra, and they are not small.

Appointment-setting agencies: $150 to $600 per booked appointment for mid-market, $800 to $1,500 for enterprise titles, frequently with a monthly minimum of ten to twenty appointments or a retainer floor of $2,000 to $5,000. Hybrid pricing, a lower retainer of $3,000 to $8,000 plus $100 to $300 per appointment, is increasingly common.

Pay-per-meeting marketplaces: a bounty per qualified held meeting, set by you, plus a subscription. On Bountii the subscription is $199 a month for ten target accounts or $499 for thirty, bounties start at $200, and most companies set them between $300 and $1,500 based on what a meeting is worth to them. Nothing is paid for a meeting that does not happen or does not pass review.

Tooling and data. A managed team usually bundles these; an offshore seat rarely does. Sequencer, dialer, data provider, email infrastructure and deliverability tooling for one rep runs $500 to $1,200 a month. Domains and warm-up, if the provider sends from your brand, add setup time and reputational risk that does not appear on any invoice until a domain is burned.

Management time. An offshore rep needs a manager. If a sales leader earning $180,000 spends four hours a week on that rep, that is roughly $1,500 a month of cost that the $1,999 seat price does not include. Managed teams charge for this in the retainer; the question is whether the manager is any good, and whether they are managing eight other clients' reps at the same time.

Ramp and minimum terms. A managed program typically takes four to eight weeks to produce its first meetings while lists are built and domains warm. On a $7,500 retainer with a six-month minimum, that is $7,500 to $15,000 paid before the first result, and the exit terms decide whether a bad fit costs you one month or six.

Take everything you pay in a month (retainer or seat fee, plus tooling, plus management time, plus any per-meeting fees) and divide by the number of meetings that were held and passed your qualification criteria. Not booked; held and qualified. A meeting the prospect skipped, or that the AE ended after ten minutes because the person had no budget and no authority, has a cost but no value.

Worked example, managed team: $7,500 retainer, tooling included, negligible management time, twelve meetings booked, nine held, seven qualified. Cost per qualified held meeting: $1,071. Same team in a slow month with five booked, three held, two qualified: $3,750. Worked example, offshore seat: $1,999 seat, $800 tooling, $1,500 management time, ten booked, seven held, five qualified: $860. Worked example, agency at $400 per booked appointment with a fifteen-appointment minimum: $6,000, of which eleven held and seven qualified: $857, and the four no-shows are still on the invoice unless the contract says otherwise.

Worked example, marketplace: $499 subscription, bounties set at $600, six qualified held meetings in the month. Cost: $3,600 plus $499, or $683 per qualified held meeting. In a month with zero meetings: $499, and nothing else. That last line is the structural difference between paying for activity and paying for outcomes, and it is why the ranges only tell half the story.

Every model above is cheap or expensive only relative to what a held meeting is worth to your business. Work it backwards: average contract value, multiplied by the share of first meetings that become opportunities, multiplied by the share of opportunities that close, gives the expected revenue of one meeting. Most B2B companies land between $300 and $1,500. If your number is $400, a managed retainer that produces qualified meetings at $1,071 is losing money on every one; if your number is $4,000 because you sell six-figure contracts, all four models are fine and the decision is about fit and speed rather than price.

This is also why the same vendor can be a bargain for one client and a disaster for another. Ask any provider for their median meetings per month for clients in your segment, run it through the formula with your own conversion rates, and you will know before signing whether the outsourced SDR can pay back. The CFO version of this calculation, with a downloadable model, is in The CFO Business Case and ROI Model.

Four levers move the effective price more than haggling on the retainer. First, pay for held rather than booked: insist that no-shows are replaced or not charged. Second, define qualified in writing and attach a rejection process; a rejected meeting should not count toward a minimum. Third, shorten the minimum term in exchange for a slightly higher monthly rate, because the real risk is six months of a bad fit, not a ten percent premium. Fourth, cap the zero-meeting month: some providers will agree to a reduced fee or a credit if output falls below a floor, and the ones that will not have told you something.

If you would rather price the meeting than the activity, Bountii lets you set the number yourself. You choose the bounty per qualified meeting for each target account, the money is held until the meeting has taken place and passed your 48-hour review, and the subscription is the only fixed cost. Companies can book a demo now to see what bounties on their target list would look like.