Smartlead vs Instantly vs lemlist

Written head to head: Instantly vs Smartlead · Instantly vs lemlist, with when to choose each side.

Compared on	Smartlead Free trial · from $32.50/mo VisitRemove	Instantly Free trial · from $37.60/mo VisitRemove	lemlist Free trial · from $55/mo VisitRemove
What it is	Cold email platform with unlimited mailboxes and warmup, priced by sends and stored contacts, not seats	Cold email platform with unlimited sending accounts and warmup, priced by emails sent and contacts uploaded	Multichannel outreach across email, LinkedIn, calls and WhatsApp, with an email-only plan priced by volume
Free plan	No	No	No
Cheapest paid plan	$32.50/mo billed annually (Base)Smartlead pricing	$37.60/mo billed annually (Growth)Instantly pricing	$55/mo billed annually (Email)lemlist pricing
What it covers	2,000 stored contacts, 6,000 email sends and 2,000 verified prospect emails a month, unlimited email accounts; $390 a year on annual billing. No CRM, API or webhooks on Base.	Outreach plan: 5,000 emails a month, 1,000 uploaded contacts, unlimited email accounts and warmup. Lead data and AI agents need a separate Instantly Credits plan; the cheapest, Nano, is $9 a month for 150 credits.	50,000 emails a month with unlimited users and email senders; $62 a month on quarterly billing. Higher volumes cost $89 (100,000), $159 (200,000), $359 (500,000) and $659 (1,000,000) a month on monthly billing.
Free trial	Free trial on every plan, no card needed; length not stated	14-day free trial, no card needed, with 250 uploaded contacts and 1,000 emails	14-day free trial with Multichannel features (except in-app calls) and 200 credits
Platforms	Web, API	Web, API	Web, Chrome extension, API, CLI
Integrations (vendor's figure)	Native connections with Clay, HubSpot, Zapier, Slack, Salesforce and 18+ more	Not stated	58 integrations across 8 categories, including HubSpot, Salesforce, Pipedrive, Zapier, Make, n8n and Clay
Open source	No	No	No
Good for	Agencies sending high volumes across many mailboxes Running client campaigns in separate whitelabel workspaces Scaling sends without per-seat or per-mailbox fees	Sending cold email from many mailboxes without per-inbox fees Agencies running high-volume campaigns for several clients Finding leads and writing sequences with AI in the same tool that sends them	Running email and LinkedIn outreach in one sequence Teams that want unlimited users on an email-only plan Building campaigns from a written brief with an AI agent
Watch out for	Base has no CRM, API or webhooks and caps stored contacts at 2,000 Verified prospect emails cost $59 a month extra on Base and Pro Dedicated servers and client workspaces are paid add-ons below Unlimited Prime	Growth caps sending at 5,000 emails and 1,000 uploaded contacts a month; going over a plan's volume means upgrading, not paying overage Lead data and AI agents need a separate Instantly Credits subscription Webhooks and full in-app Unibox replies start on Hypergrowth	LinkedIn, SMS, calling and the Gmail and LinkedIn extensions are only on the per-user Multichannel plan Lead finding and intent signals use credits sold as separate add-ons WhatsApp steps cost an extra $20 per user a month
Made by	521 Products Pty Ltd	Foo Monk, LLC	lempire SAS

Entry prices are the cheapest paid plan, as each vendor publishes it; “What it covers” says what that price is per (a user, a channel, a brand, a number of contacts). The sources are listed on each tool's page.

Every tool in cold email and sales outreach tools is on its category page, with the written head-to-heads on Compare.