Woodpecker vs lemlist vs Instantly vs Mailshake

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

Compared on	Woodpecker Free trial · from $23.33/mo VisitRemove	lemlist Free trial · from $55/mo VisitRemove	Instantly Free trial · from $37.60/mo VisitRemove	Mailshake From $25/user/mo VisitRemove
What it is	Cold email and LinkedIn outreach priced by prospects contacted, with unlimited mailboxes and team members	Multichannel outreach across email, LinkedIn, calls and WhatsApp, with an email-only plan priced by volume	Cold email platform with unlimited sending accounts and warmup, priced by emails sent and contacts uploaded	Cold email and phone outreach with an AI email writer, billed per user with set sending addresses per plan
Free plan	No	No	No	No
Cheapest paid plan	$23.33/mo billed annually (500 contacted prospects)Woodpecker pricing	$55/mo billed annually (Email)lemlist pricing	$37.60/mo billed annually (Growth)Instantly pricing	$25/user/mo billed annually (Starter)Mailshake pricing
What it covers	500 prospects contacted a month, 8,000 emails, 2,000 stored prospects, 2 free warm-ups, 100 Lead Finder credits, unlimited email accounts and team members; $280 a year on annual billing. Prices exclude VAT.	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.	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.	1 sending email address, 1,500 email sends a month, unlimited uploaded contacts, unlimited warm-up and email verification, 50 data finder credits. No free trial.
Free trial	14-day free trial or 100 cold emails, whichever comes first, with all features and no card needed	14-day free trial with Multichannel features (except in-app calls) and 200 credits	14-day free trial, no card needed, with 250 uploaded contacts and 1,000 emails	None stated
Platforms	Web, API, CLI	Web, Chrome extension, API, CLI	Web, API	Web, Browser extension, API
Integrations (vendor's figure)	Native Pipedrive and HubSpot two-way sync, Clay, Calendly, Zapier, Google Sheets and Claude, plus API, webhooks, MCP and CLI	58 integrations across 8 categories, including HubSpot, Salesforce, Pipedrive, Zapier, Make, n8n and Clay	Not stated	Salesforce, Pipedrive and HubSpot, plus 1,000+ integrations via Zapier
Open source	No	No	No	No
Good for	Small teams that want to pay only for the prospects they contact Agencies managing client campaigns from one panel Adding LinkedIn steps to cold email campaigns	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	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	Small teams starting cold email at a low per-user price Reps who want email and phone calls in one sequence Writing cold email copy with AI
Watch out for	Integrations, API, webhooks and MCP are a $20 a month add-on Once the contacted-prospects limit is reached, campaigns stop emailing new prospects until you upgrade or the limit renews A prospect added to 5 campaigns counts as 5 contacted prospects	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	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	Starter allows 1 sending address and 1,500 email sends a month No free trial; payment is collected up front Email rotation, the unified inbox and CRM integrations start on Email Outreach
Made by	Woodpecker AI sp. z o.o.	lempire SAS	Foo Monk, LLC	Mailshake, LLC

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.