AiSDR vs Artisan vs 11x: Which AI SDR Actually Books Meetings?

AiSDR, Artisan, and 11x show up in nearly every 'best AI SDR' list, and they get compared to each other constantly because they are the closest thing this category has to direct competitors: all three research leads, write messages, send sequences, and market themselves as a replacement for at least part of an SDR's job. They are not, however, interchangeable. Each one is built around a different bet on what matters most in AI-run outbound.

The short answer

AiSDR is the most transparent and accessible of the three, with published pricing and a self-serve signup, best for smaller teams that want to see the real cost before committing. Artisan is the most polished full-stack product, marketed hardest on replacing an SDR's entire workload, and priced at a sales-led enterprise tier to match. 11x is the most explicitly built to replace headcount, priced like it (roughly $50,000 to $60,000 for a first year, per third-party reports), and best suited to mid-market and enterprise teams with the budget and internal bandwidth to manage it like a new hire. None of the three books a meeting without a person setting the strategy, watching quality, and staying on top of deliverability.

AiSDR: the transparent, self-serve option

AiSDR publishes three tiers as of July 2026: Solo at $250/month, Explore at $900/month, and Scale at $2,500/month, all billed quarterly with a 20% discount available on annual terms (source: Landbase's AiSDR pricing breakdown and G2's AiSDR pricing page). Pricing is based on message volume across email and LinkedIn rather than seats, so unlimited users can share a plan. What stands out is that you can actually calculate your cost before talking to anyone, rare in this category. The catch is the quarterly commitment: the Explore tier requires $2,700 upfront before a single meeting is booked, and the entry Solo tier is capped at just 200 AI-researched contacts a month, thin volume for a team that wants to see real pipeline impact quickly.

Artisan (Ava): the full-stack, sales-led product

Artisan's AI SDR, Ava, runs research, writing, and sending inside one dashboard, and the company leans hard on marketing around cost-per-meeting versus a human BDR. Pricing is sales-led and harder to pin down: a published Employee plan lists at $600/month billed annually, while third-party estimates put real deployments starting around $2,000/month on the Accelerate tier and scaling to $5,000+/month on higher tiers (source: 11x's own Artisan pricing guide and Landbase's Artisan AI pricing breakdown, both 2026). We could not independently verify Artisan's marketed cost-per-meeting claims, and neither should you take them at face value without asking for references from a company in your industry and size range. What stands out is genuine product polish. What to watch for is a pricing conversation that starts well above the published headline number.

11x (Alice): priced and built like a new hire

11x is the most direct about its positioning: Alice is marketed as a 'digital worker,' not a productivity tool layered on top of a human's job. 11x's own site lists Alice starting at $36,000/year on the Growth plan, with Pro and Enterprise quote-only. Third-party 2026 reports converge on a real starting cost closer to $5,000/month with a 12-month commitment, implementation fees often exceeding $3,000, and total first-year spend landing around $50,000 to $60,000 (source: Breakout's 2026 11x pricing breakdown and MarketBetter's 11x pricing analysis). That is genuinely comparable to, or more than, a junior SDR's base salary before benefits. What stands out is that 11x commits fully to the headcount-replacement framing, for better or worse. What to watch for is the 12-month lock-in on a tool this expensive, before you know if it will actually perform for your specific ICP.

Comparison table

Why does none of them book a meeting by itself?

Every one of these three tools automates the mechanics of outbound: finding a contact, drafting a message, sending it on schedule. None of them automates the three things that actually determine whether outbound generates meetings. First, list quality: an AI writing a personalized-sounding email to the wrong person at the wrong company still fails, no matter how good the copy is. Second, deliverability: a beautifully written sequence that lands in spam because sending infrastructure was never warmed up properly never gets read. Third, reply handling: a prospect who responds with a real question needs an answer fast and specific, and every vendor here still leans on a human reviewing or writing that response for anything beyond a scheduling link. AI SDR tools are honestly good at removing repetitive typing. They are not, on the public evidence, good at removing the judgment calls.

Does a bigger price tag mean better results?

Not automatically, and this is the part vendor marketing tends to skip. 11x costs roughly ten to twenty times what AiSDR's entry tier costs, but that price difference reflects positioning (11x wants to replace a full SDR line item) more than it reflects a guaranteed difference in booked meetings for your specific ICP. A well-run AiSDR account with a tight ICP and careful messaging can outperform a poorly configured 11x deployment, and the reverse is just as true. The variable that actually predicts results across all three tools is the same one none of them sell: someone with the time and judgment to configure the ICP correctly, watch message quality, and fix what breaks. If you already have that person in-house, the cheaper tool with more manual control (AiSDR) may serve you better than the expensive one that assumes you will not need to touch it (11x). If you do not have that person, the expensive tool does not manufacture them.

The part all three leave on the table

Every one of these platforms hands you a dashboard and expects your team to be the one steering it, checking reply quality, tuning the ICP filter, and watching deliverability metrics week over week. That is a real, ongoing job, and it is separate from the software subscription itself. For a deeper look at when that tradeoff makes sense versus when a fully custom or fully managed approach wins, see our comparison of custom AI agents vs off-the-shelf tools and our breakdown on GTM experts vs off-the-shelf tools.

mkdir's Managed Outbound Engine is built specifically for the team that has looked at AiSDR, Artisan, and 11x and does not want to be the one steering any of them. We build inside whichever CRM and sequencer you already run, and our team, not an AI dashboard alone, handles the ICP definition, message quality, deliverability, and reply drafting, with AI-assisted replies reviewed and sent within the hour. Pricing is a fixed project price agreed after a one-week paid audit, not a monthly tier tied to message volume. For a full cost comparison across AI SDR software, a human hire, and a managed service, see AI SDR vs human SDR vs managed outbound: the real cost comparison.

Frequently asked questions

Which is cheaper, AiSDR, Artisan, or 11x?

AiSDR is the cheapest and most transparent of the three, with published tiers starting at $250/month as of July 2026. Artisan's published entry price is $600/month but real deployments reportedly start closer to $2,000/month. 11x is the most expensive by a wide margin, with typical first-year cost around $50,000 to $60,000 according to third-party reports.

Can any of these tools run without a person managing them?

Not reliably, based on public reviews and vendor documentation. All three still require a person to set the ICP, review message quality, and monitor deliverability. None of them are marketed by their own vendors as fully autonomous, set-and-forget systems.

Is 11x worth it over Artisan or AiSDR for a small team?

Probably not. 11x's pricing and 12-month commitment are built for teams with the budget and structure to treat it like a new headcount line, not for a small team testing whether AI-run outbound works for their ICP. AiSDR's lower commitment or a managed service is a lower-risk starting point.

What is the alternative if none of these three feel like the right fit?

A managed outbound service, where a human team runs the whole motion inside your existing tools for a fixed price, is the alternative to running any of these platforms yourself. See how mkdir's Managed Outbound Engine works.

Methodology and disclosure

mkdir is our own service and appears in the comparison table above as the managed alternative. All pricing and feature claims about AiSDR, Artisan, and 11x are drawn from public vendor pricing pages and dated third-party pricing breakdowns, not paid trials. We have not run paid trials of AiSDR, Artisan, or 11x, and any figure we could not verify on a vendor's own page is marked as a third-party estimate with its source. This is not a paid or sponsored comparison.

Sources

• >AiSDR Pricing 2026: Plans and Costs Breakdown (landbase.com/blog/aisdr-pricing)
• >AiSDR Pricing 2026, G2 (g2.com/products/aisdr-inc-aisdr/pricing)
• >Artisan Pricing 2026: Real Cost, Plans, and Hidden Fees Explained (11x.ai/guides/artisan-pricing)
• >Artisan AI Pricing 2026: Plans and Costs Breakdown (landbase.com/blog/artisan-ai-pricing)
• >11x Pricing In 2026: What Does Alice The AI SDR Really Cost? (getbreakout.ai/blog/11x-pricing-ai-sdr-cost-2026)
• >11x AI Pricing 2026: Real Cost of Alice (marketbetter.ai/blog/11x-ai-pricing-2026)