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

AiSDR vs Artisan vs 11x is the comparison nearly every 'best AI SDR' list ends up making, because these three are the closest thing the 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 aren't interchangeable, though. 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. It has published pricing and an online signup, which suits smaller teams that want to see the cost before committing. Artisan is the most polished full-stack product. It's 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, and priced like it: roughly $50,000 to $60,000 for a first year, per third-party reports. It suits 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 option you can buy online

As of November 2026, AiSDR's pricing page lists pay as you go at $1.50 per person prospected, charged daily, with no contract and the option to cancel anytime. Teams that contact more than 1,000 people a month move to Team plans, priced on volume through a sales call and billed monthly on quarterly contracts (source: AiSDR's pricing page). In October 2026 this replaced the fixed Solo, Explore and Scale tiers AiSDR used to publish. You can still work out what a small test costs before talking to anyone, which is rare in this category.

The catch is volume. Pay as you go has no upfront commitment, but you pay for every person prospected, so 1,000 people cost $1,500 before anyone replies. Past that volume, the Team plans bring back a quarterly contract, and you only see that price after a sales call.

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

Artisan's AI SDR, Ava, runs research, writing, and sending inside one dashboard. 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. Third-party estimates put real deployments at around $2,000/month to start on the Accelerate tier, 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 couldn't independently verify Artisan's marketed cost-per-meeting claims. Don't take them at face value either: ask for references from a company in your industry and size range. The product polish stands out. Watch for 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. As of October 2026, 11x's Alice pricing page lists the Growth plan from $3,750/month, billed annually, with Pro and Enterprise quote-only. The same page's FAQ gives $36,000/year for Growth, which doesn't match, so get the number in writing. Third-party 2026 reports converge on a starting cost closer to $5,000/month with a 12-month commitment. Implementation fees often exceed $3,000, and total first-year spend lands around $50,000 to $60,000 (source: Breakout's 2026 11x pricing breakdown and MarketBetter's 11x pricing analysis).

That's comparable to, or more than, a junior SDR's base salary before benefits. For better or worse, 11x commits fully to the headcount-replacement framing. Watch the 12-month lock-in. It's a long term on a tool this expensive, before you know whether it will perform for your specific ICP.

Comparison table

Why does none of them book a meeting by itself?

All three tools automate the mechanics of outbound: finding a contact, drafting a message, sending it on schedule. None automates the three things that decide whether outbound produces meetings. The first is list quality. An AI that writes a personalized-sounding email to the wrong person at the wrong company still fails, however good the copy. The second is deliverability. A well-written sequence lands in spam if the sending infrastructure was never warmed up properly, and then nobody reads it.

The third is reply handling. A prospect who responds with a real question needs a fast, specific answer. For anything beyond a scheduling link, every vendor here still leans on a human to review or write that response. AI SDR tools are good at removing repetitive typing. On the public evidence, they're not good at removing the judgment calls.

Does a bigger price tag mean better results?

Not automatically, and vendor marketing tends to skip this part. 11x costs many times what a small AiSDR test costs. That gap reflects positioning (11x wants to replace a full SDR line item) more than 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.

What predicts results across all three tools is the one thing 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 won't need to touch it (11x). If you don't, the expensive tool does not manufacture them.

What all three leave to your team

Each of these platforms hands you a dashboard and expects your team to steer it. Someone has to check reply quality, tune the ICP filter, and watch deliverability metrics week over week. That's a real, ongoing job, separate from the software subscription. For when that tradeoff makes sense, and 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.

We built mkdir's done-for-you outbound, run on our own platform, kriyo, for the team that has looked at AiSDR, Artisan, and 11x and doesn't want to steer any of them. We build inside whichever CRM and sequencer you already run. We handle the ICP definition, message quality, deliverability, and replies: AI drafts each one within the hour, and a person approves it before it goes out. It starts with a free audit of your market. The price depends on your industry and how many relevant decision makers are in it, and if the buyers aren't there, you pay nothing. 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: as of November 2026 it charges $1.50 per person prospected on pay as you go, and quotes Team plans for higher volume. 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. Third-party reports put its typical first-year cost around $50,000 to $60,000.

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

Not reliably, going by public reviews and vendor documentation. All three still need a person to set the ICP, review message quality, and monitor deliverability. Their own vendors don't market any of them 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. A small team testing whether AI-run outbound works for its ICP is a different buyer. 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. A team runs the whole motion inside your existing tools, so you don't run any of these platforms yourself. See how mkdir's done-for-you outbound works.

Methodology and disclosure

mkdir is our own service, and it appears in the comparison table above as the managed alternative. Every pricing and feature claim about AiSDR, Artisan, and 11x comes from public vendor pricing pages and dated third-party pricing breakdowns. We haven't run paid trials of AiSDR, Artisan, or 11x. Any figure we couldn't 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)
• AiSDR: pricing page, checked November 2026 (aisdr.com/pricing)
• AiSDR pricing change, October 2026 (usagepricing.com/blueprint/aisdr)
• 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)
• 11x: Alice pricing, checked October 2026 (11x.ai/products/alice/pricing)