Instantly Pricing: The Complete Breakdown (What It Actually Costs)
Instantly.ai has become one of the go-to cold email platforms for sales teams and agencies. But their pricing structure? It's not as straightforward as you'd hope.
Here's the deal: Instantly splits their product into three separate pricing categories—Outreach (sending and warmup), Leads (their SuperSearch database), and CRM. You can mix and match, but that also means costs can stack up fast if you need the full package.
Let me break down exactly what you're looking at.
Instantly Pricing Overview
Instantly offers three core product lines, each with their own pricing tiers:
- Sending & Warmup: Starting at $37/month
- Leads (SuperSearch): Starting at $47/month
- CRM: Starting at $47/month
All plans offer a 20% discount when billed annually. They also have a 14-day free trial so you can test things out before committing.
Sending & Warmup Plans (Email Outreach)
This is the core product most people come to Instantly for—sending cold emails at scale with built-in warmup.
Growth Plan - $37/month ($30/month annual)
The entry-level plan includes:
- Unlimited email accounts
- Unlimited email warmup
- 1,000 uploaded contacts
- 5,000 emails per month
- Basic chat support
The unlimited email accounts and warmup on the cheapest plan is genuinely impressive—most competitors charge per seat. But here's the catch: 1,000 contacts and 5,000 emails is pretty limiting. You'll outgrow this quickly if your campaigns gain traction.
What you don't get: Unibox (centralized inbox), team collaboration, A/B testing, API/webhook integrations, or the global block list.
Hypergrowth Plan - $97/month ($77.6/month annual)
This is where most serious users land:
- Everything in Growth
- 25,000 uploaded contacts
- 100,000 emails per month
- Unibox (centralized reply management)
- Team member invites
- A/B testing
- API, webhooks, and integrations
- Global block list
- Premium live support
The jump from Growth to Hypergrowth is significant—you get 25x the contacts and 20x the email volume. If you're doing any meaningful cold outreach, this is probably your starting point, not Growth.
Light Speed Plan - $358/month ($286.3/month annual)
For high-volume operations:
- Everything in Hypergrowth
- 100,000 uploaded contacts
- 500,000 emails per month
- SISR (Server and IP Sharding and Rotation)
- Private IP pools
The Light Speed plan adds dedicated deliverability infrastructure. If you're sending hundreds of thousands of emails monthly, the SISR feature helps maintain inbox placement at high throughput. But at $358/month just for sending, you need to have a proven outreach model to justify this.
Leads Plans (SuperSearch Database)
Instantly's B2B lead database claims over 450 million contacts with verification and enrichment. These plans use a credit-based system.
Growth Leads - $47/month ($42.3/month annual)
- 1,000 verified leads monthly
- Advanced filtering (job title, industry, location, tech stack)
- Keyword and lookalike domain search
- AI email writer
- Export to CRMs and outreach tools
Supersonic Leads - $97/month ($87.3/month annual)
- 5,000 credits monthly
- Everything in Growth Leads
Hyperleads - $197/month
- 10,000 credits monthly
- Everything in Supersonic
Light Speed Leads - $492/month
- 25,000 verified leads monthly
- All features included
The credit system works like this: 1 credit for Instantly-verified emails, 2+ credits for partner-sourced emails, and 0.5 credits for AI enrichment. So plan on roughly 1.5 credits per verified contact on average.
One frustrating limitation: unused credits don't roll over to the next month.
CRM Plans
Instantly recently launched CRM functionality to complement their outreach and lead tools.
Growth CRM - $47/month ($37.9/month annual)
- Unlimited seats
- Master inbox
- Advanced opportunities
- Detailed lead view
- Tasks and follow-ups
- Basic reporting
- Integrations
Hyper CRM - $97/month ($77.6/month annual)
- Everything in Growth CRM
- Instantly AI
- Calling and SMS
- Salesflows (automated sequences)
- Website visitor tracking inside CRM
- Advanced and team reporting
Worth noting: several advanced CRM features are still marked as "coming soon," including Priority AI, Follow-up AI, and Stripe integration. So you're paying for a product that's still being built out.
If you need a proper CRM, you might be better off with a dedicated solution like one of our top CRM picks or checking out Close CRM which has calling built-in from the start.
What Does Instantly Actually Cost? (Real-World Scenarios)
Here's where the sticker shock hits. Most users need more than just one product.
Starter Stack
Outreach Growth ($37) + SuperSearch Growth ($47) + Growth CRM ($47) = $131/month
This gets you basic sending, lead finding, and CRM. Workable for a solopreneur testing cold outreach.
Growing Team Stack
Outreach Hypergrowth ($97) + Supersonic Leads ($97) + Hyper CRM ($97) = $291/month
More realistic for a team doing serious outreach with meaningful volume.
Agency/High-Volume Stack
Outreach Light Speed ($358) + Hyper Credits ($197) + Hyper CRM ($97) = $652/month
And that's before you factor in add-ons.
Hidden Costs to Know About
The base pricing doesn't tell the whole story:
- Credit add-ons: If you need extra credits for AI features or verification, the Nano add-on is $9/month for 150 credits
- Volume add-ons: +$87/month for an extra 25,000 contacts if you're on Hypergrowth or Light Speed
- Done-for-you email accounts: $30-50 upfront plus ongoing domain costs if you want pre-warmed accounts
- Domain registration: $15-30 annually per domain (you need separate domains for cold email)
- AI Reply Agent: 5 credits per AI-handled reply
One G2 reviewer complained that their bill "climbed from $47 to $147 with no feature upgrades and hardly any notice." Credits don't roll over, and the billing can get confusing with proration.
What's Good About Instantly's Pricing
- Unlimited email accounts on all Outreach plans - This is genuinely rare. Most competitors charge per seat or per inbox.
- Unlimited warmup included - No extra cost for email warmup, which some tools charge $20-50/month for separately.
- No per-user pricing - Workspace-based, not seat-based, so you're not penalized for adding team members (on higher plans).
- 20% annual discount - Standard but meaningful savings if you commit.
- 14-day free trial - Full access to test before buying.
What Sucks About Instantly's Pricing
- Three separate product lines - The pricing gets confusing, and costs stack up when you need everything.
- Big jumps between plans - Going from 5,000 to 100,000 emails is a huge gap. If you need 20,000 emails, you're overpaying.
- Credits don't roll over - Use them or lose them each month.
- Essential features locked to higher tiers - A/B testing, Unibox, and integrations aren't available on the Growth plan.
- Agencies need separate workspaces - Each client requires a separate workspace with separate subscriptions.
Instantly vs Alternatives
How does Instantly's pricing compare to similar tools?
Smartlead offers similar functionality with more pricing flexibility, though the UI is rougher. They start at $39/month for 2,000 leads and 6,000 emails.
Lemlist starts at $59/month per user but includes strong personalization features and their lemwarm deliverability tool. Better for teams focused on personalization over pure volume.
Apollo.io has a free forever plan with 600 email credits per year and combines outreach with a huge B2B database, making it more of an all-in-one option.
Is Instantly Worth It?
Instantly is a solid cold email platform, especially if you need to scale with unlimited accounts and don't want to pay per seat. The Growth plan at $37/month is genuinely affordable for testing cold outreach.
But be realistic: most businesses end up needing the Hypergrowth tier ($97/month) plus leads and possibly CRM. Budget $150-300/month for a functional setup, not the $37 they advertise.
The platform works best for:
- Sales teams doing high-volume cold email
- Agencies managing multiple client campaigns (though workspace costs add up)
- Anyone who needs unlimited sending accounts without per-seat pricing
It's less ideal for:
- Teams needing multi-channel outreach (no LinkedIn, limited SMS)
- Agencies wanting client management under one roof
- Anyone who needs flexibility between pricing tiers
Try Instantly's 14-day free trial to see if it fits your workflow before committing. Just go in knowing the real costs, not just the starting price.