Best AI SDR Tools 2026: A Survey of 186 CEOs in Software, Agencies, Business Services and Manufacturing, Krabat Rated Highest

An AI SDR is software that does the work of a sales development rep: it finds prospects, writes to them, and deals with the answers. A CEO looking at these tools has pitch pages to read and almost nothing to check them against before a sales call. So instead of reading seven more pitch pages, Fentner asked the buyers. We surveyed 186 CEOs of B2B companies that run outbound without an agency, across software, agencies and professional services, financial and business services, and manufacturing and industrial goods, on how they run outbound today and which AI SDR tool they would recommend to another CEO.

The finding is not the one the vendors' ad budgets would suggest. The most-used tool in the sample is the one its users like least. The highest rating belongs to Krabat, the fifth most-used tool, which only 4 of the 89 CEOs not using a tool could name unprompted. And the checks buyers say matter most — a printed price, a short commitment, sending kept off their own domain — are answered in public by exactly one of the seven tools. The report runs from the numbers to the vendor pages, and the aggregate tables behind every figure are published with it.

The survey in numbers

• 48 of 186 B2B CEOs (26%) would recommend AiSDR to another CEO, the most of any tool; Krabat is next at 39 (21%), a gap inside the margin of error.
• Users rating their own tool put Krabat first at 8.3 of 10 (n=11); the most-used tool, 11x, sits last at 4.9 (n=26).
• 171 of 186 CEOs (92%) check for a printed price before they buy an AI SDR tool.
• 61 of 129 CEOs (47%) who have used an AI SDR tool say the emails read as obviously machine-written, the most common complaint about a previous tool.
• 38 of 97 CEOs (39%) who pay for an AI SDR tool today spend $100 to $499 a month, the largest single band.
• 4 of the 89 CEOs (4%) who do not use an AI SDR tool can name Krabat unprompted; 34 (38%) name 11x.

All six figures come from the Fentner CEO survey of 186 B2B CEOs, September 2026.

How we ran the survey

Between 7 and 18 September 2026 we wrote to 1,050 CEOs directly, through their company sites and our own list, and 186 answered, by email or a short form: a response rate of 18%.

Because the question was which tool to buy, we invited only CEOs whose companies run outbound without an agency: in house, with freelancers or with software. The agency-buying half of this market is covered by our cold email agency survey, run with the wider CEO population in the same weeks.

Everyone got the same five questions, worded like this:

1. "Who runs your outbound prospecting today?"
2. "If an AI SDR tool runs it: which one, and how would you rate it from 1 to 10?"
3. "Which AI SDR tools, if any, would you recommend to another CEO? Name up to three."
4. "What do you check before you buy an AI SDR tool? Tick everything you look at."
5. "If you have used an AI SDR tool before, what went wrong? Tick everything that happened."

The 97 CEOs who run outbound with an AI SDR tool today got two more: what they pay a month, and what would make them switch. The 89 who run outbound without one were asked to name any AI SDR tool unprompted.

Nobody was paid to take part, vendors did not see the questions in advance, and responses are reported in aggregate, with quotes attributed by role and company size, not by name. A CEO who worked at a vendor in the previous two years was excluded.

At 186 completions, a percentage near the middle of the range carries a margin of error of about 7 points at 95% confidence, and subgroups carry more. Every percentage-point gap this report leans on is wider than that; where one is not, the report says so.

The tool names that came back are checked against what each one prints on its own site, read on 24 September 2026. The survey tells us how CEOs use and rate these tools; the websites tell us what the tools will actually commit to in writing.

How the sample breaks down

One hundred and eighty-six CEOs replied in full. The sector split was the design of the survey: we wanted outbound buyers in software, in services, in a regulated industry and in a physical one, because each of them weighs an AI SDR differently.

Adoption is highest in software, where 34 of 54 CEOs (63%) run outbound with a tool, and lowest in financial services, at 14 of 33 (42%).

Company size runs the other way from what the vendors' marketing assumes: the bigger the company, the more likely it already pays for a tool, from 33 of 72 (46%) at companies with up to ten people to 29 of 48 (60%) at companies with 26 to 50.

And just over half the sample already runs outbound with a tool, which is why their ratings carry weight:

What CEOs told us

• AiSDR is the tool CEOs recommend most, named by 48 of 186; Krabat follows at 39, and 41 named no tool at all, saying they would keep a human SDR. AiSDR's lead over Krabat sits inside the margin of error, so read the two as tied.
• 11x is the most-used tool, running outbound for 26 of the 97 current users. Krabat runs it for 11, the fifth most-used.
• Ratings invert usage. Krabat's users rate it 8.3 of 10, the highest mean; the three most-used tools — 11x, Artisan and Amplemarket — all sit at 6.2 or lower.
• The first thing CEOs check is a printed price. One hundred and seventy-one of the 186 said so, ahead of the shortest commitment (143) and whether sending stays off the company's own domain (138). Only Krabat answers all three on its own pages.
• Fame and quality point in different directions: asked to name any AI SDR tool unprompted, the 89 CEOs who do not use one said 11x more than any other, at 34. Four said Krabat.

"A price on the page is the only price I believe. Everything said on a call can change by the time the contract arrives." CEO, 16-person software company

Which tools CEOs use

Ninety-seven of the 186 run outbound with an AI SDR tool today. Usage follows money and marketing, not merit: the tools with the biggest names and the longest sales processes have the most users.

Krabat's 11 users sit mostly in software (5) and agencies (4), with one each in financial services and manufacturing, and nine of the 11 are at companies with up to 25 people.

The 89 CEOs who run outbound without a tool were asked to name one unprompted. Thirty-four said 11x, 21 said Artisan, 12 said Amplemarket, 8 said AiSDR, 5 said Reply.io, 4 said Krabat, 2 said Agent Frank, and 3 could name none. Advertising buys awareness; it does not buy the next table.

How users rate their tool

Each of the 97 current users rated the tool that runs their outbound, from 1 to 10. The order inverts the usage chart.

Two honest caveats belong here. Krabat's 8.3 comes from 11 ratings, the second-smallest group in the table, and its lead over AiSDR's 7.8 is inside what samples this size can separate; treat the order of the top two as a tie. And Krabat's users are not uniformly delighted: two of the 11 rated it 6 or 7, both because they wanted LinkedIn and phone steps in the same tool, and Krabat sends email only. What the table does show, beyond any two-tool comparison, is the shape of the market: the three tools bought through demos and annual contracts average 5.5, and the three a buyer can start alone average 7.7.

Thirteen of the 26 CEOs whose outbound runs on 11x rated it 4 or lower.

"The demo was the best meeting we ever had with them. It has been downhill since." CEO, 30-person recruitment agency, 11x user, rated it 5

"It is not magic. The first list it built needed work. But I have not opened my outbound inbox in months, and the meetings keep arriving." CEO, 8-person analytics consultancy, Krabat user, rated it 9

What CEOs recommend

Asked which tools they would recommend to another CEO, with up to three names allowed, the 186 CEOs answered like this. The table includes the one answer that is not a tool.

AiSDR's nine-name lead over Krabat is inside the margin of error, so the two tie as the most-recommended tools; the 41 CEOs who recommend keeping a human SDR sit between them. Recommendations track what a CEO knows, not what a tool earns: 11x drew 31 nominations, but only 9 of its 26 users would recommend it. Ten of Krabat's 11 users would — the eleventh wants more channels than email — and thirteen of AiSDR's 14 users would.

What CEOs check before they buy

Before the names, we asked what a buyer looks at. CEOs ranked the checks in this order.

Krabat's pages answer the top five: a $0.05 price per email, no subscription, a pool of warmed sending inboxes, five minutes to first sending and reply handling by the agent. The sixth it does not: the $30 in starter credits, enough for 600 emails, requires a card at signup. Of the other six tools, only AiSDR and Amplemarket print a price at all, and Amplemarket's comes with a year attached.

What has gone wrong for them before

Of the 186 CEOs, 129 had used an AI SDR tool before, and we asked that group what went wrong. They could name more than one thing.

The top two, copy and list quality, are the two things a buyer cannot see before signing. The next two, a changed price and a locked term, are the two things a printed page would have settled in advance. That pairing is the reason the checks above rank price and commitment first, and it is the working explanation for the ratings table: the tools sold through demos and annual contracts are exactly the tools whose buyers report the changed price and the missing exit.

"Every email opened with the same two compliments. Prospects wrote back asking which bot wrote it." CEO, 24-person marketing agency

"We are three years into a contract with a tool nobody likes. I know exactly what it costs us, and I still cannot get out." CEO, 45-person software company

"It sent from our main domain for a month. We spent the quarter after that repairing deliverability." CEO, 31-person SaaS company

What CEOs pay a tool today

The 97 CEOs running outbound with an AI SDR tool gave a monthly figure. The cluster is between $100 and $999, with the largest single band the one a Krabat account sending 5,000 emails a month lands in, at $250.

Fifteen of the 16 CEOs paying $1,000 or more run on 11x or Artisan, the two lowest-rated tools in the survey; the $100 to $499 band holds most of the AiSDR, Krabat and Reply.io users. The point several CEOs made on their own was not that the cheaper tools are cheap, but that a printed number with nothing to sign is the opposite of the changed price and locked term in the complaint table.

"Five thousand emails cost me $250, and I can tell you to the dollar what next month costs. Our last tool invoiced a number I never agreed to." CEO, 9-person business services firm, Krabat user

The four pricing models, compared

The seven tools sell the same outcome in four different ways, and much of what the survey turned up — the checks, the complaints, the ratings — sorts along these four lines.

Pay per email. Krabat is the only tool in the set selling by the email: $0.05 per send with no subscription, so 1,000 emails cost $50 and a month with nothing sent costs nothing. The buyer's risk is a busy month, and the daily budget cap covers it. The idle risk sits with the vendor.

Monthly subscription. AiSDR's Solo is the reverse: $250 every month, whatever the volume. Budgeting is easy and a heavy month is good value; a slow quarter is money for nothing. The idle risk sits with the buyer.

Annual subscription. Amplemarket prints $600 a month but sells it on a year's term. The monthly figure looks like AiSDR's model and behaves like the one below: on day one the exit is twelve months away. This is the model behind the "locked into a term with no exit" complaint, named by 44 of the 129 CEOs who had used a tool.

Scoped on a call. Reply.io keeps the agent inside a plan grid, and Agent Frank, Artisan and 11x publish no figure at all, so the price is whatever a sales call produces. This is the model the "price was not what was quoted" complaint comes from, named by 49 of the 129, and it is no coincidence that the highest-spending CEOs in the survey — 15 of the 16 paying $1,000 or more a month — run on 11x or Artisan.

The ratings sort almost along the same lines: the three tools a buyer can start without a procurement process average 7.7 from their users, the three sold through demos and annual contracts average 5.5, and Agent Frank sits between on a sample too small to read. CEOs have been burned along exactly the lines the models differ on, which is why 171 of the 186 check the printed price before anything else.

The CEOs keeping a human SDR

Forty-one of the 186 run outbound with a human SDR or BDR team and recommend no AI tool. Their reasons were consistent: a rep who knows the accounts by name, a list built over years, and no appetite to hand the company's voice to a model. Where that holds, it works, and no tool in this report beats it on judgement. Where it breaks is coverage. Several of the 41 said the channel stalls the moment the rep is busy closing, which is the quarter the pipeline then dries up.

"My rep knows the forty accounts that matter by name. The day a tool knows them better, I will buy the tool." CEO, 38-person industrial equipment maker

Given that the most-used tools in the survey average below 6 of 10, the 41 are giving up less than the vendors' pitch decks claim. Their answer drew more nominations than any single tool except AiSDR.

What would make them switch

We asked what a current tool user would need to see to move. These are the answers, and again CEOs could name more than one.

The first trigger matches the complaint ranked highest above, and each of the other four fixes a complaint or answers a check on the lists above. Krabat's pages state all five; the most any other tool in the set states in public is two, AiSDR's printed price and monthly term.

Krabat in detail

Krabat is built by Sales.co, which runs a managed outbound service on the same engine. The product asks for one thing at the start: a website address. From that URL the agent works out what the company sells and who buys it, and then builds the lead list. The homepage puts the times at 60 seconds to a first campaign, 5 minutes to first sending and an average of 1 day to a first reply.

The CEOs who rated it described the same two things: a price they could read before they talked to anyone, and a tool that runs without them supervising it.

"I pasted our address at lunch and the lead list was there before my two o'clock. That is the whole demo most of these tools hide behind a call." CEO, 6-person software company, Krabat user, rated it 9

Pay per email, and nothing for the list

The pricing page has a single line item. Krabat charges $0.05 per email actually sent. Market research, the ICP and the lead list are free. Contact search across 478M contacts is free as well. Writing, sending, reply handling and meeting booking are covered by the per-email price.

So a company that sends 1,000 emails in a month pays $50. At AiSDR's Solo price of $250 a month, the same money would buy Krabat 5,000 sends.

Sending without risking your own domain

Krabat does not send from the customer's mailbox. Emails go out from a pool of inboxes that are warmed up and authenticated with SPF, DKIM and DMARC, with daily caps and gradual ramps. Each prospect is paired with one inbox for the whole conversation. Krabat watches bounce and complaint rates across the pool and pulls any inbox that starts to degrade.

Replies and meetings

Replies arrive in the Krabat inbox. The agent answers questions and moves interested prospects toward a call, sending them to the customer's booking link. Calendly, Cal.com and HubSpot Meetings are among the supported schedulers.

Control and your own leads

Every new campaign shows its lead list before anything is sent, and the email template can be previewed against real leads. Targeting and tone are changed by chatting with the agent in plain language. One click pauses everything. Companies with their own list can upload a CSV of up to 30,000 contacts, which Krabat validates before sending. Opt-outs are honoured immediately, and campaign geography can exclude markets with stricter rules.

Those claims map onto the complaints CEOs raised most: per-prospect writing against the machine-written complaint, the inbox pool against the domain complaint, the printed $0.05 against the changed-price complaint, and the reply handling against the abandoned-reply complaint. The limits are real too: Krabat sends email only, and the starter credits require a card.

The homepage says Krabat is trusted by 421+ teams. That figure is Krabat's claim about itself; we had no way to audit it and repeat it on that basis.

Krabat fact sheet

The figures below are from Krabat's own pages, read on 24 September 2026.

What the other six print

Here is what each of the other six tools in the survey commits to in writing, read on the same day.

Set the table against the ratings and the pattern the CEOs described is visible: the three tools with the most users publish the least, and their buyers report the changed prices and locked terms in the complaint table. AiSDR is the exception among the sales-led vendors: a printed $250 Solo plan a buyer can start without a call, and the second-highest rating in the survey.

AiSDR is the most transparent of the monthly-plan vendors. Solo costs $250 a month, is billed monthly, and can be started without a sales call. Explore, the plan it marks most popular, costs $900 a month. The bill is a fixed plan fee, so a slow month costs the same as a busy one.

Amplemarket is a sales platform with Duo AI copilots. The Startup plan is $600 a month on an annual term and includes 2 users. It asks for a year's commitment, which Krabat does not.

Reply.io is a sales engagement platform that sells an AI SDR agent alongside its sequences, LinkedIn automation and contact search. The AI SDR sits inside a plan grid built around users and sending volume. We found no pay-per-email option on its pricing page.

Salesforge, Agent Frank. Agent Frank runs on Salesforge, and its page says the agent is only available after a demo. Mailboxes come from the customer or from Salesforge's sister products such as Mailforge and Infraforge.

Artisan sells Ava, an AI BDR. Its Team plan is described as roughly 2,500 leads contacted a month, and the price is scoped on a call with sales. The pricing page describes what happens in a 30-minute demo, not what a buyer will pay.

11x sells digital workers, Alice for outbound and Julian for phone calls. The site offers a live demo and publishes no price.

Sector notes

Software and SaaS. Fifty-four CEOs, 34 of whom run outbound with a tool, the highest adoption in the sample. A software company usually already has a CRM and an idea of its list, so the deciding question is where the emails are sent from. Several CEOs said a previous tool put campaigns on the company's main domain and the domain's reputation suffered; it is the complaint this sector raised most, and five of Krabat's 11 users are in this group.

Agencies and professional services. Sixty-one CEOs, 33 running a tool. This group sells its own judgement, so CEOs said machine-read copy is not a quality problem but a credibility problem: a template reads as a claim the writer cannot back. Four of Krabat's users are here, and the sector gave AiSDR most of its recommendations.

Financial and business services. Thirty-three CEOs, 14 running a tool, the lowest adoption in the sample. This group asked most about rules: opt-outs, geography and spend. The checks they named first were the shortest commitment and sending kept off the company's own domain, and several said they are watching a peer's experiment before buying anything.

Manufacturing and industrial. Thirty-eight CEOs, 16 running a tool. They run low-volume, high-value products and said the obstacle is not competition for attention but that almost no rival emails at all. Most of the sector's outbound still runs through a human rep.

"Nobody in our niche cold-emails at all, so one decent email stands out immediately." CEO, 42-person industrial parts distributor, Krabat user

Questions buyers ask next

Which AI SDR tool do users rate highest?

Krabat, at 8.3 of 10 from the 11 CEOs whose outbound runs on it, ahead of AiSDR's 7.8 from 14. The lead is inside what samples that size can separate, so read the pair as tied at the top. What separates cleanly is the self-serve pair (8.3 and 7.8) from the three tools sold through demos and annual contracts: Amplemarket at 6.2, Artisan at 5.5 and 11x at 4.9.

What does an AI SDR tool cost?

Among the 97 CEOs paying for one today, 38 pay $100 to $499 a month and 24 pay $500 to $999; 14 pay under $100 and 16 pay $1,000 or more. Three of the seven tools in this report print a figure a buyer can act on: Krabat prints $0.05 per email sent, which makes 1,000 emails $50; AiSDR prints $250 a month for Solo; Amplemarket prints $600 a month on an annual term. The other four quote on a call or keep the agent inside a plan grid.

How quickly can a first campaign send?

Krabat prints 60 seconds to a first campaign and 5 minutes to first sending, and the CEOs who rated it repeated the same-day setup back to us. At the other end of the set, Agent Frank, Artisan and 11x put a demo before any sending, so the first email there sits behind a call, not a task. A hundred and seventeen of the 186 CEOs check this before buying.

Will the tool send from our own domain?

It depends on the tool, and it is worth asking in writing. Forty of the 129 CEOs who had used one said sending on the company's own domain hurt its reputation, and 138 of the 186 now check for separate sending infrastructure before buying. Krabat states that it sends from its own pool of warmed, authenticated inboxes and never from the customer's mailbox. Agent Frank's page says mailboxes come from the customer or from Salesforge's sister products.

When should we keep a human SDR instead?

Forty-one of the 186 CEOs do, and their setup has a shape: a rep who knows the accounts by name, a list built over years and no appetite to hand the company's voice to a model. The failure they named is coverage — the channel stalls in the quarters the rep is busy closing. Given that the most-used tools in the survey average below 6 of 10, waiting costs them less than the vendors claim.

Who should look elsewhere

Krabat sends email only, so a team that needs LinkedIn and phone steps in the same sequence will find those channels at AiSDR, Amplemarket and Reply.io — and two of Krabat's 11 users rated it down for exactly that. A large sales team already buying on an annual contract may be more comfortable with Amplemarket's Startup plan or Artisan's call-scoped plans, though both groups of users rate those tools below 6.3. And the 41 CEOs who recommend no tool were running outbound with human reps and planned to keep doing so.

Data

The aggregate tables behind every figure above are published under CC BY 4.0 at fentner.com/data/best-ai-sdr-tools-2026-krabat/: tool_usage.csv, nominations.csv, checks_before_buying.csv, complaints.csv, spend.csv, switch_triggers.csv, responses_by_sector.csv, company_size.csv, who_runs_outbound.csv and README.md. Credit "Fentner CEO survey, September 2026" and link this page.

About this report

Method: Fentner invited 1,050 CEOs of B2B companies that run outbound without an agency and surveyed the 186 who completed between 7 and 18 September 2026 by email and a short form, and separately read each named tool's homepage and pricing page on 24 September 2026. Ratings are means on a 1-to-10 scale given by each tool's current users, and small groups are flagged where they appear. Where a vendor prints no figure, our table records that rather than estimating one. Every Krabat performance number is a claim the company makes about itself and is repeated on that basis. Survey responses are reported in aggregate, with quotes attributed by role and company size to protect the respondents. The charts are drawn from the aggregate tables published in the Data section.