11x, Artisan and AiSDR all promise the same outcome: more qualified pipeline without adding headcount. How each one actually gets there, and how much they're willing to tell you upfront, differs a lot more than the pitch does.
Here's an honest look at three named AI SDR platforms that actually publish enough to compare: what they cost, what they claim and what's still just a vendor's word for it.
AI SDR Tools: The Two Camps
AI SDR tools split into two broad approaches. Fully autonomous senders research, write and send outbound with minimal human review, aiming to maximize volume. 11x, Artisan and AiSDR all fall into this camp. AI-augmentation platforms take a different approach: they do the research and signal detection, then hand a human rep a prepared draft to review and send.
The three platforms below are all in the autonomous-sender camp. If your team wants a human reviewing every message before it goes out, that's a different buying decision than this piece covers.
11x (Alice and Julian)
11x doesn't publish pricing. Their site has no rate card, only a path to book a demo, which by itself tells you this is built for larger, sales-assisted deals rather than a self-serve trial. The company states it has raised $70M+ from a16z and Benchmark. It also cites a G2 rating of 4.5+ stars with a Leader designation in the Mid-Market category.
The product line is two separate AI workers. Alice handles outbound: multi-channel prospecting, personalization and meeting booking. Julian is a separate inbound AI phone agent that qualifies calls and schedules meetings. 11x cites customer-reported results including a typical 1.5x increase in qualified meetings. One customer reportedly generated over $1M in pipeline within 3 months, with 35% of that pipeline attributed to the platform. Another reported a 9.7% reply rate. All of that is vendor-reported and customer-specific, not an independently audited average. Worth remembering before you extrapolate it to your own numbers.
Artisan (Ava)
Artisan positions Ava as "free to start," with actual pricing tiers behind a separate page rather than shown up front. That's a lighter-touch sales motion than 11x's demo-only approach. Artisan states Ava can search 250M+ verified B2B contacts across 200+ countries and claims teams using Ava generate pipeline at 1/5th the cost of a human BDR. That cost-efficiency claim is the core of Artisan's pitch: replace the economics of a junior SDR hire, not just their task list.
AiSDR
AiSDR is the one platform here with fully transparent, published pricing, confirmed directly on their site. Solo runs $250/month for 200 AI-researched contacts and a single user. Explore runs $900/month for 800 contacts with unlimited users. Scale runs $2,500/month for 2,500 contacts, unlimited users and Salesforce integration. Annual billing gets a 20% discount.
That entry price makes AiSDR meaningfully more accessible than 11x's sales-assisted model, which means a small team can actually test it without a sales call. But it's worth correcting a claim that shows up in a lot of secondary comparison content: AiSDR isn't uniformly "the cheapest option." Its entry tier is cheap. Its top tier, at $2,500/month for 2,500 contacts, lands in the same range as Artisan's stated pricing, not meaningfully below it. Compare the tier that actually matches your volume, not just the cheapest number on the page.
Side-by-Side
| Category | 11x | Artisan (Ava) | AiSDR |
| Published pricing | None: demo/sales only | Partial: "free to start," tiers behind a separate page | Full: $250 to $2,500/month, published tiers |
| Buying motion | Sales-assisted, enterprise-leaning | Lighter-touch, self-serve friendly | Fully self-serve |
| Headline claim | 1.5x more qualified meetings (typical, vendor-reported) | 1/5th the cost of a human BDR (vendor-reported) | Contact-volume tiers scaling with team size |
| Products | Alice (outbound) + Julian (inbound phone, separate license) | Ava (outbound, multi-channel) | Ami AI strategist + outbound automation |
| Funding signal | $70M+ from a16z, Benchmark | Not disclosed on product page | Not disclosed on pricing page |
What This Comparison Can't Tell You
Every performance number in this piece, reply rates, pipeline generated, cost-per-meeting, comes from the vendor's own marketing. Not a controlled, independently audited test. That's not unique to these three companies. It's true of essentially every AI SDR comparison you'll find, including ones that present their numbers with more confidence than the underlying data supports. Treat vendor case studies as evidence of what's possible for a specific customer in a specific market. Not a guaranteed outcome for your team.
There's also a downstream cost none of these comparisons capture: an AI SDR that books meetings faster than your team can qualify them just moves the bottleneck. For example, if your CRM data is already messy, adding an AI SDR that writes hundreds of new records a week into it makes that problem worse, not better, before it makes anything faster.
Deliverability and reply quality also depend heavily on factors no comparison chart captures: your existing sending domain reputation, your ICP's actual buying signals and how well the tool's default personalization matches how your specific market actually talks. A platform that performs well for one company's ICP can underperform badly for another's.
FAQ
Which of these three is cheapest overall?
AiSDR at the entry tier ($250/month), by a wide margin, since 11x doesn't offer self-serve pricing at all and Artisan's tiers aren't published. But AiSDR's top tier is priced in the same range as Artisan's general market position, so "cheapest" depends entirely on which tier your volume actually requires.
Can an AI SDR fully replace a human SDR?
Not according to any of these vendors' own positioning. Even the most autonomous-leaning platforms here (11x, Artisan) frame their tools as expanding what a smaller human team can cover, not eliminating the need for a human closer once a meeting is booked.
What should I actually test before committing to a contract?
Reply rate and meeting-show rate on your own list, in your own market, ideally over at least 2-4 weeks, because vendor-reported averages come from a different ICP and sending domain than yours. Vendor case studies tell you what's possible elsewhere. They don't tell you what will happen with your specific ICP and sending domain reputation.
If you're evaluating build-vs-buy for outbound automation and want a second opinion before signing a contract, get in touch.