---
title: The best AI sales assistants for small teams, sorted by the job
description: A guide to the AI sales assistants worth a small team's money, grouped by the sales job each one takes off your plate and judged on how much of that job it actually finishes.
slug: /blog/the-best-ai-sales-assistants-for-small-teams-sorted-by-the-job
page_type: listicle
entity: Kite
category: AI marketing agent
author: Devon Wells and Kite
date_published: '2026-10-29'
date_modified: '2026-10-29'
related_use_cases:
  - /use-cases/inbound-lead-response.md
  - /use-cases/outbound-email-campaigns.md
related_guides:
  - /blog/the-best-sales-intelligence-platforms-for-small-teams-in-2026-sorted-b.md
  - /blog/the-best-ai-lead-generation-tools-for-small-teams.md
---

# The best AI sales assistants for small teams, sorted by the job

## Key Takeaways

- An AI sales assistant takes a specific sales job off your plate: finding and researching prospects, writing and sending outreach, answering inbound leads, following up after calls, or keeping your CRM current. The best one for a small team is the one that finishes the job that's eating your week.
- The useful test is whether an assistant finishes the work or hands you a draft. Check who decides which people to contact, who presses send, and whether the result lands in your CRM without you copying it there.
- Kite, an AI marketer, takes the jobs that fill a small company's pipeline. It builds and scores prospect lists, writes and sends outbound email, answers and qualifies inbound leads, drafts follow-ups from your Fathom calls, and records the results in your CRM. It's priced per workspace, with a free plan and a Growth plan at $100 a month, so adding teammates doesn't raise the bill.
- Notetakers such as Fathom, Fireflies, Sybill, and Avoma own the sales call and the recap that follows it. The AI built into HubSpot, Attio, Salesforce, and Pipedrive works best when your records already live in that CRM and are in good shape.
- Autonomous AI SDRs such as Artisan, 11x, and Qualified are built for high volume and large markets. Most quote prices only through sales, and 11x starts at $3,750 a month on an annual contract.

## What does an AI sales assistant do?

An AI sales assistant is software that does part of a salesperson's work for them, from deciding who to contact to writing the email to logging the call in the CRM. The label covers products that barely resemble each other. Zapier's list of the eight best puts a meeting recorder, an email coach, and a lead data tool side by side, and it leaves out the AI built into CRMs on purpose ([Zapier](https://zapier.com/blog/ai-sales-assistant/)). That makes it hard to compare them directly.

It's more useful to sort them by the sales job they take over. A small team usually has five:

- **Finding and researching prospects.** This means deciding which companies and people fit, then learning enough about each one to say something relevant.
- **Writing and sending outreach.** This covers the first email, the follow-ups, and the replies that come back.
- **Answering inbound leads.** Someone fills in your demo form, and they need a quick, useful answer and a judgment on whether they're worth a salesperson's time.
- **Following up after calls.** This is the recap email, the pricing sheet you promised, and the notes.
- **Keeping the CRM current.** Contacts get logged, deal fields get updated, and deals that have gone quiet get noticed.

The second thing to check is how far an assistant takes its job. Some draft a message and wait for you to send it. Some send on their own but leave the CRM to you. A few research the person, decide whether to contact them, write the message, send it, and record what happened. On a team of two or three, where the founder often does the selling, that difference decides whether a tool gives you time back or adds another inbox to check.

Pricing matters more for small teams than for large ones. Most sales tools charge per seat, and several set minimums: RegieGO's Team plan needs two seats, Apollo's Organization plan needs three, and Fathom's Team plan needs two users. The autonomous agents often quote only through a sales call. When three people share the selling, a tool priced per workspace or by usage can cost a fraction of one priced per seat.

The 19 assistants below are grouped by the job each one does best. For each, you'll see what it does well, where it stops, and what it costs a small team.

## Assistants that take on several sales jobs at once

These assistants cover more than one job, from finding prospects through recording the result. A small team can hand over a whole stretch of its pipeline to one of them instead of buying a separate tool for each step.

### 1. Kite

Kite is an AI marketer that takes on the work that fills a small company's pipeline. It researches your business, builds a growth strategy, and ships the work that brings you new customers. At a company without separate sales and marketing teams, much of that work is sales work: building a prospect list, writing the first email, answering the person who filled in your demo form, and following up after the call. You can work with Kite in the Kite web app or in Slack, and you ask it for work the way you'd ask a colleague.

Kite starts from what it already knows about you. During onboarding, it researches your positioning, your products, and the customers you serve, and it keeps that knowledge in your team's wiki, including your ideal customer profile ([Kite](/use-cases/inbound-lead-response.md)). Every lead and prospect is judged against that profile rather than a generic checklist.

Here's what Kite does across the sales jobs:

- **It finds and scores prospects.** Kite searches for companies by industry, size, location, growth, funding, or technology, then finds the right people by title, function, and seniority. It confirms each person still holds the role, scores them from one to five against your criteria with a written reason, and doesn't email anyone who scores low. Apollo, Crustdata, and PredictLeads are built in, so you don't need your own accounts for the research ([Kite](/use-cases/outbound-email-campaigns.md)).
- **It writes and sends outbound email.** Kite writes each email from research on that company and person, such as a recent launch, a funding round, or a hiring push, and it decides the angle itself. It sends from a Kite-managed team address or your own connected email, sends follow-ups only to people who haven't replied, and reports which messages were delivered, which failed, and which drew a reply.
- **It answers inbound leads.** When a form or email arrives, Kite researches the person and their company and places them in strong, partial, or poor fit with a one-line reason, such as "Strong fit: VP of Marketing at a 120-person B2B software company that just raised its Series B and is hiring two marketers." It drafts a reply that answers the person's question first and ends with one next step, such as two meeting times.
- **It follows up after calls.** With Fathom connected, Kite reads the summary and action items from a sales call and drafts the follow-up. It knows you promised a pricing breakdown and the prospect promised to bring in their head of finance, so the email covers both ([Kite](/integrations/fathom.md)).
- **It records the result.** Kite creates or updates the person and company in HubSpot, Pipedrive, or Attio, or adds the person as a lead in Salesforce, with the research, fit, and next step attached. For a strong lead, it sends your team a two-line summary of who the person is, why they fit, and what it proposed.

Most AIs wait for instructions. Kite finds what needs doing and does it. A new form submission or a finished Fathom recording can start the work on its own, so the research and draft are ready almost immediately. Add Kite to Slack, and it also reads your team's channels and suggests moves worth making.

By default, Kite shows you each email and sends it once you approve it in the conversation. Many teams review the first few days of replies the way they'd check a new hire's work, then let Kite send on its own once they trust its judgment.

Kite's sales work happens in email and in your CRM. It doesn't place phone calls or record meetings, so a team that sells mostly on calls pairs it with a notetaker such as Fathom. Pricing is per workspace, and Kite doesn't cap the number of people who use it. There's a free plan, a Growth plan at $100 a month that includes $100 in AI credits, and custom pricing for Business ([Kite](https://kite.ai/pricing)). Kite is the strongest fit for a founder-led or small team that wants the pipeline-filling jobs done end to end without paying for a sales seat per person.

### 2. RegieGO

RegieGO, from Regie.ai, is a sales workspace built around a rep's daily task list. Every morning at 7:00 AM Pacific, its prebuilt workflows research your accounts for funding, job changes, and company news, draft calls, emails, and LinkedIn messages in your voice, and sort the day's tasks by urgency and upside ([Regie.ai](https://regie.ai/use-cases/run-your-day)). An account that has gone quiet for 12 days moves up the list, and each call outcome creates its own follow-up.

It covers more channels than most assistants here. You get email, a power dialer with local numbers you pick, and LinkedIn messages drafted for you to paste. RegieGO has its own built-in CRM, or it syncs with HubSpot, Salesforce, or Monday CRM, with one CRM per workspace ([Regie.ai](https://www.regie.ai/pricing)). You choose which workflows run on their own and which hold drafts for your review, and nothing sends or dials unless you scheduled it or told it to.

The free plan gives each person 250 one-time credits, for up to 10 people. Pro costs $49 a month, or $41 a month billed annually, for one person filling their own pipeline. Team costs $150 per seat a month, or $125 billed annually, with a two-seat minimum. Credits pay for research, drafting, enrichment, and dialing, and you can't buy extra credits on their own. Zapier lists limited integrations among its drawbacks ([Zapier](https://zapier.com/blog/ai-sales-assistant/)). RegieGO fits a team where at least one person works a list of calls and emails every day and wants that list built for them.

## Assistants that find and research prospects

These assistants handle the first job: deciding who to contact and learning enough about them to write something worth reading. They leave the sending, the replies, and the follow-up to you or to another tool. For a deeper look at the data side of this job, see [the best sales intelligence platforms for small teams](/blog/the-best-sales-intelligence-platforms-for-small-teams-in-2026-sorted-b.md).

### 3. Apollo

Apollo pairs a large B2B contact database with an AI Assistant you talk to in plain language. Ask it to find decision-makers, prioritize accounts using web research, or build a sequence, and it drafts the action, then applies it by saving prospects to lists, enriching records, or creating sequences ([Apollo](https://knowledge.apollo.io/hc/en-us/articles/39359204112397-Use-the-AI-Assistant-on-Apollo-to-Sell-Smarter)). It remembers your writing style, territory, and target audience across conversations. Depending on your plan, scheduled agents can run outbound jobs in the background and bring the results back for you to review.

Apollo is cheap to start with. The free plan includes 900 credits per seat per year and five assistant chats per billing cycle. Paid plans cost $49, $79, or $119 per seat a month billed annually, the top plan needs at least three seats, and every seat on an account has to be on the same plan ([Apollo](https://www.apollo.io/pricing)). By default, the assistant shows you the credit cost and waits for your approval before it spends credits.

The assistant works on Apollo's own data and sequences, and Apollo's help center tells you to check its messaging and prospect matches before you use them in outreach. That makes Apollo a strong choice if you'll do the prospecting yourself and want it to go faster. Kite uses Apollo as one of its built-in research sources, so a Kite team gets Apollo's data without an Apollo account.

### 4. Clay

Clay is a spreadsheet-style workspace for building and enriching lead lists, and its AI agent, Claygent, answers a research question about every row. You write the question, such as whether a company is hiring for a particular role, and Claygent searches the live web and puts the answer in a column next to the rest of the data ([Sales Ops Club](https://www.salesopsclub.com/software/claygent)). That's research a contact database can't sell you, because the answer sits on a web page rather than in a contact record.

Claygent comes with every Clay plan. The free plan includes 500 actions and 100 data credits a month, with up to 200 rows per table. Launch costs $185 a month, or $167 billed annually, and Growth costs $495 a month, or $446 billed annually, and adds CRM sync. What a list costs depends on the AI model and the length of your prompt, so Sales Ops Club suggests running each prompt on 50 rows, reading the cost per row, and multiplying by your list size before you run it on everything.

Clay rewards a team with someone who'll build and maintain its workflows. Sales Ops Club says each research prompt needs an owner who writes it narrowly, tests it on a sample, and keeps it up to date, and it relays reviewers who find Clay hard to justify at low volume. Kite works with Clay too, enriching a list across Clay's data providers in one pass when you ask, so you get the data without building the tables yourself.

## AI SDRs that send outreach and handle the replies

An SDR, or sales development rep, is the person who books first meetings. AI SDRs take over that conversation: they write and send messages, answer replies, and book meetings, often without a person approving each message. Most of them are built for high volume and large markets, and several quote prices only through sales.

### 5. Instantly

Instantly is a cold email platform with a large lead database and AI agents that write and reply. Its AI Reply Agent reads incoming replies, handles objections, follows up with people who haven't answered, and books meetings. When someone writes "I'm free at 3 pm," it schedules the meeting directly in Calendly instead of only sending a link ([Instantly](https://help.instantly.ai/en/articles/11774076-ai-reply-agent)). It also follows up with people who missed a meeting.

You can approve each reply before it goes out, or turn on Autopilot, which is available on Instantly's Hyper Growth plan and above. Even on Autopilot, the agent pauses and asks for review when it's missing product information or isn't sure how to respond. Instantly calls training the agent with your guidance "the most crucial step," so plan to write that guidance carefully.

The Starter bundle costs $94 a month, or $85 billed yearly, and includes 5,000 emails a month, 1,500 credits, access to a database of more than 450 million B2B leads, and Instantly's AI Sales Agent. The AI Reply Agent appears on the Scale bundle at $194 a month, or $175 billed yearly ([Instantly](https://instantly.ai/pricing)). Each generated reply costs five credits, whether or not you send it. The agent works inside Instantly's own campaigns and inboxes, so Instantly fits a team whose main motion is cold email at volume.

### 6. Artisan

Artisan sells Ava, an AI BDR (business development rep) that finds leads, writes and sends email in your reps' names from your own domains, handles the replies, and books meetings on a rep's calendar ([Artisan](https://www.artisan.co/pricing)). Every plan includes a database of more than 250 million verified B2B contacts, two-way sync with Salesforce and HubSpot, and onboarding. Artisan describes Ava as "Autonomous by default, adjustable by design," and you can require approval before sending, lock tone and calls to action, and ban phrases.

Ava decides the personalization angle for each message from what it knows about the prospect. Artisan's CEO gives the example that a company hiring lots of BDRs is a useful hook for Artisan's own outreach but not for another seller's ([SaaStr](https://www.saastr.com/artisans-ava-2-0-what-a-fully-autonomous-ai-bdr-actually-looks-like-in-production-with-ceo-jaspar-carmichael-jack/)). Ava doesn't make calls. It queues calls for your reps in a dialer, with talking points before the call and a drafted follow-up after.

Artisan doesn't publish prices. Plans are sized by lead volume, mailboxes, and dialer seats, and the smallest covers about 2,500 leads contacted a month. SaaStr, which is an Artisan customer, relays the CEO describing a credit model that usually comes to 30 to 60 cents per lead enrolled in a campaign, with $300 in free credits to start. The CEO also says that if iterating on who you contact, what you say, and when doesn't work, cold outbound isn't your channel. That's worth weighing if most of your customers come through referrals.

### 7. 11x

11x sells two AI agents. Alice runs outbound prospecting, outreach across channels, and meeting booking, and Julian qualifies inbound leads by phone, chat, and SMS ([11x](https://www.11x.ai/products/alice/pricing)). Plans include contact data, Gmail mailboxes that 11x sets up, warms up, and monitors, two-way CRM sync, and onboarding. 11x charges per lead rather than per email, so a three-touch sequence and a thirty-touch sequence cost the same.

The Growth plan starts at $3,750 a month billed annually, for up to five users and 2,000 new prospects a month. Matteo of Inscaler, a sales consultancy, reports that 11x's customer success team told his client the tool doesn't make much sense without a large total market. He adds that a market of one or two thousand companies can be used up in a few weeks ([Inscaler](https://www.inscaler.com/blog/i-tried-canceling-ai-sdr-contract-with-11x)). 11x fits a funded team with a large market and the budget for an annual contract.

### 8. Lavender Ora

Lavender built its name on an email coach that scores your drafts as you write them ([Zapier](https://zapier.com/blog/ai-sales-assistant/)). Ora, its newer agent, researches, writes, and sends cold email. You upload a lead list as a CSV file or from Salesforce, let Ora read your inbox to learn what works, and give it instructions the way you'd brief a rep ([Lavender](https://ora.im/)). Before writing, Ora researches the prospect, their company, and the market. In what Lavender calls LFG mode, Ora sends without a person approving each email ([Something Inc.](https://somethinginc.com/blog/lavender-ora-autonomous-ai-sdr-reality-check/)).

Ora is free to build and costs $500 per agent per month once you launch it, with no annual commitment. Each agent sends about 1,000 emails a month. Ora's site doesn't describe its approval settings, and the only CRM it names is Salesforce, as a place to import leads from. It suits a team that already likes Lavender's coaching and wants an agent that writes like its best-performing emails.

### 9. Qualified (Piper)

Qualified's Piper is an AI SDR for inbound buyers. It meets website visitors over chat, voice, or video, gives them a first-call style presentation, follows up with high-intent leads by email, and books meetings, drawing on the data in Salesforce and your other systems ([Qualified](https://www.qualified.com/ai-sdr)). Salesforce completed its purchase of Qualified in April 2026 ([Inscaler](https://www.inscaler.com/blog/i-tried-canceling-ai-sdr-contract-with-11x)).

Piper is built for companies with a lot of website traffic. Its smallest plan includes 250,000 web sessions a month, and every plan is priced through sales ([Qualified](https://www.qualified.com/pricing)). A small team whose inbound arrives as a few form fills a day gets more from fast research and a good reply after the form than from a live conversation on the site.

## Assistants that follow up after your sales calls

These assistants record your calls and turn them into summaries, follow-up emails, and CRM updates. They're the right first purchase when most of your selling happens on calls and the recap work is what slips.

### 10. Fathom

Fathom is an AI notetaker with the most generous free plan in this group. It gives you unlimited recordings, transcripts, and AI summaries, free forever, with a choice between capture without a bot (in beta) or a visible bot in the call ([Fathom](https://www.fathom.ai/pricing)). The Team plan costs $19 per user a month, or $15 billed annually, with a two-user minimum. Business costs $34 per user a month, or $25 billed annually, and adds CRM field sync, which updates records after each meeting, plus a deal view.

Lilach Bullock, an AI consultant, ran Fathom and Otter on about 60 of her own calls over 90 days. By her rough count, the tools pulled out the follow-up tasks correctly about 85% of the time, and she saved about 17 hours overall after time spent checking ([Lilach Bullock](https://www.lilachbullock.com/ai-notetaker-90-day-sales-call-experiment/)). Fathom records and summarizes, and writing the follow-up is still up to you. Kite connects to Fathom, reads each sales call's summary and action items, and drafts that follow-up for you to approve ([Kite](/integrations/fathom.md)).

### 11. Fireflies

Fireflies transcribes and summarizes calls and logs the notes in 13 CRMs. On its Business and Enterprise plans, a feature called Autofill drafts updates to contact, company, and deal fields in HubSpot or Salesforce after each meeting ([Timeeting](https://timeeting.com/fireflies-ai-review)). Nothing syncs until a person reviews it, and each extraction uses one AI credit. Newer features, including an email assistant and daily briefs, are moving Fireflies from a notetaker toward an assistant that takes actions.

Pro costs $10 per seat a month billed annually, or $18 monthly. Business costs $19 per seat a month billed annually, or $29 monthly ([Fireflies](https://fireflies.ai/pricing)). Tomas Laurinavicius, who reviewed it for Timeeting, says Business is worth it only if someone will work through the Autofill review queue. He also notes that the AI credit pool is shared across the team and doesn't grow as you add seats.

### 12. Sybill

Sybill goes further into the CRM than any other notetaker here. After every call and email, its CRM Autofill fills in the fields you chose, such as deal stage, risk, and next steps, in HubSpot, Salesforce, Zoho, Dynamics 365, or Pipedrive, usually within a few minutes ([Sybill](https://help.sybill.ai/en/articles/11899540-crm-autofill-feature-guide)). During a setup that takes about ten minutes, Sybill reads your past CRM entries, writes prompts that match how your team fills in each field, and asks you to approve them. It also drafts follow-up emails in your writing style, and those drafts never send without your review ([Sybill](https://help.sybill.ai/en/articles/8132340-using-the-ai-email-for-follow-ups-a-complete-guide)).

The free plan covers unlimited recordings and AI summaries for 20 meetings a month. Pro costs $30 per user a month billed annually, or $36 monthly, and pushes meeting summaries to your CRM. CRM Autofill comes with Business, at $90 per user a month billed annually, or $108 monthly, and covers 10 fields ([Sybill](https://www.sybill.ai/pricing)). Summaries, briefs, follow-up emails, and CRM Autofill don't use credits. Zapier notes that Sybill isn't built for prospecting ([Zapier](https://zapier.com/blog/ai-sales-assistant/)).

### 13. Avoma

Avoma combines a meeting assistant with a scheduler, and it charges only the people who record calls. The Startup plan costs $19 per recorder seat a month billed annually, or $29 monthly, for up to 25 paid seats, and anyone who only views recordings is free ([Avoma](https://www.avoma.com/pricing)). It includes transcription, AI notes, AI follow-up emails, scheduling, and notes saved automatically to Salesforce, HubSpot, Zoho, Pipedrive, or Copper.

Two add-ons cost $29 per seat a month billed annually, or $35 monthly. Conversation Intelligence adds call scoring and scorecards. Revenue Intelligence adds two-way CRM field updates, deal risk alerts, and forecasting. Pipe Playbook works out that three reps who record calls, plus a manager who only reviews them, would pay $144 a month on annual billing for the Startup plan with Conversation Intelligence ([Pipe Playbook](https://www.pipeplaybook.com/plays/is-gong-worth-it)). That per-recorder pricing makes Avoma a good fit for a small team with one manager who coaches from calls.

### 14. Gong

Gong is the call analysis platform many larger sales teams use to record, review, and coach, and it now runs AI agents too. Its AI Data Extractor listens to calls and emails and fills in CRM fields with no rep input, and other agents flag deal risks, draft emails, and brief reps before calls ([Gong](https://www.gong.io/platform/ai-agents-for-revenue-teams)). Gong doesn't publish prices. It charges per user plus a platform fee, through a custom quote on a term contract ([Pipe Playbook](https://www.pipeplaybook.com/plays/is-gong-worth-it)).

Pipe Playbook suggests skipping Gong if you have one to five reps and nobody whose job is coaching, or if you mainly need recordings, notes, and CRM sync. Florian of The AI Sales Lab bought Gong to speed up his team's follow-up. Six months later, most of his account managers didn't know the follow-up features existed, but reviewing the sales calls that had won the accounts now leaving led the team to re-onboard several accounts, and a few stayed ([The AI Sales Lab](https://aisaleslab.substack.com/p/we-bought-gong-to-take-better-notes)). Gong earns its price when someone on your team coaches from recordings every week.

## AI built into the CRM you already use

These assistants live inside your CRM and work on the contacts, deals, and history already there. They need no extra connections, but they're only as good as the records they read, and the most capable ones sit on the higher-priced plans. Before you add another subscription, check what your current CRM plan already includes ([100Xfounder](https://100xfounder.com/best-ai-sales-tools/)).

### 15. HubSpot

HubSpot's prospecting agent watches the companies you choose for intent signals, such as a funding round, a product launch, or research on topics you care about. It then picks contacts who match your target personas and writes outreach from what's in the CRM record ([HubSpot](https://knowledge.hubspot.com/prospecting/use-the-prospecting-agent)). You choose between reviewing each email and letting the agent send without review, and it picks send times inside the window you set. A daily email at 9 AM lists the drafts waiting for you and the companies it recommends, each with a reason. You can connect one outside data source at a time: Apollo, Surfe, ZoomInfo, or Seamless.

Major Tom, a digital agency that also sells HubSpot setup services, ran the agent on 1,000 leads that had gone quiet. In the first month, it booked 24 meetings, produced more than $750,000 in proposals, and closed a $200,000 deal ([Major Tom](https://www.majortom.com/mercury-blog/hubspot-prospecting-agent)). Major Tom had kept its HubSpot records in order for over a decade, and it says setup took two hours while the preparation took ten years. In its words, the agent "accelerates what's already there - the good and the bad." One person there now works on the agent nearly full time.

Since April 2026, HubSpot has charged $1 in HubSpot Credits for each lead the agent recommends for outreach, and its announcement says the agent is available to Pro and Enterprise customers ([HubSpot](https://www.hubspot.com/company-news/hubspots-customer-agent-and-prospecting-agent-now-you-pay-when-the-task-is-complete)). Sales Hub Professional starts at $90 per seat a month, plus a required one-time onboarding fee of $1,500 ([HubSpot](https://www.hubspot.com/pricing/sales?tier=starter)). The agent is a strong choice for a team that already runs on HubSpot with clean records. Kite also works in HubSpot, recording leads and research there through your connected account ([Kite](/integrations/hubspot.md)).

### 16. Attio

Attio is a newer CRM whose Workflows feature runs AI agents alongside your team. You describe a job in a sentence, such as researching each new lead, scoring it against your ideal customer profile, and creating a deal for a salesperson when the fit is strong, and Attio drafts the workflow ([Attio](https://attio.com/blog/orchestrate-revenue-agents)). The plays Attio lists include these:

- building a target list of qualified accounts for a sequence
- scoring leads against your ideal customer profile and routing them with a personalized opener
- briefing reps before each call with deal history and recent emails
- recapping meetings with a summary, updated fields, and drafted next steps
- watching deals that have gone quiet and drafting the nudge
- catching funding rounds, executive changes, and hiring spikes and queuing the right play

Every run is logged, so you can see what each agent read, decided, and did. An agent can only touch what the person it's assigned to could touch.

Attio charges per user. The free plan covers up to three seats, Plus costs $35 per user a month billed annually ($44 monthly) for up to 10 seats, and Pro costs $79 billed annually ($99 monthly) and adds call intelligence and sequences ([Attio](https://attio.com/pricing)). AI runs on monthly credits for each seat and for the workspace, and eligible startups can get up to 80% off. Attio fits a team ready to move its CRM to Attio. Its announcement doesn't say which plays send on their own and which only draft, so ask before you rely on one to send. Kite records leads in Attio as well.

### 17. Salesforce Agentforce

Salesforce's Agentforce SDR agent answers inbound leads by email around the clock. It sorts each reply, answers product questions from company files you upload, handles objections, books meetings, and copies the lead owner when it suggests a meeting ([Salesforce](https://www.salesforce.com/en-us/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/documents/guides/Agentforce-for-Sales-Development-Implementation-Guide.pdf)). Salesforce's setup guide says it's a good fit for teams with a large volume of leads. It works only by email, one org can have only one of these agents, and it requires Data Cloud, Salesforce Inbox, and Einstein Activity Capture.

Salesforce says AI can be added to its Core edition and above, which starts at $195 per user a month billed annually. Agentforce for Sales is a separate add-on from $125 per user a month ([Salesforce](https://www.salesforce.com/sales/pricing/)). Agentforce fits a team that already runs on Salesforce, has steady inbound volume, and has an admin to set it up.

### 18. Pipedrive

Pipedrive's AI is lighter and cheaper than the other CRMs here. Its Nova meeting intelligence gives you a brief before every meeting, a transcript of every call, and CRM updates to approve afterward, starting on the Lite plan at $14 per seat a month billed annually ([Pipedrive](https://www.pipedrive.com/en/pricing)). The Premium plan, at $59 per seat a month billed annually, adds AI that writes, summarizes, and replies to emails.

Pipedrive's Sales Assistant, a chat that answers questions such as "Which deals need my attention?" from your deals and activities, is in beta for a select group of users ([Pipedrive](https://support.pipedrive.com/en/article/sales-assistant)). Today it answers questions and writes text rather than taking actions. Pipedrive fits a small team that wants a simple pipeline CRM with AI help on calls and email, rather than an agent that runs outreach.

## A general assistant you can point at sales

### 19. Lindy

Lindy is a general AI assistant for whole teams. It records and summarizes meetings, prepares you before them and follows up after, manages your inbox, drafts replies in your voice, and connects to more than 1,500 tools ([Lindy](https://www.lindy.ai/pricing)). Anything with outside impact, such as sending an email, waits for your approval. Lindy costs $29.99 per user a month for 3,000 credits, every active user in the workspace is billed, and new accounts get $50 in free credits for seven days.

Its pricing page lists no prospect research, lead lists, or email sequences. Lindy fits someone who wants help across the whole workday and is happy to set up the sales routines themselves.

## How the 19 assistants compare

The table shows each assistant's main sales job, who presses send, and what a small team pays to start.

| Assistant | The sales job it takes | Who presses send | Starting price for a small team |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Kite | Prospect lists, outbound email, inbound replies, call follow-ups, and CRM records | Kite asks before sending by default, and you can let it send on its own | Free; Growth $100/month per workspace, no seat cap |
| RegieGO | Daily research, email, calls, LinkedIn drafts, and a built-in CRM | You choose which workflows send and which hold drafts | Free credits; Pro $49/month; Team $150/seat/month, two-seat minimum |
| Apollo | Prospect search, enrichment, and sequences | You apply the actions it drafts | Free; $49/seat/month billed annually |
| Clay | Web research on every row of a lead list | Clay researches, and another tool sends | Free; Launch $185/month |
| Instantly | Cold email, reply handling, and meeting booking | You approve replies, or Autopilot sends on higher plans | Starter bundle $94/month |
| Artisan | Outbound email, replies, and meeting booking | Ava sends on its own by default | Quoted through sales |
| 11x | Outbound and inbound conversations | The agents send | From $3,750/month billed annually |
| Lavender Ora | Cold email research, writing, and sending | Ora can send on its own | $500 per agent per month |
| Qualified (Piper) | Website conversations, inbound email, and meetings | Piper sends | Quoted through sales |
| Fathom | Call recordings, summaries, and action items | You send the follow-up | Free; Team $19/user/month |
| Fireflies | Call notes in your CRM and drafted field updates | You approve each field update | Free; Pro $18/seat/month ($10 billed annually) |
| Sybill | Call summaries, follow-up drafts, and CRM fields | You send follow-ups, and CRM fields update after setup | Free; Pro $36/user/month ($30 billed annually) |
| Avoma | Recordings, notes, follow-up emails, and scheduling | You send the follow-up | $29/recorder/month ($19 billed annually), viewers free |
| Gong | Call analysis, coaching, and CRM field updates | Reps send; agents fill CRM fields | Quoted through sales |
| HubSpot | Prospecting and outreach inside HubSpot | You review, or the agent sends without review | $1 per recommended lead, on Sales Hub Professional from $90/seat/month |
| Attio | Agent workflows for prospecting, triage, briefs, and follow-ups | Depends on the workflow | Free for three seats; Plus $35/user/month billed annually |
| Salesforce Agentforce | Inbound lead email and meeting booking | The agent replies | Core $195/user/month, plus Agentforce for Sales from $125/user/month |
| Pipedrive | Meeting briefs, transcripts, CRM updates, and AI email | You approve CRM updates | Lite $14/seat/month billed annually |
| Lindy | Meetings, inbox, and drafts across your tools | You approve anything with outside impact | $29.99/user/month |

Prices come from each vendor's pages and the sources cited above. Confirm current figures before you buy, because several change often.

## How to choose the right AI sales assistant

Start with the sales job that takes most of your week, then pick from the group built for it.

- **If you need the pipeline filled and nobody's job is to do it full time,** start with an assistant that takes several jobs at once. Kite builds the list, writes and sends the outreach, answers inbound leads, and records everything in your CRM, at one price for the whole team. RegieGO suits a team with someone who works a list of calls and emails every day.
- **If you'll do the prospecting yourself and want it faster,** use Apollo. Choose Clay when someone on your team will build and maintain research workflows.
- **If cold email at volume is your main motion,** look at Instantly. Consider Artisan or 11x when you have a large market and a budget for an annual contract.
- **If most of your selling happens on calls,** start with a notetaker. Fathom is the cheapest place to begin, Sybill goes furthest into your CRM fields, and Avoma charges only the people who record.
- **If your records already live in HubSpot, Attio, Salesforce, or Pipedrive,** check what your current plan includes before you buy something else. These agents get better the cleaner your records are.

Then do two quick checks. First, price the tool for the number of people who'll actually use it, including seat minimums, add-ons, and onboarding fees. Second, decide who presses send. Most assistants here let you approve every message at first and widen what they handle on their own once you trust their work.

## Common questions

### What's the difference between an AI sales assistant and an AI SDR?

An AI SDR is one kind of AI sales assistant, focused on booking first meetings. It writes and sends outreach, answers replies, and books time on a rep's calendar, often without approval on each message. Artisan, 11x, and Qualified sell AI SDRs. "AI sales assistant" is the wider term. It also covers notetakers that summarize calls, research tools that build lead lists, and CRM agents that update records.

### Is there a free AI sales assistant?

Several assistants on this list have a free plan you can do real work on. Kite's free plan includes access to the complete product and a one-time grant of usage credits. Apollo's free plan includes 900 credits per seat per year, Fathom records and summarizes unlimited calls for free, and Sybill's free plan covers summaries for 20 meetings a month. Clay, RegieGO, and Attio also have free plans, with limits on rows, credits, or seats. Most free plans run out once you send real volume, so check which limit you'll hit first.

### Can an AI sales assistant replace a salesperson?

An AI sales assistant can take over most of the research, writing, sending, and record-keeping that fills a salesperson's day, and good ones make sound judgment calls about who to contact and what to say. What it can't be is accountable for the result, so a person still owns the decision to let it act. Major Tom found that its reps became the operators of HubSpot's agent, spending their time on warmer conversations instead of cold follow-ups ([Major Tom](https://www.majortom.com/mercury-blog/hubspot-prospecting-agent)). Kite works the same way: it handles the work, asks before it sends until you trust it, and leaves the relationships and the final call to you.

### Do I need permission to record sales calls with an AI notetaker?

Often, yes. Pipe Playbook notes that some US states require every party on a call to consent to recording ([Pipe Playbook](https://www.pipeplaybook.com/plays/is-gong-worth-it)). Lilach Bullock tells every prospect at the start that the call is transcribed by AI, and she turns the notetaker off for sensitive conversations ([Lilach Bullock](https://www.lilachbullock.com/ai-notetaker-90-day-sales-call-experiment/)). Check the rules where you and your buyers are before you turn on automatic recording.

## Sources

- [The 8 best AI sales assistant software in 2026](https://zapier.com/blog/ai-sales-assistant/), Zapier
- [Make your follow-through as inevitable as your quota reset](https://regie.ai/use-cases/run-your-day), Regie.ai
- [Pricing that fits how you prospect](https://www.regie.ai/pricing), Regie.ai
- [Use the AI Assistant on Apollo](https://knowledge.apollo.io/hc/en-us/articles/39359204112397-Use-the-AI-Assistant-on-Apollo-to-Sell-Smarter), Apollo.io Knowledge Base
- [Apollo pricing](https://www.apollo.io/pricing), Apollo.io
- [Claygent pricing, features and alternatives](https://www.salesopsclub.com/software/claygent), Sales Ops Club
- [AI Reply Agent](https://help.instantly.ai/en/articles/11774076-ai-reply-agent), Instantly help center
- [Simple Pricing for Everyone](https://instantly.ai/pricing), Instantly
- [Hire Ava, give every rep a BDR](https://www.artisan.co/pricing), Artisan
- [Artisan's Ava 2.0: What a Fully Autonomous AI BDR Actually Looks Like in Production](https://www.saastr.com/artisans-ava-2-0-what-a-fully-autonomous-ai-bdr-actually-looks-like-in-production-with-ceo-jaspar-carmichael-jack/), SaaStr
- [Alice Pricing](https://www.11x.ai/products/alice/pricing), 11x
- [I Tried Canceling AI SDR contract with 11x](https://www.inscaler.com/blog/i-tried-canceling-ai-sdr-contract-with-11x), Inscaler
- [Ora: Your intelligent AI sales agent](https://ora.im/), Lavender
- [Your AI SDR doesn't need less supervision. It needs better supervision.](https://somethinginc.com/blog/lavender-ora-autonomous-ai-sdr-reality-check/), Something Inc.
- [Meet Piper, the #1 AI SDR Agent](https://www.qualified.com/ai-sdr), Qualified
- [Pricing](https://www.qualified.com/pricing), Qualified
- [Fathom pricing](https://www.fathom.ai/pricing), Fathom
- [I Let an AI Notetaker Sit in on 90 Days of Sales Calls](https://www.lilachbullock.com/ai-notetaker-90-day-sales-call-experiment/), Lilach Bullock
- [Fireflies pricing](https://fireflies.ai/pricing), Fireflies.ai
- [Fireflies AI Is Worth It Only If You Pay for Autofill](https://timeeting.com/fireflies-ai-review), Timeeting
- [CRM Autofill Feature Guide](https://help.sybill.ai/en/articles/11899540-crm-autofill-feature-guide), Sybill help center
- [Using the AI Email for Follow-ups: A complete guide](https://help.sybill.ai/en/articles/8132340-using-the-ai-email-for-follow-ups-a-complete-guide), Sybill help center
- [Sybill Pricing](https://www.sybill.ai/pricing), Sybill
- [Avoma pricing](https://www.avoma.com/pricing), Avoma
- [How much does Gong cost? Is Gong worth it?](https://www.pipeplaybook.com/plays/is-gong-worth-it), Pipe Playbook
- [Gong Agents: Turn intelligence into agentic execution](https://www.gong.io/platform/ai-agents-for-revenue-teams), Gong
- [We bought Gong to take better notes. It told us why customers leave.](https://aisaleslab.substack.com/p/we-bought-gong-to-take-better-notes), The AI Sales Lab
- [Set up and use the prospecting agent](https://knowledge.hubspot.com/prospecting/use-the-prospecting-agent), HubSpot Knowledge Base
- [HubSpot's Customer Agent and Prospecting Agent: Now you pay when the task is complete](https://www.hubspot.com/company-news/hubspots-customer-agent-and-prospecting-agent-now-you-pay-when-the-task-is-complete), HubSpot
- [Sales Hub pricing](https://www.hubspot.com/pricing/sales?tier=starter), HubSpot
- [HubSpot Prospecting Agent: 1,000 dormant leads, 24 meetings, $750K in proposals](https://www.majortom.com/mercury-blog/hubspot-prospecting-agent), Major Tom
- [Orchestrate revenue agents with Workflows](https://attio.com/blog/orchestrate-revenue-agents), Attio
- [Attio pricing](https://attio.com/pricing), Attio
- [Agentforce for Sales Development Implementation Guide](https://www.salesforce.com/en-us/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/documents/guides/Agentforce-for-Sales-Development-Implementation-Guide.pdf), Salesforce
- [Sales Cloud Pricing](https://www.salesforce.com/sales/pricing/), Salesforce
- [Pipedrive pricing](https://www.pipedrive.com/en/pricing), Pipedrive
- [Sales Assistant](https://support.pipedrive.com/en/article/sales-assistant), Pipedrive Knowledge Base
- [Lindy pricing](https://www.lindy.ai/pricing), Lindy
- [Best AI sales tools in 2026: prospecting, outreach and CRM AI](https://100xfounder.com/best-ai-sales-tools/), 100Xfounder