How much does an outsourced SDR cost in the UK?

Ashleigh Holmes

Oct 8

Outsourced SDR services in the UK typically cost between £3,500 and £10,000 a month, according to ORRJO's 2026 UK pricing comparison. Flowd starts at £5,000 a month, which gives you a dedicated 7-person outbound team, GTM strategy, prospecting across email and calls, and a monthly meeting target agreed with you, based on your market and your sales team's capacity. This post covers what drives that price, which pricing model to choose, what a fair quote includes, and how to calculate a cost per meeting that tells you whether the investment makes sense.

Outsourced SDR pricing at a glance

The short answer, for most UK B2B businesses:

Team retainer: £3,000 to £10,000+ a month. Full outbound team, fixed monthly fee.
Dedicated SDR seat: £2,500 to £5,000 a month. One named SDR, full or part time.
Pay per meeting: £150 to £600 per meeting. Fee only on attended, qualified meetings.
Hybrid: Variable. Retainer plus a cost-per-meeting bonus.

Ranges based on published UK pricing guides from Supernova AI, The Lead Gen Company and SendIQ.

Smaller agencies and email-led programmes sit towards the bottom of that range. Fully managed, multi-channel programmes often cost £6,000 to £12,000+ a month. At the lower end, you are getting a leaner setup with fewer inboxes and a smaller meeting target. At the higher end, you are paying for a larger team, more sending infrastructure, and a higher monthly meeting commitment.

VAT at 20% is extra on most B2B service quotes, so factor that into your budget conversation.

What are the pricing models for outsourced SDR services?

Team retainer

The most common model. You pay a fixed monthly fee for a dedicated outbound team that handles everything, from data and copy through to reply management and CRM handover. It is predictable, scales with your campaign, and suits businesses that want consistent pipeline without the unpredictability of pay-per-meeting costs. Most agencies, including Flowd, use this model as their primary offering.

Dedicated SDR seat

Sometimes called SDR as a service, this model gives you one named SDR embedded in your business on a part-time or full-time basis. It suits businesses that want closer integration with their own sales team and are happy to manage day-to-day activity. The downside: one person is a single point of failure. If they are sick or leave, your pipeline stops.

Pay per meeting

You pay only when a meeting is attended and qualifies against your ICP. It removes the risk of paying for zero results, but the per-meeting cost is higher than what you would pay under a retainer for the same number of meetings. It also creates a perverse incentive for agencies to book easy meetings rather than the right ones. Ask exactly what counts as a qualified meeting before you sign anything.

Hybrid

A base retainer that covers infrastructure and operations, with a bonus fee per meeting booked above a threshold. This aligns incentives on both sides and is worth exploring if you want pay-per-meeting accountability with retainer reliability.

For a detailed breakdown of how these models compare across different types of lead generation activity, see our post on lead generation pricing models.

What does the monthly fee include?

A fair outsourced SDR quote covers all of the following. If an agency leaves any of these off, ask whether they are included or charged separately.

What should be included:

Data and list building to your ICP
Sending domains and inboxes (set up, warmed, monitored)
Email copy, subject line testing and ongoing optimisation
Campaign management and sequencing
Reply handling and lead qualification
Show-rate follow-up (confirmation reminders, rescheduling)
CRM handover of qualified leads
Weekly or monthly performance reporting

Hidden costs to ask about:

One-off set-up fees (some agencies charge £500 to £3,000 to onboard, others charge nothing)
Data charges on top of the retainer
Third-party tool licences passed through to the client
Minimum contract terms (watch for 6-month or 12-month lock-ins)

At Flowd, pricing starts at £5,000 a month and scales up to £30,000 a month, depending on your targets. Every campaign includes the full team, all infrastructure and data, with no hidden tool costs. All campaigns run on a 30-day break clause, so you are not locked into a long contract if the campaign is not delivering.

What do you get from Flowd for £5,000 a month?

A low price is not the same as good value. The real question is what the monthly fee pays for. With Flowd, it pays for more than booked meetings:

GTM strategy

Before any outreach starts, we work with you on your go-to-market strategy: which markets to target, which buyers to speak to, and what offer and message will make them reply. Each campaign gets its own strategy, not a template.

Multi-channel prospecting on email and calls

We contact your prospects by outbound email and by phone, with our SDRs calling the same decision-makers that receive your emails. Outreach is timed on buying signals, so prospects hear from you when they are most likely to need you.

Brand visibility

Every campaign puts your name in front of the same decision-makers many times, across email and calls. Outreach goes out from branded domains, with messaging that matches your brand. Prospects who do not reply this month still know who you are when they are ready to buy.

A full team, data and reporting

You get a 7-person outbound team, a dedicated account manager, bespoke lists from a 500M+ contact database, and a real-time reporting portal. An in-house SDR is 1 person who must do the strategy, the data, the emails and the calls alone.

What is a fair cost per meeting?

The most useful number in any outsourced SDR quote is the implied cost per meeting. Calculate it like this:

Monthly fee ÷ attended, qualified meetings = cost per meeting

If you are paying £6,000 a month for 10 meetings, your cost per meeting is £600.

Be careful when you compare a retainer with a pay-per-meeting price. A retainer usually also pays for strategy, data, calls and the brand exposure your outreach creates, not only the meetings.

Whether that is good value depends entirely on your deal value. A business with an average order value of £10,000 needs to close 1 deal from every 17 meetings to break even at that cost. A business with an AOV of £100,000 is profitable from a much lower close rate.

The question to ask is: how many meetings do I need to close 1 deal, and what is that deal worth? If the maths works, the price is right.

2 things to check before you accept the cost-per-meeting figure an agency quotes: what counts as a qualified meeting (ask for the definition in writing), and what their show rate is. Flowd's meeting attendance rate is 94%, which means a booked meeting almost always turns into an attended one. A low show rate inflates your real cost per meeting significantly.

Outsourced vs in-house SDR: how do the costs compare?

In the first year, an in-house SDR in the UK costs approximately £62,000 to £85,000. This includes base salary and commission (the UK median on-target earnings are around £56,000), 15% employer National Insurance, pension contributions, software, equipment, training and recruitment fees of 20 to 25%. That is £5,200 to £7,100 a month before the role books a single meeting, and before the cost of management time. Then add around 3 months of ramp time (The Bridge Group's 2025 average), often longer for complex sales, before they are fully productive.

An outsourced SDR service from Flowd starts at £5,000 a month. For that, you get a 7-person team already up and running, GTM strategy, prospecting across email and calls, and the first meetings within 14 days of onboarding.

That is a lower first-year cost, a faster start, more channels, and no single point of failure if someone leaves. For a full breakdown of the in-house vs outsourced calculation, see our post on the full cost of an in-house SDR.

What pushes the price up or down?

Not all outbound campaigns cost the same to run. Here is what moves the price:

Higher cost:

Senior or hard-to-reach buyers (C-suite, PE-backed, enterprise procurement teams)
Small or niche total addressable market that requires more research per contact
Multi-channel campaigns (email plus phone plus LinkedIn)
A high monthly meeting target

Lower cost:

Well-defined ICP with a large, accessible contact list
Email-only campaigns with a modest meeting target
Sectors with high reply rates (professional services, industrial, mid-market)

How do you check an outsourced SDR quote?

Before you sign, ask every agency these questions:

What counts as a qualified meeting? Get the definition in writing. "Attended" is not the same as "qualified."
What is your show rate? Most B2B benchmarks put no-shows at around 15 to 20%, so a show rate below 80% is a warning sign.
What is included in the monthly fee? Ask specifically about data, domains, and tool licences.
Is there a set-up fee? Some agencies charge up to £3,000 on top of the first month.
What is the minimum contract term? Month-to-month or short break clauses are a sign of confidence in the results.
How many meetings are you targeting per month? Get this in writing, not just as an aspiration.

For a full list of questions to ask before you hire, see our post on questions to ask a lead generation agency.

Recycling Lives asked similar questions before partnering with Flowd. Their campaign generated 77 meetings and £1.5M in pipeline. One of those meetings turned into a deal worth nearly £1 million a year. See the Recycling Lives case study.

Frequently asked questions

Is an outsourced SDR cheaper than hiring one in-house?

In most cases, yes, especially in the first year. An in-house SDR costs approximately £62,000 to £85,000 in the first year, before management time, plus around 3 months of ramp time. Flowd's outsourced SDR service starts at £5,000 a month, with meetings typically starting within 2 weeks. You also get a full team, GTM strategy and prospecting across email and calls, rather than a single hire.

How many meetings should an outsourced SDR book each month?

It depends on your market and the pricing model. At Flowd, we agree a monthly meeting target with you, based on your market and your sales team's capacity. The right benchmark for your business depends on your ICP, your deal cycle, and the size of your addressable market. Ask any agency to show you meeting targets from comparable clients.

Is there a minimum contract with an outsourced SDR service?

It varies by agency. Long minimum terms (6 or 12 months) can be a sign that the agency needs time to hide underperformance. Flowd runs on a 30-day break clause, because the results make clients want to stay.