What a US in-house SDR actually costs you, built from primary data (Bridge Group, IRS, KFF, BLS), with ramp and attrition modelled instead of assumed away. Side by side with the agency prices that are actually published, per meeting booked.
These are United States numbers. The employer load is built from US statute (FICA, FUTA, employer-share health) and US salary benchmarks, so it does not describe a hire anywhere else. We have built the same thing on local statute for the UK, UAE and Saudi Arabia, or compare all four side by side.
A US in-house SDR at the Bridge Group 2025 median ($55K base / $80K OTE) costs roughly $104,000–$122,000 a year fully loaded — OTE plus employer load (IRS/KFF/BLS primary data) plus tooling. And that buys about nine productive months per rep-year: ramp is 3.0 months, median annual attrition is 40%, and only 60% of SDRs hit quota.
The unit of comparison that survives scrutiny is cost per meeting booked. Published agency comparables run $8,000–$11,000/month per US-based SDR; Division50 runs $3,500–$5,500/month depending on the market, $5,500/month ($16,500/quarter) for a US-market SDR, roughly $367–$458 per meeting at the 12–15 meetings/month benchmark. Every figure below carries its source and date.
Defaults are the published US benchmarks — Bridge Group 2025 SDR Metrics Report (n=351) — not our estimates. Adjust them to your market; the comparison updates live.
OTE at the 68:32 split, employer load from IRS/KFF primary data, plus tooling. Priced against the ~9 productive months a rep-year actually delivers after the 3.0-month ramp — with a 40% chance of repeating recruiting and ramp inside twelve months.
Sanity check: the primary-source build-up in our benchmark report lands at $104,000–$122,000/year for a $55,000–$60,000 base — before management overhead and commission variance.
Per dedicated SDR. Every agency figure carries its confidence grade — published prices read from the vendor's own pricing page, self-reported ones from the vendor's own blog or marketing. Sources below.
| Provider | Monthly | Cost / meeting* | Where the reps sit | Figure status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Your in-house SDR | $12,478 /productive mo | $891 | Your office / payroll | Your inputs + IRS/KFF/BLS load |
| EBQ | $10,000 | $714 | United States | Published price |
| SalesRoads | $10,779 | $770 | United States | Published price |
| memoryBlue (absorbed Operatix, 2023) | $11,000 | $786 | United States | Self-reported |
| Belkins | $8,000 | $571own guarantee implies ~$960/appt | Eastern Europe / Balkans / Caucasus | Self-reported |
| Division50 | $3,500–$5,500by region · $5,500 US-market billed $16,500/quarter | $393US rate. $367–$458 at the 12–15 benchmark | Disclosed before you sign — ask us | Our own rate |
*Cost per meeting divides each monthly price by your meetings input (14/mo). The in-house row is priced per productive month — an agency seat has no ramp gap on your payroll, so its calendar month IS a productive month. Ramp and attrition risk sits with you in-house; under an agency it sits with the agency.
On our pricing. Pricing depends on the market your SDR sells into. $5,500/month is the US-market dedicated SDR; rates start at $3,500/month for other regions. The comparisons on this page use the US rate, because everything they are compared against is US cost.
Full methodology and the numbers vendors don't publish: What an SDR actually costs in 2026 →
Cash compensation. Your base salary input is grossed up to OTE at the Bridge Group 2025 68:32 base:variable split (their study, n=351 B2B companies, puts the median at $55K base / $80K OTE; RepVue independently reports $60K / $85K from 8,462 verified salaries). Employer load adds FICA at 7.65% (IRS Topic 751), FUTA (IRS Topic 759), employer-share health insurance at $7,885/year (KFF 2025 Employer Health Benefits Survey), and retirement at 4.7% (Vanguard How America Saves 2025) — cross-checked against BLS ECEC, which puts private-industry benefits at 30.1% of total compensation.
Tooling is a toggle: a lean stack at $3,830/seat/year (Apollo Professional, LinkedIn Sales Navigator Advanced, HubSpot Sales Pro — all published prices), or a real outbound stack with intent data and a dialer at $12,000–$15,000/seat/year. Ramp + attrition uses the Bridge Group 2025 findings — 3.0 months to full productivity, 40% median annual attrition, 60% of SDRs at quota — to price each meeting against the ~9 productive months a rep-year actually delivers, rather than 12 calendar months.
The outsourced side shows only figures vendors publish or state themselves, each labelled with its confidence grade — no secondhand listicle numbers, no averaging away of disagreements. Cost per meeting divides each monthly price by your meetings input; the Bridge Group benchmark is 12–15 meetings per SDR per month, and a healthy mid-market band is $150–$600 per meeting. If a vendor leads with dials per day instead, check it against the benchmark: the 2025 median is 44–46 dials/day.
Dataset verified 2026; re-verified quarterly. Full write-up, including where each agency's reps actually sit: What an SDR actually costs in 2026. This calculator runs entirely in your browser and stores nothing you type; the optional email step only sends an address if you ask for the breakdown.