Best Cold Calling Companies in 2026, Compared

When you outsource cold calling you are buying one of three things, and vendors sell all three under the same words. You can buy dials, where you pay for activity and carry every bit of the outcome risk. You can buy conversations or contacts attempted, which is what a per-lead price covers. Or you can buy booked meetings, where the vendor carries the risk and therefore has a reason to book meetings your reps will sit through for ten minutes and then leave. The vendors below are a mix of all three, and the first job on any sales call is working out which one is in front of you.

We are Sales.co. We sell managed outbound and we are on this list at number thirteen, which we picked ourselves. Discount the ranking accordingly. Everything else here can be checked against the vendor's own site in about two minutes, ours included, and we read all of them on 3 September 2026. Where a site does not state something, we write "not stated" rather than filling the gap from a directory listing. Numbers vendors publish about themselves are labelled as claims, because that is what they are.

Nobody publishes an hourly rate

Search for what outsourced cold calling costs per hour and you get a tight consensus: roughly $8 to $15 an hour offshore, $35 to $75 an hour in the US. We went looking for the vendor pages those numbers came from. There aren't any. Not one of the fifteen cold calling firms we read states a per-hour price anywhere on its own website. Several of the pages publishing those hourly ranges belong to agencies that do not publish a rate of their own, which makes them market commentary written by interested parties rather than price disclosure.

Hit Rate Solutions is a clean example of the pattern. Its FAQ says that in the US hourly rates typically run $15 to $30. That is the company describing the market, not quoting itself. Its own price sits behind a "Calculate the Price" flow. Intelemark goes further and argues in public that time-based fixed-cost billing beats performance pricing, saying its approach can be 30 to 50 percent cheaper than performance-driven competitors, and then publishes no hourly figure to check that against.

The units that vendors do publish are per month, per lead dialed, or per meeting. So if you are budgeting from an hourly number you found in a rate guide, you are budgeting from something no vendor has agreed to.

The single most useful published number in the category comes from CIENCE, which prices SDR seats by seniority and by region on the same table. A Level 1 scripted SDR is $1,500 a month offshore, $2,500 in Europe and $4,500 in the US. At Level 3 the same three columns read $3,500, $4,500 and $6,500. That is a three times onshore premium at entry level, stated in public by a vendor that sells both. Every other firm makes you infer the geography premium from vague positioning copy. CIENCE hands you the number.

Onshore, offshore, or unstated

Caller location is the fact we ranked on, for two reasons. It drives price more than anything else on a vendor's page, and unlike claimed results it is something the vendor either states or does not.

Seven firms state US-based callers explicitly. Superhuman Prospecting writes that all of its cold callers and sales development reps are based in the United States. Upcall says its agents are 100% human-powered and US-based. Intelemark says US-based agents. VSA Prospecting calls itself a US-based BPO call center. SalesHive says 100% US-based SDRs with an offshore option available, which is the most honest version of the claim on this list because it names the exception. SalesRoads does not put a geography line in its copy but positions itself against offshore alternatives on its vertical pages. Sales Focus Inc. states that its callers are W-2 employees who undergo drug and background checks, which implies a US employment model without naming the country.

The offshore and mixed group is smaller and more varied. CIENCE sells all three regions off one price table. Hit Rate Solutions is straightforwardly Philippines-based, with its operations address in Bacolod and a representative office in Chicago. Pearl Lemon Leads is in London. Callbox has six offices across four continents including the Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore and Colombia, and sells 50+ countries and 15+ languages as the product. Martal Group claims 200+ onshore sales executives without saying which shore, given the company operates across North America, the EU and LATAM.

Then there is the group that says nothing. Outbound Sales Pro publishes a detailed market rate card and does not state where its callers sit. EBQ runs appointment setting via cold calling out of Austin and does not either. We are in this group too, which we get into below. Silence here is worth reading as information: a vendor with US callers and US pricing has an obvious commercial reason to say so on the homepage, so a vendor that stays quiet is usually either mixed, offshore, or assembling the team after you sign. That is not a reason to rule anyone out. It is a reason to ask on the first call, and to ask for recordings.

The comparison table

1. Superhuman Prospecting

Founded 2017 in Philadelphia, grown from one employee to 45 according to the founder's own account on the about page. The company sells cold calling as the core product rather than as a channel inside a broader program, which makes it unusual on this list.

Caller location is stated flatly: all cold callers and sales development reps are based in the United States. Superhuman is also one of the few vendors here with a real price page. Calls Only Flex Subscriptions start at $1,998 a month. Premium SDR Bundles start at $4,995 a month. List building is priced at $3.00 per contact and CRM integration at $250. Contracts are month-to-month with no long-term commitment.

What you buy at the entry tier is dials, not booked meetings, which is worth being clear-eyed about. The bundle tier is where appointment setting sits. The manufacturing page publishes a case study claiming a 1.76% appointment setting rate, 75 sales appointments and 170 leads over ten months, which is a useful order-of-magnitude even though it is the vendor's own number. The company claims work with over 1,200 companies and across 50-plus industries, and markets a proprietary H2H script methodology.

Best fit: a US-market seller who wants US voices on the phone, wants to start small, and wants to know the monthly number before booking a call.

The limitation: the pricing page carries an asterisk saying an additional setup fee may apply and never states the amount, so the published starting price is a floor with an unknown addition on top. Ask for the setup figure in the first email.

2. Intelemark

Based in Scottsdale, Arizona. Founding year not stated. The service list is the broadest phone offering here: B2B appointment setting, lead generation, LinkedIn lead generation, event registration, customer reactivation, database cleanup, lead qualification, emergency telemarketing, sales insourcing, market research surveys, tradeshow support, inbound call center and tiered technical support.

Callers are stated as US-based. Intelemark is the one firm in this set that makes an explicit argument for time-based billing, saying on its healthcare page that its time-based, fixed-cost approach to lead qualification can be between 30 and 50 percent cheaper than performance-driven competitors. Having made that argument, it publishes no rate, which we found genuinely odd. Contract terms are not stated either.

Verticals named include healthcare, technology, financial, education, logistics, manufacturing, consulting and marketing, and the healthcare page is specific about buyer titles, naming CMOs, CCOs, CXOs, directors and administrators across hospitals, outpatient clinics, surgical centers, imaging centers, physician practices and group purchasing organizations. The company claims 98% of clients are satisfied and would refer it, and more than 90 years of combined healthcare calling experience.

Best fit: a buyer who wants a US phone team on a time-and-materials basis, particularly for work that is not appointment setting, like database cleanup, event registration or reactivating lapsed accounts.

The limitation: to compare a time-based model against a per-meeting model you need the rate, and you cannot get it without a call.

3. SalesRoads

Boca Raton, Florida. The site states more than 19 years of experience without naming a founding year. It claims more than 500 companies served and 100,000 opportunities generated, three Inc. 5000 listings, and it acquired VSA Prospecting in January 2025, which means two entries on this list are now under one roof.

Channels are outbound calling, outbound email and list building, with calling in front. The workforce is remote and the company's origin story involves hiring military spouses. It does not print a caller-location line, but its vertical pages contrast dedicated experienced reps with offshore alternatives, which is a positioning claim rather than a statement of fact about staffing.

What it sells is appointments. Pricing is not published, and the vertical pages instead ask prospects to pick an expected monthly investment from under $5,000, $5,000 to $10,000, or $10,000 and up. That band is a floor signal without a price. Contract terms are the clearest thing on the site: cancel anytime, no commitments, stated on multiple pages.

Only four vertical pages exist, covering manufacturing, healthcare, SaaS and FED/SLED, which is the narrowest genuine set we found and reads as focus rather than thin coverage. The manufacturing page names Parker, Optimas, Copperweld, Layfield and Körber as clients and claims $2.2M revenue for Parker and a $13.9M pipeline for Optimas.

Best fit: mid-market manufacturing, healthcare or public-sector selling where the buyer answers a phone.

The limitation: the stat counters on the manufacturing page render as "0+ Appointments Set" and "0+ SDR Teams Built" because the animation never fires, so the site's own proof is currently missing on the page most likely to be read by its best-fit buyer.

4. SalesHive

Founded 2016, remote-first since the start, HQ not stated. It claims 129,000+ meetings booked, $2.5B+ in pipeline, 2,285 clients and coverage of 47+ industries.

The staffing statement is more careful than most: 100% US-based SDRs, with an offshore option available. Naming the exception is rarer than it should be in this category, and it means you should ask which one you are being quoted. Channels are phone only, or phone plus email, and the company runs its own tooling: an eMod personalization engine, a power dialer, a smart inbox and two-way CRM sync.

What you buy is meetings, sold against daily touch tiers of 150+, 250+ or 500+, either full-service or platform-only. Pricing is a flat monthly fee with no figure published. The pricing page instead states $0 setup fees ever, one all-inclusive monthly fee, annual plans at a lower monthly rate than month-to-month, and that every quote is built on your targets and volume. Contract terms are month to month with cancellation on written notice.

SalesHive also has 47 dedicated industry pages, each with a distinct buyer-title list, which is the deepest genuine vertical coverage in the research set. The wealth management page targets CFOs and 401(k) plan sponsors, for instance, not retail investors.

Best fit: a buyer who wants US callers, a stated activity floor per day, and the ability to leave on notice.

The limitation: the daily touch tiers count touches, not dials, so a 250-touch tier could be mostly email. Pin down the phone share before signing.

5. VSA Prospecting

Founded 2001 in Haddon Township, New Jersey, and now part of SalesRoads following the January 2025 acquisition. It describes itself as a US-based BPO call center and is a certified woman-owned business.

The service list covers lead generation and appointment setting, inbound call center work, inside sales, list building, market research and incident reporting. The inbound side is real rather than decorative, which distinguishes VSA from the pure outbound shops: if you need someone to answer the phone as well as make calls, that is a short list.

No rates are published. The only figures on the site are outcome claims: potential cost savings of 50% on handling incoming calls, and returns often around 400% on lead generation programs. The company also claims two-plus decades of call handling, 1,000 inbound and outbound clients, 4.3 million phone calls, 50,000 sales appointments and $150M+ in client closings, and displays a 4.5 trust score based on 1,500 reviews. Contract terms are not stated.

Verticals named are healthcare, education, manufacturing and logistics, technology, government, construction, digital marketing, medical billing, software and ecommerce.

Best fit: a company that wants a single US team handling both outbound prospecting and inbound calls, especially in a regulated or field-service industry.

The limitation: nothing about price or contract terms is public, and the ownership change means the relationship you sign may sit inside a larger organisation than the one on the website.

6. Upcall

Upcall is the odd one out and the most useful entry for a specific kind of buyer. Founding year, HQ and team size are all unstated. What it does state is that calls are 100% human-powered by vetted US-based agents, and that pricing is per lead.

The published rates are $3.50 to $7.50 per lead on the Standard plan and $3.50 to $5.00 per lead on the SMB plan, with named Reseller and Enterprise tiers above. The minimum is 1,000 leads per project. Engagements are project-based with no long-term commitment.

Read that price carefully. It is a per-contact-dialed price, not a per-qualified-lead price in the appointment-setting sense. At $5 per lead, 1,000 leads is $5,000 for a defined calling project, which sits in the same range as a month of retainer at several vendors above but buys a completely different thing. Comparing $5 per lead against a $250 per-meeting rate is comparing an input to an output, and the conversion between them is the whole game.

Best fit: a one-off or recurring calling project with a known list, such as event follow-up, lead qualification on inbound signups, a survey or a reactivation push, where you want US voices and you can define the script yourself.

The limitation: no industry pages, no stated location, and a platform model that gives you callers on demand rather than a named team learning your product over months. For a complex enterprise sale that is a poor fit.

7. Sales Focus Inc.

States that it pioneered the sales outsourcing industry in 1998 and cites 28 years of experience. HQ is not given on the homepage. The model is different from the retainer shops: it builds and hires you a dedicated team, covering outside sales, inside sales and lead generation, plus sales management, sales recruitment outsourcing and digital marketing.

Caller location is implied rather than stated. The site says the callers are W-2 employees who undergo drug and background checks, which points to a US employment model without naming the country. If that matters to your compliance team, get it in writing.

Pricing is not published and contract terms are not stated. The one commitment on the page is a delivery guarantee: a new sales team launched in 45 days or less. That number tells you something about the model. A firm that assigns you existing capacity can start in a week; a firm that recruits for you needs a month and a half.

Claims on the site include $1.2B generated in gross revenue for clients, a 37% average revenue increase, and 12,500 sales agents hired and trained. Industries named run from energy and telecommunications through healthcare, IT, manufacturing, pharmaceutical, finance, hospitality, retail and EV charging.

Best fit: a company that wants a dedicated hired team it can direct, closer to staffing than to agency work, and can wait six weeks to start.

The limitation: no price, no contract terms, no stated channel mix, and a 45-day ramp before anyone dials.

8. CIENCE

CIENCE now sits inside the graph8 group alongside Tenbound, with a group address in Miami and a Boston office. The about page describes a decade of managed outbound, inbound and SDR services. Founding year is not stated.

It publishes the most detailed price card in the category, by a distance. The core plan is a $5,000 one-time GTM system setup, $2,000 a month for a strategic team and $499 a month for the graph8 platform license, giving a first-month total of $7,499, with four campaigns and 75,000 monthly platform credits included. SDR capacity is optional and priced by seniority and region: Level 1 scripted seats at $1,500 offshore, $2,500 Europe, $4,500 US; Level 2 independent seats at $2,500, $3,500 and $5,500; Level 3 data-driven seats at $3,500, $4,500 and $6,500. SDR onboarding is $1,000 per seat, one-time. Per-meeting fees are described as calculated from an ROI goal, and a Revenue System Setup runs $1,000 to $25,000 depending on complexity. Terms are month-to-month after setup, with seats scaling up or down.

The regional split is the reason CIENCE is worth reading even if you buy elsewhere. It is the only vendor we found that puts a price on the onshore decision, and it does so as a seller of both options rather than as an advocate for one.

Best fit: a buyer who wants to mix regions deliberately, for example running offshore Level 1 seats on a high-volume SMB list while keeping a US Level 3 seat on named enterprise accounts.

The limitation: the fee structure has a lot of separate lines, and the setup and platform charges land before any SDR seat does. Total the whole card for month one before comparing it to a flat retainer somewhere else.

9. Callbox

Founded 2004, headquartered in Encino, California, with six offices across four continents including the US, Australia, Singapore, Malaysia, Colombia and the Philippines. It states 700+ full-time staff and coverage of 50+ countries in 15+ languages, which makes it the largest operation here.

Phone is one channel inside a multi-channel program that also uses email, LinkedIn, web and chat, social, retargeting, content and webinars, run through a proprietary platform called Pipeline. If you want a pure calling vendor, this is not one. If you want calling in Spanish into Colombia and in English into Singapore off the same account, there is nothing else on this list that does it.

Pricing is not published. A lead generation pricing page and a Request Pricing CTA exist and show no figures. Contract terms are not stated.

The industry pages are among the better ones. The medical page lists buyers from general and specialist hospitals through diagnostic laboratories, health insurance partners, dental and orthodontic clinics and veterinarian offices. The manufacturing page targets plant operations directors, procurement managers and C-suite executives across semiconductor, additive manufacturing and medical equipment sub-segments, and claims a 25% average reduction in six-to-twelve-month sales cycles by combining AI intent data with human outreach.

Best fit: multi-country or multi-language calling programs, and complex technical sales into named industries.

The limitation: nothing about price, contract length or the balance between phone and the other channels is public, and with a 700-person firm the size of the account you bring determines the seniority of the team you get.

10. Pearl Lemon Leads

London-based. Founding year, team size and caller location are all unstated, though the UK base and the client focus point at UK and European calling.

It publishes per-service monthly floors, which is rare, and cold calling is a line item at £2,997 or more per month. The surrounding card reads: cold email from £2,497, LinkedIn lead generation from £2,497, multi-channel from £3,497, SEO lead gen from £2,997, end-to-end sales from £6,697, and appointment setting at £4,497. That last figure is instructive, because it prices the difference between paying for dials and paying for meetings inside one vendor's own card. Contract terms are not stated.

The vertical list is unusually specific for a firm this size and is heavily weighted to professional services: accredited investor, antitrust law, commercial real estate finance, complex litigation, corporate finance, hedge fund, high-stakes litigation, medical malpractice, outsourced legal, patent attorney, pharmaceutical litigation, private banking, securities law, venture capital and wealth management, among others. Those pages sit at the root of the domain rather than under an industries index.

Best fit: UK or EU calling into professional services and finance, where a British caller is an asset rather than a complication.

The limitation: the published floors are floors in pounds, with no contract terms attached and no statement of where the callers actually sit. For a US-market program the currency and time zone both work against you.

11. Hit Rate Solutions

The clearest offshore entry. Operations are in Bacolod, Negros Occidental, in the Philippines, with a representative office at 205 North Michigan Avenue in Chicago. Agents serve the US, Canada and Australia. Founding year and team size are not stated.

The service mix runs wider than prospecting: outbound lead generation, appointment setting, cold calling, data mining, sales calls and surveys, plus inbound phone answering, customer support, order taking and virtual receptionist work, plus virtual assistance. Contract terms are flexible month-to-month with no setup costs or hidden fees.

Own rates are not published. There is a Plans and Pre-Estimate flow with a Calculate the Price step instead. Its FAQ does quote general market context, saying US hourly rates typically range $15 to $30, and that is worth flagging clearly: it is the company characterising the market, not naming its own price. Claims on the site include 24/7 operations, a five-second average response time, a 98% call quality assurance score and onboarding in 7 to 14 days.

Best fit: high-volume dialing where the job is qualification against a script and the cost per dial matters more than the seniority of the voice: SMB lists, survey work, data verification, or covering hours your own team does not work.

The limitation: no published price of its own, and the offshore model is a poor match for calls where the prospect is a senior US executive who will screen anything that does not sound local. Ask for recordings from accounts in your industry before committing.

12. Outbound Sales Pro

Founding year, HQ, team size and caller location are all unstated, which puts it in the group where you have to ask everything on the call. Cold calling is the lead service, alongside email outreach, LinkedIn automation, website visitor identification and market validation work.

It earns its place here for a different reason: it publishes the most complete cost benchmark in the category, at its outsourced SDR pricing page. Monthly retainers are laid out as $2,500 to $4,000 entry level, $4,000 to $7,500 mid-market and $7,500 to $15,000 enterprise. Pay-per-meeting bands run $125 to $250, $250 to $450 and $450 to $800+. Expected meetings per month are given as 8 to 12, 12 to 20 and 20 to 35+. It also gives cost-per-meeting benchmarks of $357 to $500 outsourced against $821 to $1,150 in-house, and puts a fully loaded in-house SDR at $9,800 to $14,200 a month.

Read that as a market guide, not as a rate card. The page does not say this is what we charge, so you cannot treat it as the company's price. As a sanity check against quotes you receive, it is the most detailed public document we found. Contract terms are not stated.

Claims include an average client duration of nine-plus months, email reply rates 4.5x above industry average, a 35% conversion rate on real-time intro calls, and a 5.0 rating on G2.

Best fit: buyers who want a benchmark to argue with before shortlisting.

The limitation: a vendor publishing a market rate card without publishing its own is doing SEO, and you still have to ask where its callers sit.

13. Sales.co

We publish this list and we are on it, so read this section with that in mind.

The important thing to say first is that cold calling at Sales.co is a +$1,500 per month add-on on top of a plan, not a standalone product. Plans are Intent Takeover at $1,000 a month for up to 1,000 high-intent leads with 5+ touches per lead, TAM Takeover at $2,000 a month for up to 20,000 ICP-matching leads with light-touch personalized email at scale, and both together at $2,500 a month. So the cheapest way to buy calls from us is Intent Takeover at $1,000 a month plus the calls add-on at $1,500 a month, which is $2,500 a month total. LinkedIn and ads are separate add-ons at $1,000 a month each. Everything is month-to-month, cancel anytime, no long-term contract, no setup fees, no hourly billing, and clients are live in 7 days. We state 421+ clients over 4 years. Published case studies are Cytena ($700K pipeline), Testimonial Hero ($85K pipeline) and Alts.co (250+ leads).

A buyer who wants only cold calling is not our buyer. We are an email-led service that adds the phone, so if the phone is the primary motion and email is the afterthought, a dedicated calling shop is the better purchase. Superhuman Prospecting or Intelemark are the two we would point a phone-only buyer at first, on the strength of the stated US callers in both cases and the published subscription price in Superhuman's.

Our other limits, stated plainly. We do not publish caller location, dial volumes, connect rates or per-meeting call costs, and several vendors on this list do publish at least caller location, which is a fair criticism of us. We publish no third-party review count. We are much smaller than Callbox at 700+ staff, and we do not offer multi-language global delivery. The headline $1,000 price understates a phone-led program by design, because the calls cost extra.

What we do publish is outbound email data from our own book: 1,288,605 cold emails sent between October 2025 and August 2026, 34,269 replies at a 2.66% raw reply rate, and a 0.24% interested reply rate, which is one genuinely interested reply per 421 emails. Those are email numbers. We have not published calling equivalents, and we are not going to make them up.

Best fit: a company running cold email as the main channel that wants phone follow-up on the accounts that engage, at a total price it can read on the pricing page before any call.

What outsourced cold calling costs

Here is every figure in this article that a vendor actually published, with the arithmetic where it is available.

CIENCE's per-SDR monthly rates by region are $1,500 offshore, $2,500 Europe and $4,500 US at Level 1; $2,500, $3,500 and $5,500 at Level 2; $3,500, $4,500 and $6,500 at Level 3. On top of that sit a $5,000 one-time setup fee, $2,000 a month for the strategic team, $499 a month for the platform, and $1,000 one-time onboarding per SDR. A single US Level 1 seat therefore costs $12,999 in month one and $7,000 a month thereafter. The same seat offshore costs $9,999 in month one and $4,000 a month after.

LevelUp Leads publishes a starting price of $5,000 a month with a three-month minimum, prepaid monthly, no onboarding charge and 7 to 10 days to launch. It also publishes activity levels per tier: 150+ calls per business day on Fractional SDR, 300+ on Full-Service SDR and 700+ on Growth, alongside 180+, 230+ and 460+ emails per business day. That combination lets you compute a cost per dial, which almost nothing else in this category does. At roughly 21 business days a month, the entry tier's 150+ calls per day is about 3,150 dials, and $5,000 divided by 3,150 is roughly $1.59 per dial. The arithmetic only holds for the entry tier, because the higher tiers cost more than $5,000 and the amount is not published. Treat $1.59 as a ceiling on the entry package rather than a rate card.

Upcall's $3.50 to $7.50 per lead is the only other unit price, and it is per contact dialed, with a 1,000-lead minimum. Pearl Lemon Leads' £2,997 a month is a floor for a calling retainer with no activity level attached. Superhuman Prospecting's $1,998 a month is a floor for a calls-only subscription, also with no published dial count, plus an unstated setup fee.

Separately, buyers commonly report being quoted $500 to $1,000 per booked meeting, often with a setup fee on top. That is a buyer-side anchor from what people say they have been quoted, not a published rate from any vendor page, and we are labelling it as such because the difference matters when you are negotiating. Outbound Sales Pro's market guide puts the outsourced per-meeting range lower, at $125 to $800+, and its own cost-per-meeting benchmark at $357 to $500. Two anchors that far apart tell you the range is wide and the quote you get will depend on your list and your industry more than on the vendor's rate sheet.

Against hiring: a US SDR base salary commonly runs $50,000 to $65,000, which is about $4,200 to $5,400 a month before tools, management time and ramp. Outbound Sales Pro puts a fully loaded in-house SDR at $9,800 to $14,200 a month, which is its figure rather than ours, but the direction is right once you add a dialer, data, a manager's time and three months of ramp during which the person books very little. A CIENCE US Level 1 seat at $4,500 a month is roughly the base salary with the hiring, dialer and management included. The trade you make is knowledge: the outsourced caller learns your product for as long as the contract runs, and takes it with them when it ends.

Compliance

This is not legal advice, we are not lawyers, and the rules differ by jurisdiction. Get a real opinion before you start a calling program. What follows is a description of the mechanisms so you know what to ask a vendor about.

In the US, the Telephone Consumer Protection Act governs how calls may be placed and covers areas including automated dialing systems and prerecorded messages. State law adds calling-time restrictions that limit the hours during which calls may be made, and those hours vary between states, so a national calling program is subject to several overlapping windows. The National Do Not Call Registry maintains numbers that have opted out of certain categories of calls. Business-to-business calls are generally treated differently from calls to consumers under these frameworks, which is why B2B calling programs exist at all, but "treated differently" is not the same as "exempt" and the distinction depends on the specific rule, the number being called and the content of the call. Mobile numbers can raise questions that landlines do not. Call recording adds a separate layer, because consent requirements for recording vary by state.

Outside the US the picture changes again. The UK and EU have their own regimes, and a vendor calling into multiple countries is subject to each of them.

Questions worth putting to a vendor: what lists do you screen against and how often, who maintains your internal do-not-call list, how do you handle calling windows across time zones, are calls recorded and under what consent model, and who carries the liability in the contract if a complaint arrives. A vendor that answers those crisply has thought about it. A vendor that waves them away has not.

How to choose

Eight questions that separate vendors faster than a price comparison does.

Where do your callers sit, and can I listen to recordings from accounts in my industry? The recordings matter more than the answer. A vendor confident about its callers will send you three within a day.

Are the reps dedicated to my account or shared across several? Shared reps are cheaper and know your product less well. Both models work; being told which one you are buying is the point.

How many dials per day per rep, and what counts as a dial? Ask whether a voicemail counts, whether a second attempt on the same number counts, and what connect rate they see on lists like yours.

Who writes the script, and do I approve it before anyone calls? Also ask who rewrites it when it is not working, and how quickly.

What counts as a booked meeting? Get the qualification criteria in the contract, in writing, with who decides. This is the single most common source of disputes in per-meeting deals.

What is the no-show policy? If a meeting is booked and the prospect does not appear, is it replaced, credited, or counted? Ask for the no-show rate across their book, not the best account.

What is the notice period, and what happens to the data when I leave? SalesRoads and SalesHive both state cancel-anytime terms; LevelUp Leads requires three months; most vendors state nothing, and twelve-month terms show up in quotes anyway.

Will you call my existing inbound leads, or only cold lists? Speed-to-lead calling on inbound signups converts far better than cold dialing, and some vendors will not touch it. If you have inbound volume, this question can change which vendor is right for you.

FAQ

Do cold calling companies publish hourly rates?

We could not find one that does. Across the fifteen cold calling vendors we read on 3 September 2026, no company stated a per-hour price on its own website. The units vendors actually publish are per month (Superhuman Prospecting from $1,998, Pearl Lemon Leads from £2,997, CIENCE per SDR seat), per lead dialed (Upcall $3.50 to $7.50), or per meeting in a market guide. The $8 to $75 per hour ranges that fill search results come from blog rate-guides, several written by vendors that publish no rate of their own.

How much do outsourced cold calling services cost?

The published figures we could verify: CIENCE charges $1,500 per month for an offshore Level 1 SDR seat, $2,500 for Europe and $4,500 for the US, plus a $5,000 setup fee, $2,000 per month for its strategic team and $499 per month for its platform. Superhuman Prospecting starts calls-only subscriptions at $1,998 per month. Upcall charges $3.50 to $7.50 per lead with a 1,000-lead project minimum. LevelUp Leads starts at $5,000 per month with a three-month minimum. Sales.co sells cold calling only as a $1,500 per month add-on to a plan, so the cheapest route is $2,500 per month total. Buyers also report being quoted $500 to $1,000 per booked meeting, which is a buyer-side anchor rather than a published rate.

Should I use onshore or offshore cold callers?

CIENCE prices the decision directly: $4,500 per month for a US Level 1 SDR seat against $1,500 for the same level offshore, a three times premium stated in public. Whether the premium is worth paying depends on who picks up. If your buyers are US enterprise executives who screen calls hard, accent, local knowledge and the ability to hold an unscripted conversation matter more than dial count. If you are calling a high-volume SMB list where the job is qualification against a short script, offshore capacity buys you a lot more dials for the money. Ask to listen to recordings before you decide.

What is the difference between buying dials, conversations and booked meetings?

They are three different products sold under one category name. Buying dials means you pay for activity and carry all of the outcome risk, which is what a monthly SDR seat at CIENCE or a calls-only subscription at Superhuman Prospecting gives you. Buying leads dialed, as with Upcall's per-lead price, means you pay per contact attempted regardless of what happens on the call. Buying booked meetings moves outcome risk to the vendor and creates a reason to book meetings that no-show, so the definition of a qualified meeting and the no-show policy have to be in the contract. Our appointment setting comparison covers the meetings end of that in more detail.

Is outsourcing cold calling cheaper than hiring an SDR?

For the first year, usually. A US SDR base salary commonly runs $50,000 to $65,000 before tools, management time and ramp, so roughly $4,200 to $5,400 per month in base pay alone. CIENCE's published US Level 1 seat is $4,500 per month with no recruiting risk and a $1,000 one-time onboarding charge. The outsourced seat costs about the same as the salary and includes the hiring, the dialer and the management. The trade is that the caller does not accumulate knowledge of your product for you, and you can lose the team on a month's notice. Our outsourced SDR comparison goes through the rent-versus-hire maths for the same field of vendors.

Is cold calling businesses legal in the US?

This is not legal advice and rules differ by jurisdiction, so take a lawyer's view before you start. The mechanisms to understand are the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, which governs how calls are placed and covers automated dialing and prerecorded messages; state calling-time restrictions, which limit the hours during which calls may be made and vary state by state; and the National Do Not Call Registry. Business-to-business calls are treated differently from calls to consumers, and calls to mobile numbers can raise questions that calls to landlines do not. Ask any vendor what it screens against, who maintains its internal do-not-call list, and whether calls are recorded and in which states.

How long until an outsourced cold calling team books the first meeting?

Calling starts faster than email because there is no domain warm-up, but the list, the script and the training still take time. LevelUp Leads states 7 to 10 days to launch. Hit Rate Solutions states onboarding in 7 to 14 days. Sales Focus Inc. guarantees a launch within 45 days, which tells you it is building a dedicated team rather than assigning an existing one. Sales.co states clients are live in 7 days. Launching and booking are different milestones, so ask for both dates separately and ask how many dials the vendor expects to make before the first meeting.

Where to start

Work out which of the three products you are buying, then shortlist inside it. For dials at a known monthly price with US callers, Superhuman Prospecting and CIENCE are the two that let you compare without a call. For a defined calling project on a list you already have, Upcall's per-lead price is the cleanest structure here. For booked meetings from a phone-first team, SalesRoads, SalesHive, Intelemark and VSA Prospecting are the US-stated options and Callbox is the one that works across countries. For maximum dials per dollar, Hit Rate Solutions is the honest offshore entry.

Then ask every shortlisted vendor for recordings and for the price in writing. The category-wide absence of published hourly rates means the first real number you see will come out of a sales conversation, so go in with the published figures above and make them explain any gap. If phone is one part of a wider program rather than the whole thing, our cold calling versus cold email comparison covers where each channel actually earns its cost, and we also compare cold email agencies and B2B lead generation agencies.

Ours is on the pricing page: $1,000 a month for the plan plus $1,500 a month for calls, month-to-month, no setup fee. If you need the contact data rather than the calling, email lists are $295 one-time per list, and B2B lead generation and appointment setting and outsourced SDR cover the adjacent services.