Which cold email agencies publish their own reply-rate data?
Updated October 26, 2026. Agency sites read October 26, 2026.
If you are a B2B company comparing cold email agencies and want proof before a sales call, two of the ten agencies we checked on October 26, 2026 publish a reply rate pooled across client campaigns, with the sample size. They are Belkins (0.45% across 7,530,489 emails in 2025) and OutreachBloom (0.92% to 3.47% across 289,502 emails). Sales.co publishes eight such reports, the largest from 1,843,998 emails, of which 0.522% got a human reply (best time to send).
Sales.co publishes this page and is one of the eleven agencies on it, so read it with that in mind. The ten others are the agencies on our how to choose a cold email agency checklist and alternatives pages. For each one we searched its site for reply or response rates and opened every page we found.
What each agency publishes
Four agencies give a reply rate with no sample or method, two show rates only inside client case studies, one quotes other companies' studies, and Martal Group's site blocked every read. Figures are quoted as each site writes them.
| Agency | What it publishes | Figure, as written | Sample stated | Page date |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sales.co | Own-data reports (8) | 0.74% to 0.81% human replies per email, 10am to 7pm Eastern (best time to send) | 1,843,998 emails, Oct 6, 2025 to Oct 9, 2026 | Updated Oct 24, 2026 |
| Belkins | Own-data report | "The average reply rate across all 2025 campaigns was 0.45%" (report) | 7,530,489 emails, 34,393 replies, January to December 2025 | Updated Jun 26, 2026 |
| OutreachBloom | Own-data report | "Reply rates ran from 0.92% at the 10th percentile of campaigns to 3.47% at the 90th" (statistics page) | 40 campaigns, 15 client workspaces, 289,502 emails; no date range | Modified Oct 20, 2026 |
| Cleverly | Own claim, no method | "32% Avg. Reply Rate" (case studies page) | None | None shown |
| CIENCE | Own claim, no method | "CIENCE's graph8 platform consistently achieves 8-15% reply rates on well-targeted campaigns" (email outreach page) | None | None shown |
| Hypergen | Own claim, no method | "Across Hypergen's campaigns, cold email typically sees a 2.5% to 4% reply rate" (blog post) | None | Oct 21, 2026 |
| SalesBread | Own claim, no method | "with email outreach, we are seeing a 10-20% reply rate on average" (blog post); the same post puts LinkedIn at 20-50%. The 19.98% often quoted for SalesBread was on no SalesBread page we read on Oct 26, 2026 | None | Aug 20, 2024 |
| LevelUp Leads | Case studies only | "3.80% Average Response Rate" for one client (Stratifi case study); other cases 4.14% to 7.58% | One client per case | "in 6 months", no dates |
| Leadium | Case studies only | "12.5% response rate" for one client (BidSpeed case study); other cases 10.7% to 36% | 11,600 prospects, 70,000+ emails (that client) | None shown |
| SalesHive | Other companies' studies | "5.8% Average cold email reply rate", credited to Belkins and Artemis Leads (glossary page) | Not its own | Last reviewed Jun 2026 |
| Martal Group | Not readable | Every request to martal.ca returned HTTP 403 on Oct 26, 2026, so it is not classified here | n/a | n/a |
Why the published numbers range from under 1% to over 30%
The gap comes from what each agency divides by and what it counts as a reply. Belkins divides unique replies by emails sent and leaves out auto-replies and bounce notices, which is why its 2025 figure is 0.45%. A rate with no stated sample can be one client, one channel or the best campaigns.
The same emails give very different rates depending on what is counted. Across 1,288,605 cold emails Sales.co sent from October 2025 to August 2026, 2.66% got any reply, 0.70% got a reply from a person and 0.24% got an interested reply (cold email response rates). 53.7% of all replies were automated. Counting auto-replies made the rate almost four times higher.
Channel matters too. SalesBread's 20-50% and most of Cleverly's case-study rates are LinkedIn message replies, which run far above cold email.
What Sales.co publishes
Every Sales.co report below is computed from its own sending database, prints its sample, and counts human replies apart from automated ones. The first five rebuild every week from that database.
| Report | Sample and window | Headline |
|---|---|---|
| Best time to send cold email | 1,843,998 emails, Oct 6, 2025 to Oct 9, 2026 | 0.74% to 0.81% human replies per email for every hour from 10am to 7pm Eastern |
| Follow-up reply rates by step | 1,117,412 recipients, Oct 6, 2025 to Oct 10, 2026 | 0.50% for the first email, 0.43% for the second, 0.36% for the third, per recipient |
| Cold email best practices | 1,116,744 first emails, Oct 6, 2025 to Oct 9, 2026 | Offering to send something beat asking for a call, 0.76% vs 0.50% |
| Email spam checker | 1,116,744 first emails, same window | Emails with a trigger word: 0.75% human replies vs 0.69% with none |
| Subject line grader | 907,687 prospects, Oct 6, 2025 to Oct 9, 2026 | First name in the subject: 0.88% vs 0.56% without |
| Cold email response rates | 1,288,605 emails, Oct 2025 to Aug 2026 | 2.66% any reply, 0.70% human, 0.24% interested |
| Reply rate by month | 1,279,153 contacts, Apr 8, 2025 to Sep 25, 2026 | 0.83% human replies, 0.25% positive |
| Conversion rate benchmarks | 336,257 contacts, 20 campaigns, Mar to Aug 2026 | 0.84% replied in person, 0.29% positively |
One large client can carry a whole benchmark, so the weekly reports also print every rate with the largest sending workspace removed. In the 1,843,998-email set that workspace sent 32.9% of the emails; without it the human reply rate was 0.589%, against 0.522% for all of them (best time to send prints both columns for every hour).
Four questions for an agency that publishes nothing
Ask these before you sign, and ask for the answer in writing:
- Divided by what: emails sent, people emailed, or emails opened? A rate per opened email is several times a rate per sent email.
- Are auto-replies, out-of-office notices and bounces counted as replies?
- How many emails, over which months, from how many clients?
- How many of those replies were interested, and how many became booked calls? Is a cold email agency worth it turns those rates into cost per booked call.
Where the other agencies still win
Belkins' 2025 report covers 7,530,489 emails, about four times Sales.co's largest set, and states its reply definition on the page (Sales.co vs Belkins compares price and contract terms). OutreachBloom shows the spread across 40 campaigns, from the 10th to the 90th percentile; Sales.co shows a campaign spread in one report only, quartiles across 15 campaigns in its conversion benchmarks. Leadium and LevelUp Leads name the client behind each case study, so you can ask those clients directly.
What Sales.co costs
Sales.co runs done-for-you cold email for B2B companies from $2,000 a month for up to 10,000 emails, $2,500 for 15,000 and $3,000 for 20,000, month-to-month with no setup fee (pricing). It states no guaranteed reply rate; the reports above are what its campaigns have done. In Sales.co's own outbound campaign, March to August 2026, one call was booked per 1,650 emails (143 calls from 124,513 contacts, conversion benchmarks).
Sources
- Belkins, cold email response rates 2025, read October 26, 2026.
- OutreachBloom, cold email statistics, read October 26, 2026.
- Cleverly, case studies, read October 26, 2026.
- CIENCE, email outreach, read October 26, 2026.
- Hypergen, LinkedIn vs cold email outreach, read October 26, 2026.
- SalesBread, cold email vs LinkedIn, read October 26, 2026.
- LevelUp Leads, Stratifi case study, read October 26, 2026.
- Leadium, BidSpeed case study, read October 26, 2026.
- SalesHive, reply tracking, read October 26, 2026.
- Martal Group (martal.ca) returned HTTP 403 to every request on October 26, 2026.
- Sales.co sending database: the eight reports linked above, each with its own window and update date; largest-sender figures from the weekly benchmarks file, data through October 9, 2026.
- Sales.co pricing, read October 26, 2026.
Questions
Which cold email agencies publish their own reply rates?
Of the ten agencies we checked on October 26, 2026, Belkins (0.45% across 7,530,489 emails in 2025) and OutreachBloom (0.92% to 3.47% across 289,502 emails) publish a reply rate pooled across client campaigns, with the sample size. Sales.co, which publishes this page, publishes eight reports from its own sending data.
What reply rate should I expect from a cold email agency?
Ask what the rate is divided by first. Belkins reports 0.45% of emails sent for 2025, leaving out auto-replies. In 1,843,998 emails Sales.co sent from October 2025 to October 2026, every hour from 10am to 7pm Eastern got 0.74% to 0.81% human replies per email (best time to send cold email).
Why do some agencies claim 20% or 30% reply rates?
Those figures come without a sample, from single client case studies, or from LinkedIn messages, which get far more replies than cold email. Counting auto-replies also inflates a rate: in Sales.co's data it took 0.70% human replies to 2.66% replies of any kind (cold email response rates).
Does Sales.co guarantee a reply rate?
No. Sales.co states no guaranteed reply rate. It publishes what its campaigns have done, with the sample behind each number.
How much does Sales.co cost?
$2,000 a month for up to 10,000 emails, $2,500 for 15,000 and $3,000 for 20,000, month-to-month with no setup fee (pricing).