October 11, 2026. 11x and Artisan sell the same promise, an AI sales development rep that finds prospects, writes to them and books meetings, but only one of them puts a price on it. 11x lists its Alice outbound agent from $3,750 a month, billed annually, for up to 2,000 new prospects a month, which is at least $45,000 for the first year. Artisan describes its Ava plans by volume, roughly 2,500 or 6,000 leads contacted a month, and quotes every price on a sales call. Both drew uncomfortable press coverage in 2025, and each now publishes pages that point readers at the other's weak spots, so the useful question is which one fits your volume, your contract tolerance and your brand.
Everything below comes from the vendors' own pricing pages and from TechCrunch's reporting, read 11 October 2026. We run human-reviewed outbound ourselves through our cold email marketing service, so we compete with both for some budgets; we have tried to keep the comparison to verifiable facts.
Key numbers
| Item | Number |
|---|---|
| 11x Alice Growth plan (billed annually; up to 5 users) | from $3,750 a month |
| 11x Alice Growth new prospects (Pro 5,000; Enterprise 10,000+) | 2,000 a month |
| 11x Julian inbound voice, Growth (2,000 calls a month, billed annually) | from $5,333 a month |
| 11x Julian inbound chat, Growth (3,000 chats a month) | from $2,417 a month |
| Artisan Team plan volume (price on request) | about 2,500 leads contacted a month |
| Artisan Scale plan volume | about 6,000 leads contacted a month |
| Artisan Series A, April 2025 (led by Glade Brook Capital) | $25 million |
| 11x funding rounds in 2024 (Benchmark and Andreessen Horowitz) | $24M Series A, about $50M Series B |
| 11x chief executive change (Prabhav Jain replaced founder Hasan Sukkar) | May 5, 2025 |
11x and Artisan pricing pages and TechCrunch reports of March 24, April 9 and May 5, 2025, all read 11 October 2026.
The short answer
- Choose 11x if you want a published entry price, bundled sending mailboxes, an inbound voice and chat agent from the same vendor (priced separately), and you can commit to an annual contract.
- Choose Artisan if you want one agent that sources contacts from its own database and runs the whole outbound workflow, with an AI dialer for your reps as a per-seat add-on, and you are comfortable negotiating a custom quote.
- Choose neither yet if you need fewer than about 20 meetings a month, sell a complex or regulated product, or cannot commit to a year; start with a pilot from the options in our AI SDR tools comparison or a human program.
What each product does
11x calls its agents "digital workers". Alice handles outbound: prospect research, multi-step outreach and meeting booking, with 11x-managed Gmail mailboxes, domain setup, warmup and inbox rotation included on every plan and outreach in more than 105 languages from the Pro tier. Julian handles inbound qualification across voice, chat, WhatsApp and SMS. 11x says it charges "per lead, not per send", so the price does not change with the number of touches in a sequence.
Artisan sells Ava, an "AI BDR" that, according to its pricing page, works from more than 250 million verified B2B contacts, runs every campaign type, replies and books meetings autonomously and syncs with Salesforce and HubSpot. An AI dialer is an add-on per seat: "Ava emails, your reps dial." Artisan's chief executive writes on its blog that more than 90 percent of its customers run Ava autonomously and that an Ava Inbound product works website visitors.
Pricing side by side
| Plan | 11x (Alice) | Artisan (Ava) |
|---|---|---|
| Entry | Growth: from $3,750 a month, billed annually; up to 5 users; 2,000 new prospects a month (pricing page) | Team: about 2,500 leads contacted a month; "Pricing scoped on your plan" (pricing page) |
| Middle | Pro: custom, billed annually; up to 10 users; 5,000 new prospects a month | Scale: about 6,000 leads contacted a month; custom quote |
| Top | Enterprise: custom, annual or multi-year; unlimited users; 10,000+ prospects a month | Enterprise: custom; forward-deployed strategist |
| Inbound agent | Julian: voice from $5,333 a month, chat from $2,417 a month, both billed annually (pricing page) | Ava Inbound, no published price |
| Security | SOC 2 Type II, SSO, custom DPA on higher tiers | SOC 2 Type II, SSO and SAML |
On 11x's entry plan, $3,750 for 2,000 new prospects works out to about $1.88 per new prospect. Artisan does not publish enough to calculate the same figure, so ask for it: our AI SDR cost guide explains why cost per contacted lead is the only way to compare quotes in this category.
What the contracts look like
11x's published tiers are billed annually, and Enterprise can be multi-year. Artisan's page does not state a term. Annual commitments matter more here than in most software, because TechCrunch reported in March 2025 that three current and former 11x workers said most of its early customers used "break clauses" in their contracts to stop using the product. Whichever vendor you pick, negotiate:
- A paid pilot or a break clause tied to measurable results in the first 60 to 90 days.
- Price per contacted lead, overage rates and what happens to unused volume.
- Who owns the sending domains and mailboxes. 11x includes managed Gmail mailboxes; if they sit in the vendor's account you lose their reputation when you leave, which is why our email infrastructure builds keep them in the client's name.
- Approval rights over messaging, and the right to export every contact, reply and meeting.
The track record, from independent reporting
On March 24, 2025, TechCrunch reported, citing nearly two dozen sources, that 11x had displayed the logos of companies that were not customers. A ZoomInfo spokesperson said: "We did not give them permission to use our logo in any manner, and we are not a customer." ZoomInfo said it ran a one-month pilot and that the product "performed significantly worse than our SDR employees". Andreessen Horowitz, which led 11x's roughly $50 million Series B after Benchmark led a $24 million Series A in 2024, denied that it was considering legal action. On May 5, 2025, founder Hasan Sukkar stepped down as chief executive and chief technology officer Prabhav Jain took over.
On April 9, 2025, TechCrunch covered Artisan's $25 million Series A, led by Glade Brook Capital. Founder and chief executive Jaspar Carmichael-Jack said the company's "stop hiring humans" billboards were "mostly just for attention", that Artisan "had extremely bad hallucinations when we first launched", and that Ava now hallucinates in "maybe one in 10,000 emails, if that". He put Artisan at 250 customers and $5 million in annual recurring revenue, and acknowledged that it, like others in the market, had lost customers.
Read both companies' head-to-head pages with that history in mind. 11x's comparison leans on negative reviews of Artisan, and Artisan's ranking of AI SDRs, written by its chief executive, says the March 2025 reporting triggered a leadership change at 11x. Both are marketing.
How to run a fair pilot
- Give each tool the same segment, the same offer and the same 60 to 90 days.
- Measure positive replies, held meetings that match your definition, spam complaints and bounce rates, not emails sent.
- Read a sample of messages every week; one bad personalization at scale costs more than a slow month.
- Check the compliance basics for each country you mail, which differ widely, as our cold email laws by country table shows.
- Compare the cost per held meeting with a human alternative, using the benchmarks in our outsourced SDR guide and appointment setting pricing guide.
The bottom line
11x is the easier one to budget, with a published floor of $3,750 a month that includes managed mailboxes, an inbound agent available at extra cost, and an annual contract. Artisan offers a more self-contained outbound agent with its own contact database, but you will not know its price until you talk to sales. Neither replaces a clear offer and a tight target list, and both work best with a person reviewing what goes out. If you would rather have that person be us, see our cold email programs or our appointment setting plans.
Frequently Asked Questions
11x lists its Alice outbound agent's Growth plan from $3,750 a month, billed annually, for up to 5 users and 2,000 new prospects a month. Pro and Enterprise plans are custom. Its Julian inbound agent starts at $5,333 a month for voice and $2,417 a month for chat, also billed annually.
Artisan does not publish prices. Its pricing page describes a Team plan at about 2,500 leads contacted a month, a Scale plan at about 6,000 and a custom Enterprise plan, each with pricing scoped on a sales call.
11x sells two agents, Alice for outbound and Julian for inbound voice, chat, WhatsApp and SMS, and bundles managed Gmail mailboxes. Artisan sells Ava, an outbound agent that sources contacts from its own database of more than 250 million B2B contacts and books meetings, with an AI dialer add-on for human reps.
11x is a funded company with a published price list, but TechCrunch reported in March 2025 that it had displayed the logos of companies that were not customers, including ZoomInfo, which said a one-month pilot performed significantly worse than its human SDRs. Its founder stepped down as chief executive in May 2025. Run a pilot with a break clause before committing.
11x's published Growth and Pro plans are billed annually and Enterprise can be annual or multi-year. Artisan's pricing page does not state a term. Negotiate a pilot or break clause tied to results either way.
Not by default. AI SDRs add email volume cheaply, but quality, brand risk and compliance still need a person. Compare cost per held meeting against a human option, such as an in-house SDR at a median $80,000 in on-target pay or an outsourced team.