“How much does an outsourced SDR cost in the UK?” is one of those questions that sounds like it has a single number for an answer and never does. The honest reply is that it depends entirely on which model you buy, and the three main models sit at genuinely different price points. This is a 2026 breakdown of what each one actually costs, where the money quietly leaks out, and how to work out which is right for your team.

We run a dedicated offshore model ourselves, so we have a stake in this. We have tried to be straight throughout, including about the figures we charge and the situations where a different model would serve you better.

The three price points

When people say “outsourced SDR” they usually mean one of three quite different things. Comparing them on price alone is misleading, but you have to start with the numbers before you can talk about value.

1. In-house SDR (the benchmark everyone measures against)

Strictly this is not outsourcing at all, but it is the anchor every other option is judged against, so it belongs here. A UK SDR base salary typically lands between £30,000 and £45,000 depending on region and experience. Once you add employer’s National Insurance, pension, tooling, recruitment cost, management time, and the ramp period before the rep is productive, the realistic all-in figure for year one commonly sits at £50,000 or more. We break that stack down in detail in our guide to the true cost of hiring a salesperson.

2. UK sales agency (retainer model)

A UK agency will run outreach on your behalf for a monthly retainer, commonly in the region of £3,000 to £5,000 per campaign. You get campaign expertise and a fast start, but you rarely get a named person working solely for you. Instead you buy a slice of a shared team working to a brief. Over a year a single campaign retainer typically totals somewhere between £36,000 and £60,000, which puts it broadly in line with an in-house rep, but with a very different set of trade-offs around control and continuity.

3. Dedicated offshore SDR

This is the model we run. You get a named individual working full time inside your CRM, your cadence tool, and your sales process, during your working hours, but based in a lower-cost market. In our case that is South Africa, which sits just one to two hours ahead of the UK, so the working day overlaps almost entirely rather than colliding. Our pricing is a one-off setup of £1,500 and an all-inclusive monthly seat fee of £1,200 to £1,600. That fee covers salary, HR, payroll, equipment, workspace, and replacement cover, so there is no separate recruitment invoice, no tooling surprise, and no ramp you pay for twice. Over a year that lands at roughly £15,900 to £20,700 all in. You can see the full breakdown on our pricing page.

So the three headline figures for a single seat over year one look roughly like this: in-house around £50,000 or more, agency retainer around £36,000 to £60,000, dedicated offshore around £16,000 to £21,000. That is the shape of the market. Now for what those numbers actually buy.

Cost per meeting: a more useful frame

Cost per seat is easy to compare but it is not what you are really buying. What you want is meetings booked, or more precisely qualified opportunities created. Reframing the spend as cost per meeting changes the picture, and it is worth doing even roughly.

The following maths is illustrative only. Real output depends on your list quality, your offer, and how well the rep is enabled, so treat these as a way of thinking rather than a quote.

Illustrative example. Say a competent SDR books eight qualified meetings a month once ramped. At an all-in cost of £1,500 a month for a dedicated offshore seat, that is roughly £188 per meeting. Put the same eight meetings against a UK in-house rep costing £4,200 a month all in, and you are at £525 per meeting. Against a £4,000 monthly agency retainer where your campaign is one of several the team is running, the same eight meetings work out at £500 each, and the “if” on volume is larger because the attention is shared.

Two honest caveats. First, a shared agency team can sometimes ramp faster on a well-worn campaign type, so early-month output may be higher even if steady-state cost per meeting is worse. Second, meeting quality matters more than count; ten poorly qualified meetings can be worth less than five sharp ones. But even allowing for all of that, the cost-per-meeting gap between dedicated offshore and the UK alternatives is wide enough that it rarely closes on volume differences alone.

The hidden costs of each model

Every model carries costs that never make it onto the quote. These are the ones that decide whether the headline number was honest.

Hidden costs of in-house

  • Recruitment. Either an agency fee of 15 to 25 percent of salary, or weeks of your own team’s time screening candidates. Both are real money.
  • Ramp. A new SDR is rarely at target for three to five months, and you pay full cost throughout. If they leave inside a year, you may never recoup that ramp.
  • Churn. UK SDR tenure is commonly cited at around 18 months, and often shorter. Every departure restarts recruitment and ramp, and takes pipeline knowledge with it.
  • Management. Coaching, call reviews, and pipeline reviews absorb a meaningful slice of a sales manager’s week that never appears as an SDR line.

Hidden costs of the agency retainer

  • Shared attention. The rep on your campaign is usually splitting the day across other clients. Product knowledge stays shallow and your buyers rarely build a relationship with a consistent voice.
  • Knowledge that walks out. When the retainer ends, the learning about your market goes with it. You are renting insight, not accumulating it.
  • Alignment drift. An external team working to a brief can optimise for meetings booked rather than meetings that convert, unless you watch the qualification bar closely.

Hidden costs of dedicated offshore

To be fair to the comparison, this model is not free of friction either. There is onboarding effort at your end to bring someone into your stack and process, and a genuine dependence on the provider handling employment, continuity, and replacement well. The saving is real, but it assumes the provider actually absorbs the churn and admin they promise. Ours does, which is the whole point of the all-inclusive fee, but you should test that claim with anyone you speak to. Our how it works page walks through exactly what onboarding involves.

When each model is the right call

None of these is universally best. Match the model to your situation.

Choose in-house when the selling is highly technical or regulated, when the SDR seat is deliberately a training ground for your future account executives, or when a single deal is large enough that cost efficiency simply is not the constraint. Control and proximity are worth paying for here.

Choose a UK agency retainer when you are testing an unproven motion, running a time-boxed campaign, or you need to switch capacity on and off without any employment commitment. You are paying for flexibility and a fast start, and for a genuine market test that is money well spent.

Choose dedicated offshore when your motion is already proven and you want to scale known activity at the best cost per meeting, when you need a consistent named person building product knowledge over time, or when management bandwidth is tight and you want the provider to carry recruitment, continuity, and replacement. This is where our dedicated SDR service tends to fit. Many teams land on a hybrid: a small in-house core for complex accounts, plus dedicated offshore capacity for volume outreach and appointment setting.

The bottom line

An outsourced SDR in the UK can cost you the equivalent of £50,000-plus a year through a shared agency retainer, or closer to £16,000 to £21,000 a year through a dedicated offshore seat that still works in your CRM, your hours, and your process. The right answer depends on whether your motion is proven, how much management capacity you have, and how much you value a consistent named person over pure flexibility.

If you would like to model the numbers for your specific setup, including a realistic cost per meeting for your motion, get in touch and we will be honest about which route we would recommend, including the times it is not us.