Is Instantly or Lemlist cheaper?

For email alone, Instantly's Growth outreach plan is $47 a month (or $37.60 a month annually) against Lemlist's Email plan at $69 (or $55 annually). Lemlist's plan includes a 650M+ lead database; Instantly sells lead credits separately, from $47 a month for 1,500.

Do both include email warmup?

Yes. Instantly lists warmup on all outreach plans, and Lemlist says lemwarm and built-in deliverability protections are included in all plans.

Which is better for LinkedIn outreach?

Lemlist. Its Multichannel plan adds LinkedIn, SMS and WhatsApp steps to sequences. Instantly is focused on email.

Do they charge for leads with no email found?

Instantly does not charge a credit when no verified email is found. Lemlist's enrichment add-on is described as pay per success.

Instantly vs Lemlist: volume email or multichannel sequences

Same category, different instincts

Instantly and Lemlist are both cold outreach platforms with lead databases attached, and both handle the basics well: campaigns, follow-ups, warmup, reply tracking. Where they differ is what each was built to be good at first.

Instantly's instinct is volume. Its outreach plans are sized by emails a month and contacts, every plan allows unlimited email accounts, and warmup is included. It is designed so you can spread a lot of email across many inboxes and keep it landing.

Lemlist's instinct is the sequence. One campaign can mix email with LinkedIn, SMS and WhatsApp steps (on the Multichannel plan), and the product has long been associated with personalised outreach. It is designed so each touch can be a different channel.

Side by side

Prices as of October 2026, from each vendor's pricing page.

	Instantly	Lemlist
Entry sending plan	Growth $47/mo ($37.60 annual): 5,000 emails, 1,000 contacts a month	Email $69/mo ($55 annual)
Bigger plan	Hypergrowth $97/mo: 125,000 emails, 25,000 contacts	Multichannel $109/mo ($87 annual)
Email accounts	Unlimited on all plans	Unlimited users and email senders on Email plan
Warmup	Included	lemwarm included in all plans
Lead database	450M+, sold as credits from $47/mo for 1,500	650M+, included with plan
Credit per lead	1 for own data, 2 for partner data	Enrichment add-on $16 to $20/mo for 2,000 credits (about 400 emails)
No email found	No credit charged	Pay per success
LinkedIn, SMS, WhatsApp	Not its focus	Multichannel plan
Intent signals	Not compared here	Add-on, $21 to $29/mo per 100 signals
Bundles	Outreach plus credits from $85/mo	Add-ons instead

A cost worked through for a small agency

Say you are a two-person agency running cold email for three clients: about 15,000 emails a month to about 3,000 new contacts, and you need emails for those contacts.

Instantly: Growth's 5,000 emails a month is too small, so you need Hypergrowth at $97 a month. For 3,000 leads from its database you need lead credits: at 1 to 2 credits each, that is 3,000 to 6,000 credits, more than the 1,500 in the $47 credit plan, so the $197 Supersonic credit plan (5,000 to 7,500 credits) is the likely fit. Roughly $294 a month on monthly billing.

Lemlist: the Email plan at $69 a month includes the 650M+ database. If you want enrichment beyond the database, the add-on is $16 to $20 a month per 2,000 credits, which Lemlist puts at about 400 emails; 3,000 emails would need several blocks. If clients want LinkedIn steps too, move to Multichannel at $109.

This is a worked example. Plan limits, credit consumption and how many contacts each database actually finds for your clients' markets will change the totals, so run a trial on one client's list before committing. The broader point holds: Instantly prices sending and data separately and scales cheaply on email volume; Lemlist bundles more into the plan and charges for extra channels and enrichment.

Deliverability is your job either way

Both include warmup. Neither can save a campaign sent to a bad list. The things that decide whether email lands are mostly outside the tool:

Separate sending domains from your main domain, with SPF, DKIM and DMARC set up. See SPF, DKIM and DMARC.
Verify every address before it enters a campaign. Bounces hurt sender reputation faster than anything else. See how to verify email addresses.
Keep per-inbox volume modest and spread across inboxes. Instantly's unlimited accounts make this easy.
Stop sequences on a reply or a "no". See follow-up sequences that stop.

Which should you pick?

Email is your only channel and volume matters most: Instantly.
You want LinkedIn, SMS or WhatsApp steps in the same sequence: Lemlist Multichannel.
You want a database included in the base price: Lemlist.
You already have your own leads and only need sending: Instantly's outreach plans are the cheaper start.
An agency running many client campaigns: both work; Instantly for raw email volume, Lemlist if clients expect multichannel.

A third option, briefly

Both tools are senders first. If your bottleneck is the list rather than delivery, Sluice sits upstream: it finds people from public signals, such as competitors' reviewers or people who engaged with a relevant post, and scores them against your customer profile. It has no warmup and is not built for volume sending, so many teams would pair it with one of these. See Sluice vs Instantly and Sluice vs Lemlist.