Cost Calculator
If you are weighing whether to hire a sales development rep or outsource the work, the salary on the offer letter is the wrong number to compare against. This shows the real first-year cost once benefits, tooling, ramp time, and your own management hours are counted, so you can compare like for like.
Who it is for
Founders and operators at B2B service firms deciding between hiring an SDR, hiring a fractional one, or outsourcing outbound to a managed service.
What it tells you
The true fully-loaded first-year cost of one in-house SDR, so you can hold it against the cost of a done-for-you alternative on equal terms.
Fully-loaded first-year cost
$117,600
versus a base salary of $60,000. The difference is what the offer letter does not show.
In plain terms: at these numbers, one in-house SDR really costs you about $117,600 in year one, roughly 2.0x the base salary. That is the figure to compare a managed, done-for-you alternative against, not the salary alone.
| Base salary | $60,000 |
| Benefits & overhead | $16,800 |
| Tooling (annual) | $6,000 |
| Your management time (annual) | $15,600 |
| Ramp drag (paid, not yet productive) | $19,200 |
| True first-year cost | $117,600 |
A done-for-you operator carries its own tooling, sending infrastructure, and ramp, and it does not require management hours from you. Whether it costs less than the number above depends on your situation. The honest comparison, and when each model is the right call, is laid out on the outbound models page.
Assumptions & sources
The math is your inputs run through standard fully-loaded-cost arithmetic. The starting defaults are anchored to 2025 industry data, cited below. Adjust any of them to your own reality. Nothing you enter is stored unless you submit your email.
Base salary default ($60k) and fully-loaded range
US SDR base salary clusters at $55k-$60k; fully-loaded cost runs $110k-$160k once benefits, tooling, and management are included. RepVue / Martal 2025 SDR salary data
Benefits + overhead default (28%)
Fully-loaded models add roughly 25-30% over base for benefits, payroll taxes, and overhead. SalesHive, The True Cost of an SDR
Ramp time default (3 months)
Average SDR ramp to productivity is about 3.1-3.2 months; you pay salary and benefits before any pipeline appears. SalesHive / Martal 2025
Most build-versus-buy decisions get made against the base salary, because it is the number on the offer letter and the only one that feels certain. It is also the smallest component of what the role actually costs.
Benefits and overhead, tooling, and the ramp period before the hire produces anything are all real spend. So is your own time: the hours spent managing, reviewing and coaching are hours not spent on client work, and they belong in the comparison. Run your own figures above and the gap between the salary and the fully-loaded cost is usually larger than people expect.
Maximum control and the knowledge stays with you. You carry the recruiting time, the ramp, the management load, and the risk that the person leaves in month nine and the cycle restarts.
Lower monthly commitment and faster to start. You are usually sharing someone’s attention across several clients, and the person still needs direction from you to be useful.
Cheapest on the invoice and the one where the hidden cost is most often missed: someone on your team still has to run it. A platform is a seat, a learning curve and a list to maintain, not an outcome.
You are buying the output rather than the capability, which is right when outbound is not a function you want to own. The variable worth interrogating is not price, it is whether the provider sends on a calendar or on events.
Two quotes for “outbound” can describe completely different work. These questions make them comparable.
A fixed monthly quota means volume drives the work. If the number is set in advance, the list gets padded to fill it.
A campaign calendar, an intent score, or a specific dated event at the company. These produce very different reply rates and are priced as if they were the same thing.
Outbound sent from your primary domain puts the address your existing clients use at risk. A warmed secondary domain keeps that separate.
The honest comparison is fully-loaded against fully-loaded. A cheaper service that needs three hours a week of your attention is not cheaper.
For how the event-timed approach works in practice, see done-for-you outbound or the honest comparison of a service versus a tool.