Artisan AI review

Prices checked November 2026 on artisan.co/pricing, Artisan’s Ava 2.0 launch.

Verdict: Artisan is worth it if you want to hand outbound email to an AI agent and your volume suits its credit plans. Ava finds leads in a 250M+ contact database, writes and sends emails from your own domains, answers replies and books meetings, with a dialer for your reps. Paid plans start at $250 a month, billed yearly with credits upfront, for about 500 people contacted a month. It is less of a fit if you want to approve every message by default, want a low monthly price, or reach people mostly on LinkedIn.

What Artisan is and who it’s for

Artisan builds AI employees for sales teams. Its first, Ava, is an AI BDR (business development representative) that runs outbound end to end: it finds and researches leads, writes a personal email for each one, runs sequences, handles replies and objections, and books meetings on your reps’ calendars. Ava sends in your reps’ names, from your own domains.

Ava watches for intent signals such as funding rounds, leadership changes, new hires and tech stack changes, and adds matching people to campaigns. Sequences mix email with call steps for your reps in Artisan’s dialer. Ava is autonomous by default, and you can turn on approval before sending, lock tone and calls to action, and ban phrases.

Artisan was founded by Jaspar Carmichael-Jack, its CEO, and Sam Stallings, who leads product and engineering. It went through Y Combinator (winter 2024) and raised a $25M Series A led by Glade Brook Capital in April 2025. Its “Stop hiring humans” billboards ran in San Francisco and New York; Artisan retired the slogan in August 2026.

It suits

Startups and SMBs ready to run outbound mostly by email, with an agent doing the work.
Sales teams that want lead data, enrichment, sequences, a dialer and intent signals in one contract.
Larger teams that run campaigns centrally while Ava sends on behalf of each rep.

What it does well

One platform for outbound. A 250M+ contact database and 130M local businesses, waterfall email and phone enrichment across 22+ data sources, sequences, reply handling, meeting booking and a dialer, without stitching tools together.
Replies and meetings handled for you. Ava answers questions and objections, works around out-of-office replies and books meetings directly on your reps’ calendars.
Controls when you want them. Approval gates at every stage, escalation rules for when a person steps in, locked tone and calls to action, and banned phrases.
Published prices and a real trial. A free plan with 300 credits a month, and new accounts get a 30-day trial with 10,000 credits and no credit card.
Built for procurement. SOC 2 Type II, with SSO / SAML and audit logs on Enterprise.

Where it falls short

Headline prices are yearly. Intern ($250) and Employee ($600) are monthly prices billed annually, with credits upfront. Paying month to month costs 10% more: Intern is $280. On a yearly plan, credits left at the end of the term don’t roll over.
Credits go fast. A full campaign uses about 20 credits per person contacted, so Intern’s 10,000 credits reach about 500 people a month. A phone number costs 10 credits.
Extras cost more. Mailboxes and phone numbers are billed separately, the human power dialer is $67 per seat a month, and Salesforce sync starts on Enterprise.
Email first. Ava’s sequences are email plus call steps for your reps. LinkedIn messaging isn’t on Artisan’s plan list.
Autonomous by default. Emails go out in your reps’ names without review unless you turn on approvals. In 2025 the CEO told TechCrunch the first version had “extremely bad hallucinations” and that some customers churned; Artisan says Ava 2.0 is a ground-up rebuild.

Artisan pricing

Artisan prices its startup plans by credits. Prices below are per month, billed yearly; paying month to month costs 10% more (Intern is $280 a month). Business and enterprise plans are quoted by sales.

Plan	Price	Credits	What you get
Free	$0	300 a month	Find leads, build and enrich lists, agent research and CSV import and export. No campaigns.
Intern	$250 a month billed yearly, or $280 monthly	10,000 a month, upfront	About 500 people contacted a month. Autonomous campaigns and replies, HubSpot sync, deliverability monitoring, Slack.
Employee	$600 a month, billed yearly	25,000 a month, upfront	About 1,250 people contacted a month. Adds advanced campaign types such as cross-sell and upsell, webhooks and priority support.
Enterprise	Custom	Custom	Adds Salesforce sync, SSO / SAML, audit logs, a dedicated CSM and onboarding.
Team (business)	Quoted	Custom	About 2,500 people contacted a month, with CSM support and onboarding.
Scale (business)	Quoted	Custom	About 6,000 people contacted a month, with a dedicated CSM and CRM setup.

What credits buy: an email enrichment is 2 credits, a phone number 10, identifying a website visitor 4, an autonomous reply 2, and a full campaign about 20 per person contacted. The human power dialer is $67 per seat a month.

Artisan alternatives

Each one fits a different reason for looking beyond Artisan.

bravabase

Best for ready-to-buy leads and outreach you approve. Brava, your AI sales agent, finds people showing buying signals, scores their fit from 0 to 100, gets their work email and phone number (in credits, only when found), and drafts outreach and posts. Nothing sends until you approve it, and LinkedIn is one connected channel. It doesn’t send bulk cold email or make calls: if you want an agent to email thousands of people on its own, Artisan or Instantly fits better.

Price: $99 per user a month, or $948 a year ($79 a month), with 500 quality leads a month, each with a real buying signal, and 1,500 AI credits. 7-day free trial with 250 credits.

See bravabase pricing →

Instantly

Best for cold email at volume on a budget. A cold email platform with unlimited sending accounts and warmup, a lead database and AI agents that write and reply.

Price: Outreach plans from $47 a month for 5,000 emails. Lead credits are a separate plan.

Read our Instantly review.

Visit Instantly →

Apollo

Best for a database with sequences and a dialer. A database of 240M contacts with email sequences, a dialer and deliverability tools in one seat. You run the outreach; there’s no autonomous agent sending for you.

Price: free plan with 900 credits per seat a year. Basic is $49 per seat a month and Professional $79, billed yearly. 14-day trial.

Read Apollo pricing.

Visit Apollo →

AiSDR

Best for trying an AI SDR with no subscription. An AI SDR that writes outreach from each prospect’s posts and company news and runs it on email and LinkedIn.

Price: $1.50 per person prospected, billed daily, with no monthly fee and no card to sign up. Team plans for 1,000+ people a month are quoted, on quarterly contracts.

Visit AiSDR →

Questions, answered

Is Artisan worth it?

For teams ready to hand outbound email to an AI agent, yes: data, enrichment, sequences, replies, meeting booking and a dialer in one place, from $250 a month billed yearly. If you want to approve every message, want a low monthly price, or sell mostly on LinkedIn, look at the alternatives.

How much is Artisan AI?

The Free plan is $0 with 300 credits a month. Intern is $250 a month and Employee $600, both billed yearly, with 10,000 and 25,000 credits a month. Paying monthly costs 10% more: Intern is $280. Business and Enterprise plans are quoted. The human power dialer is $67 per seat a month, and mailboxes are extra.

What does Artisan AI do?

Artisan makes Ava, an AI BDR that runs outbound for you: it finds and enriches leads, writes a personal email for each one, sends sequences from your domains, handles replies and books meetings. Your reps make calls from Artisan’s dialer.

Who is the CEO of Artisan AI?

Jaspar Carmichael-Jack, who co-founded Artisan with Sam Stallings. Artisan went through Y Combinator in winter 2024 and raised a $25M Series A in April 2025.

What was the “Stop hiring humans” campaign?

Artisan’s billboard campaign in San Francisco and New York, which the company says cost $2M. It drew wide criticism. Artisan retired the slogan in August 2026 and is hiring its first human BDR.

Does Artisan have a free trial?

Yes: new accounts get 10,000 credits and 30 days, with no credit card. If you don’t add a card by the end, the account drops to the Free plan and campaigns pause.

Is bravabase an Artisan alternative?

For a different way of working. Artisan’s Ava sends outbound email on its own. bravabase finds people ready to buy, scores their fit, gets work emails and phone numbers, and drafts outreach that only goes out when you approve it.

See how bravabase works

Find people ready to buy. Brava looks for buying signals and saves each lead with a fit score and the reason it was found.
Your personal AI sales agent. Brava learns your business, then finds buyers, writes your posts and messages and plans your day.
Personal outreach you approve. A personal first message for every lead. Nothing goes out until you approve it.
$99 per user a month. 500 quality leads a month, 1,500 AI credits, 2 Discovery agents and a 7-day free trial.

Sources

Prices and plans checked November 2026 on each company’s own pages, unless marked as an estimate.