Every Sales Navigator plan, whether Core, Advanced or Advanced Plus, comes with 50 InMail credits per month. Premium Career gives 5, Premium Business 15 and Premium All-in-One 30. At the US list price of $119.99 a month for Sales Navigator Core, one credit costs about $2.40, or $1.80 on annual billing.
The rule to know before you plan around InMail: LinkedIn's Sales Navigator help page on InMail credits says, "At this time, you can't purchase additional InMail credits." When the 50 are gone, you wait for the next month or for credits to come back from replies.
That is the whole paid budget for one seat, so every credit has to count. Below: what comes back, what expires, what is free, and how to read the reply rate.
Rules and prices below were checked in September 2026 on LinkedIn's own help and pricing pages.
How many InMail credits each LinkedIn plan includes
| Plan | Credits a month | Most you can hold | You get the credit back when |
|---|---|---|---|
| Premium Career | 5 | No cap stated; each credit expires after 90 days | The recipient accepts |
| Premium Business | 15 | No cap stated; each credit expires after 90 days | The recipient accepts |
| Premium All-in-One | 30 | 90 | The recipient accepts |
| Sales Navigator (all three plans) | 50 | 150 | Any response within 90 days, including "Not interested" |
Sources: LinkedIn's InMail FAQ for the Premium plans and the Sales Navigator credits page for Sales Navigator, both checked September 2026.
Fresh Sales Navigator credits arrive on the 1st of every month (UTC). The rollover rules are further down.
LinkedIn's recruiting products carry their own allowances, built for hiring. I leave them out here, because this page is about selling.
What one InMail credit costs, by currency
LinkedIn lists Sales Navigator prices in five currencies on its plan comparison page. Divide each price by 50 credits and you get the cost of one credit.
| Currency | Core, monthly | Core, per credit | Core annual, per credit | Advanced, monthly | Advanced, per credit | Advanced annual, per credit |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| USD | $119.99 | $2.40 | $1.80 | $159.99 | $3.20 | $3.00 |
| EUR | €120.99 | €2.42 | €1.81 | €148.21 | €2.96 | €2.82 |
| GBP | £94.99 | £1.90 | £1.60 | £130.00 | £2.60 | £2.50 |
| AUD | A$154.99 | A$3.10 | A$2.50 | A$189.99 | A$3.80 | A$3.60 |
| CAD | C$144.99 | C$2.90 | C$2.00 | C$179.99 | C$3.60 | C$3.40 |
Prices per license from LinkedIn's comparison page (marked updated August 1, 2026). LinkedIn calls them estimates that may exclude VAT or GST. Annual figures are the yearly price divided by 12, then by 50. Advanced Plus is quoted per team, so it has no row.
These figures charge the whole subscription to InMail and assume you use all 50 credits. The subscription also pays for search filters, lead lists and alerts, so if you use those, InMail carries only part of the bill. If you leave credits unused, each one you do send costs more.
The table is the real price in one case: InMail is the only reason you are buying Sales Navigator. Then you are paying roughly $2 to $3 per message before anybody answers.
Billing matters more on Core than on Advanced. On US prices, LinkedIn puts the annual saving at 25% for Core and 6% for Advanced. In the other currencies above, the Core saving runs from about 16% (GBP) to 31% (CAD).
For a Premium plan, take the price your account shows at checkout and divide it by 5, 15 or 30.
Can you buy extra InMail credits?
Not on Sales Navigator. LinkedIn's credits page says additional credits cannot be purchased at this time, and it lists no price for them.
If you see a price per extra credit quoted somewhere, check its date against that page. For planning, treat paid InMail volume as fixed per seat. You get more paid InMails in two ways only: more seats, or more responses that return credits.
Invitations work the same way. LinkedIn's page on invitation restrictions says invitation limits apply to everyone, free or paid, and adds: "You can't buy or acquire more invitations while you've been restricted, or otherwise."
Which of those invitation limits are official and which are only observed by tool vendors is its own topic, covered in what LinkedIn actually publishes about its limits.
So on a single seat, money buys no extra volume on either route.
When LinkedIn gives a credit back
On Sales Navigator, any InMail answered within 90 days returns its credit, and LinkedIn puts it back in your balance the moment the answer arrives.
Three details decide whether you get it:
- Auto replies count as a response.
- The quick answers count. LinkedIn treats "Interested" and "Maybe later" as accepted and "Not interested" as declined, and all three earn the credit back.
- Deleting an InMail that nobody has answered returns nothing. You have 60 minutes to edit or delete a message after sending it.
On Premium plans, the FAQ wording is narrower: it only promises a returned credit when the recipient accepts.
On Sales Navigator, a polite no costs you nothing. Silence costs you one credit.
Your real cost per InMail after refunds
Because every response returns a credit, your response rate stretches the 50 credits. Call the share of InMails that get any response within 90 days "r".
- InMails you can send in a month: about 50 / (1 - r)
- Cost per InMail sent: monthly price / (50 / (1 - r))
- Cost per response: cost per InMail sent / r
Worked on Sales Navigator Core at $119.99 a month:
| Share of InMails with any response | InMails a month | Cost per InMail sent | Cost per response |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0% | 50 | $2.40 | No responses |
| 10% | about 56 | $2.16 | $21.60 |
| 20% | about 63 | $1.92 | $9.60 |
| 30% | about 71 | $1.68 | $5.60 |
The response rates in this table are only inputs for the arithmetic. Put your own rate in and the formula does the rest.
Two cautions. A response includes "Not interested", so your cost per interested reply is higher than the last column. And the math assumes you spend the returned credits in time: each must be used within 90 days, and you can hold 150 at most.
Do unused InMail credits roll over?
On Sales Navigator, yes, within limits. Unused credits move to the following month, each one must be used within 90 days, and you can hold 150 in total. That is three months of allowance, so saving up for a big push only works about three months ahead.
On Premium plans, LinkedIn's FAQ says InMail credits expire after 90 days, and Premium All-in-One lets you hold up to 90.
Plan changes wipe the balance. Sales Navigator credits are not transferred if you cancel or change your subscription type, and Premium credits cannot move from one Premium subscription to another. Spend them before you switch.
Does messaging an Open Profile use a credit?
No. Premium subscribers can turn on Open Profile, and LinkedIn's Open Profile page says it lets other members message them for free, "without using InMail messages."
So before you spend a credit on a Premium prospect, check whether their profile is open. If it is, the message is free.
Senders on a free account get only a capped monthly quota of these, according to the same page. It gives no figure. If you read an exact monthly number somewhere, ask where it came from, because this page does not print one.
How long can an InMail be?
Two live LinkedIn pages disagree. The InMail FAQ, updated around late August 2026, allows an optional subject line of 200 characters at most and a body as long as 2,000 characters.
The older InMail character limits page, last updated about two years ago (around 2024), makes the subject line compulsory, with the same 200-character ceiling, and stops the body at 1,900 characters.
Write a subject line every time and keep the body under 1,900, and your message fits both rules. You will rarely get close to either limit if you cut a cold message down before it goes out, and LinkedIn's own data below points the same way.
What reply rate should you expect from InMail?
LinkedIn publishes InMail response data, but it comes from recruiters and it is expressed as comparisons with an average. Its 2022 analysis of tens of millions of recruiter InMails, sent between May 2021 and April 2022, found:
- InMails under 400 characters had a response rate 22% higher than average, yet only 10% of InMails were that short.
- InMails over 1,200 characters ran 11% below average.
- InMails sent one at a time got about 15% more responses than bulk sends.
- Saturday was the weakest day, 8% below average.
A 2024 follow-up on recruiter InMails from May 2023 to April 2024 compares industries and job functions with a global average, again without printing the average itself.
Recruiters write to candidates about jobs. A sales InMail to a buyer is a different situation, so take the direction of these findings (short, one to one, on a weekday) and leave the percentages with the recruiters.
So there is no official "good" InMail reply rate for selling. The fair benchmark is your own rate from last month, counted the way the dashboard counts it.
How Sales Navigator counts your rate
Before you compare your number with anybody's benchmark, know what the dashboard counts. LinkedIn's page on the InMail response rate sets these rules:
- Only responses within 30 days of sending count, even though credits come back for responses up to 90 days.
- Free InMails to your connections and to Open Profile members are included, as are InMails sent in bulk.
- Automated follow-ups count as separate messages, so unanswered ones pull the rate down.
The number worth tracking sits further down the funnel: conversations started, then calls. I explain why in how my team structures follow-ups.
A 400-character InMail built from that data
LinkedIn's short-message finding fits two rules I hold for any first message: it sells the meeting and leaves the service for later, and it carries one real result from a past client. Together they give a skeleton like this:
- Subject: [their company] and [the problem you solve], in plain words
- Line 1: why you are writing to this person, in one sentence they can check
- Line 2: one result for a similar client, with a number and a timeframe
- Line 3: one question that proposes a short call about that problem
Send it one at a time, on a weekday, and count the characters before you press send. Under 400 is the target.
InMail or connection request: which costs less?
An InMail is the paid way to reach someone you are not connected with; LinkedIn's pricing page sells it as a way to reach prospects "even if you're not connected."
| Route | Cost per message | Can you buy more? | Volume LinkedIn publishes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Connection request | No credit | No | Limited for every member, no number published |
| Message to a 1st-degree connection | No credit (Sales Navigator calls it a free InMail) | Not applicable | Not stated on these pages |
| Open Profile message | No credit | Not applicable | Limited on free accounts, no number published |
| Paid InMail | 1 credit, about $1.80 to $3.20 on US Sales Navigator prices | No | 50 a month per Sales Navigator seat |
On cost alone, the order is clear. Free routes first: check for Open Profile, send the invitation, and message people once they accept. A paid credit is for the prospect none of those routes reaches.
I wrote down the same order in March 2023, in a post on common LinkedIn mistakes. I called Sales Navigator "a MUST" if you want to make sales on LinkedIn, and gave one reason for it: "you need this tool to create a targeted list of your ideal buyers."
The next steps in that post were to "start sending connection requests and expand your network" and to "send at least 10 private messages to your connections per day". The post set that as the baseline, to raise or lower by as much as five times, depending on your goals.
Look at where the seat earns its money in that plan: the list. The reach comes from invitations and from messages to people who have already accepted, and neither spends a credit. Sales Navigator even counts those messages to connections as free InMails.
The invitation has its own price, though. It is capped, and it only turns into a conversation after an acceptance. An InMail lands in the inbox the same day. When timing matters more than the $2.40, that is what the credit buys.
Where InMail fits in a real campaign
Smirnov Consulting Group is a Prague-based B2B outbound lead generation agency that runs cold email and LinkedIn campaigns for founder-led B2B companies and books qualified sales calls. When we plan LinkedIn volume, we plan in people per account.
The figure we build around is roughly 2,800 people a month for each LinkedIn account. That counts people contacted from the account, not InMail credits. It is my team's own planning ceiling for a profile that behaves like a person, set out with the rest of our sending setup, and it is not a number LinkedIn publishes.
Fifty paid credits is under 2% of it. However carefully you spend them, credits cannot carry that volume on their own.
For a US marketing agency, our LinkedIn outbound ran alongside email for 60 days: 1,735 InMails and 3,143 emails, 962 replies across both channels, 277 sales calls and 34 contracts, $255,000+ in sales.
One seat's credits could not have sent those 1,735. At 50 credits a month and a 30% response rate, the formula above gives about 140 InMails in 60 days.
When a channel works, we scale it sideways by adding LinkedIn accounts or email accounts. Since one seat cannot buy extra credits, more seats is also how paid InMail volume grows.
What to check before you spend a credit
Before you use a paid InMail, ask three questions in this order. Is their profile an Open Profile? Are you already connected? Would an invitation reach them in time? If all three answers are no, the prospect is worth a credit.
Then spend it on a short message, sent alone, on a weekday. LinkedIn's own numbers say short and individual beats long and bulk, and 50 credits go further when each one is aimed well.
You cannot buy your way past 50 a month on one seat. So I build the list first, the same way that 2023 post does, and plan the number of seats around that 50.
More questions about InMail credits
Do LinkedIn InMail credits expire? Yes. On Sales Navigator, each credit must be used within 90 days, and you can hold 150 at most. LinkedIn's general FAQ says InMail credits expire after 90 days on Premium plans too.
Does a "Not interested" reply return my InMail credit? On Sales Navigator, yes. "Interested", "Maybe later" and "Not interested" all earn the credit back, and so do auto replies. Only silence, or deleting an unanswered InMail, costs you the credit.
What happens to my credits if I change or cancel my plan? You lose them. Sales Navigator credits are not transferred when you cancel or change subscription type, and Premium credits cannot move from one Premium subscription to another.
When do new Sales Navigator InMail credits arrive? A fresh 50 lands on the 1st of every month, UTC. Leftovers roll forward, but you must spend each credit within 90 days, and the balance tops out at 150.