SDR Salary by Country, Plus the Employer Cost of One Hire

Sales development reps (SDRs) on RepVue, read on 27 September 2026, report a median base salary of GBP 40,397 in the UK, EUR 46,589 in Germany and EUR 49,761 in the Netherlands. Their median on-target earnings (OTE) are GBP 60,689, EUR 66,575 and EUR 72,055.

Add the employer's costs on top, and one SDR at base costs about GBP 45,700 a year in the UK before the workplace pension, EUR 57,000 in Germany and EUR 64,700 to 69,700 in the Netherlands (on a vendor estimate of employer costs). At full OTE: GBP 69,000, EUR 81,400 and EUR 93,700 to 100,900.

RepVue has no Czech SDR page, so the Czech figure uses general sales rep pay from Platy.cz: an employer cost of roughly CZK 50,500 to 108,400 a month. Sales tools add about USD 2,400 to 3,200 per rep per year.

The salary is the number people search for. What you actually pay is the salary plus what each country adds on top of it, from about 13% to 14% of pay in the UK (before the workplace pension) to 30% or more in the Netherlands and the Czech Republic.

What the fully loaded cost includes, and what it leaves out

Every cost below is built from three layers, and each one is labeled so you can rebuild it:

1. Base salary. The guaranteed part of the pay.
2. OTE. Base plus the commission a rep earns at 100% of quota. What you pay in a given year depends on how close the rep gets.
3. Employer costs on top of pay. Social and health insurance in Germany and the Czech Republic, National Insurance in the UK. The Dutch figure is a vendor estimate that also counts pension and holiday allowance.

Tools get their own line, in US dollars, because the prices below are quoted in dollars.

What I left out on purpose: recruiting fees, the manager's time, the months before a new rep is fully productive, and the cost of replacing one who leaves.

Those depend on your company more than on the country, but each can still add a real amount, so leave room for them in the budget. There is a short note on ramp and tenure further down.

SDR salary and employer cost by country

Pay figures for the UK, Germany and the Netherlands are medians from RepVue's public salary pages, read on 27 September 2026.

RepVue builds them from pay that reps submit themselves, and the pages update continuously. Treat them as what reps on one platform report, not as a national pay survey.

Employer rates were checked September 2026 against the source named in each row. Rates and reliefs change, so confirm them with your payroll provider or accountant. This is not legal advice.

Czech row: the base column holds a monthly 10th to 90th percentile pay range for 1,119 general sales reps on Platy.cz (checked September 2026), where the other rows hold an annual SDR median. The cost cell applies the employer rate to that general sales pay.

Sources: RepVue UK, RepVue Germany, RepVue Netherlands, Platy.cz. The formula in every row is pay plus pay times the employer rate, with the UK's National Insurance threshold applied as the next section shows.

Three things about reading the table.

First, plan with the OTE column in view, because OTE is what a rep earns at quota. RepVue also shows the share of reporting SDRs who say they hit quota: 57.7% in the UK, 68.0% in Germany and 73.3% in the Netherlands.

Those shares are self-reported by the reps on the platform, so use them as a rough signal. Your own team's share could land well above or below them.

Second, the Czech row is on a different footing. It uses a different source, a broader job category and a monthly range instead of a median, so compare it with the others with care. More on that below.

Third, the US reference point. A sales development consultancy's 2025 SDR metrics survey of 351 B2B companies, 78% of them in North America and 83% in SaaS, puts the median SDR OTE at USD 80,000 on a 68:32 base-to-variable split: a USD 55,000 base and USD 25,000 variable.

That is pay only, before any US employer costs. It also comes from companies, while the RepVue rows come from reps, so set it beside the European medians as a rough marker for a Europe vs US comparison.

How much an SDR costs in the UK, worked line by line

The UK is the one market here where the employer cost is not a flat percentage, so it is worth doing the arithmetic in the open.

Employer Class 1 National Insurance is 15% on earnings above the secondary threshold of GBP 96 a week, about GBP 5,000 a year, for the 2026-27 tax year (GOV.UK, checked September 2026). I round the threshold to GBP 5,000 below.

At the median base of GBP 40,397:

• National Insurance: (40,397 - 5,000) x 15% = GBP 5,310
• Total: 40,397 + 5,310 = GBP 45,707 a year, or GBP 3,809 a month

At the median OTE of GBP 60,689:

• National Insurance: (60,689 - 5,000) x 15% = GBP 8,353
• Total: 60,689 + 8,353 = GBP 69,042 a year, or GBP 5,754 a month

So National Insurance adds about 13% to 14% to UK pay at these two levels. These are the standard rates, before any relief your business may qualify for.

The workplace pension is the second UK line. Any employee aged 22 up to State Pension Age earning over GBP 10,000 a year has to be enrolled in a workplace pension, and the employer is required to contribute (The Pensions Regulator, checked September 2026).

The amount depends on your scheme, so I keep it out of the UK totals. Add your scheme's employer contribution on top.

Employer costs in Germany, the Netherlands and the Czech Republic

Germany

Employers pay about 21% of gross wage in social insurance, according to Germany Trade and Invest, the federal government's investment agency (checked September 2026).

GTAI's figure of about 21% is made up of five lines: pension 9.3%, health 7.3%, unemployment 1.3%, nursing care 1.8% and accident insurance, which averaged 1.09% in 2024 and depends on the hazard category of the work. Added up, they come to 20.79%.

One more health line sits on top. Each public health insurer sets an additional contribution that employer and employee split equally, and the 2026 average is 2.9%. The employer's half is about 1.45%.

So the rate I use is 20.79% + 1.45% = 22.24%, or about 22.2% of gross. At the median base, that is 46,589 x 22.24% = EUR 10,361 on top of pay. At the median OTE, EUR 14,806.

Netherlands

This row carries the widest employer-rate band, because the official premiums cover only part of the stack.

The Dutch Tax Administration's 2025 table lists several employee insurance premiums the employer pays. Two of them set most of the range: the unemployment fund premium (AWf) is 2.74% or 7.74%, and the Aof disability premium is 6.28% to 7.64%.

Which end of each range applies depends on the contract and the size of the employer (Belastingdienst, 2025 rates, checked September 2026).

Those two premiums alone come to about 9% to 15%. The full employer cost is higher, because smaller premiums on the same table (a flat 0.50% Wko surcharge and a Whk premium set per employer), health insurance, pension and the holiday allowance sit on top of them.

One employer-of-record provider estimates it at 30% to 40% of gross in 2025, counting social contributions, pension and an 8% holiday allowance (checked September 2026). The table uses that vendor range, which is why the row shows a band.

Czech Republic

Czech employers pay 33.8% on top of gross salary: 24.8% social security and 9% health insurance, per Expat Tax CZ, a Czech payroll advisory firm (2025 rates, checked September 2026). It is one flat rate, so the arithmetic is simple: pay x 1.338.

The pay side is where the data gets thin. RepVue does not publish a Czech Republic SDR page. The closest data is Platy.cz, a Czech salary aggregator, which shows CZK 37,721 to 80,999 a month for the middle 80% of 1,119 general sales reps (checked September 2026).

That category mixes every kind of sales job in the country, so it may not match what a Prague software company pays someone who only books meetings. It is the thinnest row in the table.

What sales tools add per rep

Tools are the last line. I priced two seats, one for prospecting and one for data and sequencing, using third-party figures:

• LinkedIn Sales Navigator Advanced: about USD 1,800 a year on annual billing, per Overloop, a prospecting software company that tells readers to confirm the price with LinkedIn (checked September 2026)
• Apollo.io: USD 588 to 1,428 per user a year on annual billing, per Cognism, a data vendor that competes with Apollo (checked September 2026)

Together that is roughly USD 2,400 to 3,200 per rep per year, or USD 200 to 270 a month. Add it to the country total in your own currency at the rate you pay on the day.

How long a new SDR takes to ramp, and how long they stay

The ramp and tenure figures I use come from the same 2025 survey behind the US reference point above, so they are mostly North American. It reports a 3.0-month average ramp and a 1.9-year average tenure.

Read it as directional for Europe. On those numbers, by my arithmetic, about 3 of a rep's roughly 23 months go to ramp, which is 13% of the time you pay for. What a rep books once ramped, and how that compares with outbound run across several accounts, is covered in my breakdown of monthly meeting numbers.

If you are weighing an outside team instead, the setup lag there is real too. I walked through what those first months look like in a post on an outbound program's first quarter.

Before you compare it with an agency or freelancer quote

In practice, a number like this ends up next to an agency quote, a freelancer or a second hire. I sit on one side of that comparison: 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.

In April 2023 I wrote this about the SDRs and BDRs who sell their services to founders:

"SDR and BDRs that can't book meetings - this is so common, you can find thousands of those, BUT most of them can't book any sales calls."

In the same post I added that many of them take the money upfront, run outdated strategies and deliver nothing.

A monthly figure only tells you what you pay. Whether it buys a method that books calls is a separate question, and no salary table answers it.

So compare the costs, then ask every option the same hard questions. The ones I would put to any agency are in my list of questions for lead gen agencies. If a quote comes with a promised number of meetings, here is how to test an agency's guarantee before you sign.