Plan by plan: Base vs Growth, Pro vs Hypergrowth, Prime vs Light Speed
Each row puts the two plans that sit at the same level side by side, billed monthly. Both price lists are in US dollars, the only currency either tool bills in, so a marked cell is the cheaper plan for a buyer paying in dollars.
Entry plan
Monthly price (yearly, per month)
Emails a month
Contacts
API
Team members
Middle plan
Monthly price (yearly, per month)
Emails a month
Contacts
API and webhooks
Top self-serve plans
Unlimited Smart
Monthly price (yearly, per month)
Emails a month
Contacts
Dedicated servers
Smartlead sells mailboxes as unlimited on every plan, yet its fair use policy still quotes 100, 300 and 800 mailboxes under plan names from an older grid. Smartlead’s price slider has 33 tiers in all, these plans included, up to 5,100,000 emails a month; Instantly goes to Enterprise, on quote, above 500,000. Excluding tax.
API and webhooks: which plan unlocks them
API
Webhooks
MCP server for AI assistants
Emelia caps API calls at 100 a minute on Start, 300 on Grow and 1,000 on Scale. Instantly publishes 100 requests a second and 6,000 a minute per workspace, more than Emelia allows; Smartlead publishes no limit.
LinkedIn on top of either: the same partners, a second bill
Neither tool runs LinkedIn steps itself. Smartlead connects to HeyReach and Aimfox through its SmartAgents, and integrates Expandi, GetSales.io and Waalaxy. Instantly’s automations push leads to Aimfox, Expandi, HeyReach, Valley and La Growth Machine, and in its CRM, sold separately, the only LinkedIn feature its help center documents is a "Connect" button that opens the contact’s profile. HeyReach and Aimfox appear on both lists.
Whichever you choose, LinkedIn means another subscription and another inbox. Emelia runs LinkedIn in the same sequence as email: 1 account on Start, 3 on Grow, 10 on Scale.
Caps compared: who lets you send more, and who stores more contacts
Both reset sending each month and both cap contacts as a running total that only deleting leads brings down. On the entry plans, Smartlead allows more of each (6,000 emails and 2,000 contacts against 5,000 and 1,000); on the middle plans, Instantly sends more and Smartlead stores more; from Unlimited Smart, Smartlead stops counting contacts, while Instantly still caps them at 100,000 on Light Speed.
Smartlead adds a third counter, verified emails from its SmartProspect database, included from Unlimited Smart and sold at $59 a month on Base and Pro. Smartlead’s home page and its comparison with lemlist present verified emails as included from the entry plan; its pricing page sells them on Base and Pro. Instantly sells its data as a separate credits plan, from $9 a month. How Smartlead’s three counters work is detailed on our Smartlead pricing page.
Agencies: Smartlead client spaces or Instantly workspaces
Smartlead sells client workspaces under white label inside one account: $29 per client a month from Pro, and Unlimited Prime includes 3. Smartlead’s own pages disagree on whether one client comes free: its FAQ and its lemlist comparison grant one on Pro, its pricing page bills each workspace.
Instantly works the other way: its help center says each workspace needs its own subscriptions, and a mailbox can belong to only one workspace. An agency that keeps each client in a separate workspace pays one Outreach plan per client, plus credits if they need data. A client portal on your own subdomain (white label, unlimited clients) comes with Hypergrowth and above, one portal per workspace.
For one agency team serving many clients from a shared pool of mailboxes, Smartlead’s model is cheaper to scale; for agencies that bill each client their own tool, Instantly’s separate workspaces match the invoices.
Refunds: none at Instantly, 7 days or none at Smartlead
Instantly: no money back under its terms, neither on fees (section 5.3) nor on the unused share of a started month or year (section 5.1(b)), and that includes credits, add-ons, done-for-you mailboxes and VIP service.
Smartlead: its help center offers a full refund within 7 days of a new subscription, or 3 days after a renewal for an account left unused, but its terms of service say fees are non-refundable. SmartProspect, servers, mailboxes and domains, tests, verification and calls never qualify.
Both renew automatically. Instantly also keeps the domains of its done-for-you Google and pre-warmed accounts, so leaving means new domains; Smartlead’s domains bought in the app are paid for a year with no refund.
Smartlead or Instantly at your sending volume
First by emails a month, at each plan’s cap; then by mailboxes, with one assumption for all three tools: 30 emails per mailbox per day over 22 working days (Instantly’s recommendation; Smartlead’s help center recommends 15 to 25 a day, and our Smartlead pages count 30 to 50 over 30 days). Billed monthly. By emails a month, Instantly costs less at 125,000 and 500,000; Smartlead at the other volumes. All three columns read in dollars, the only currency Smartlead and Instantly take; Emelia charges that same number in euros, and the marked winners assume you pay in dollars, without conversion.
By emails a month
5,000 emails
6,000 emails
90,000 emails
125,000 emails
150,000 emails
500,000 emails
By mailboxes
3 mailboxes (≈ 1,980 emails)
10 mailboxes (≈ 6,600 emails)
50 mailboxes (≈ 33,000 emails)
100 mailboxes (≈ 66,000 emails)
200 mailboxes (≈ 132,000 emails)
500 mailboxes (≈ 330,000 emails)
Hypergrowth counted at 125,000 emails, the higher of Instantly’s two figures. Contact caps are not priced here: at each level, Smartlead stores more contacts than Instantly loads, and stops counting them from Unlimited Smart. Emelia includes LinkedIn accounts and unlimited contacts, not counted. Pre-tax figures, last verified on October 6, 2026.
Smartlead vs Instantly: what people ask
Billed monthly, Smartlead costs less at most volumes in our table; Instantly costs less at 125,000 and 500,000 emails a month, where Hypergrowth or Light Speed sits just under a Smartlead tier. Compare your own volume in the table above.
No. For its Google and pre-warmed accounts, Instantly keeps ownership and admin access of the domains, and those mailboxes only work inside Instantly. Moving means new domains and mailboxes, warmed up again; Smartlead sells them from $3.99 a mailbox a month and $13 a domain a year.
Both last 14 days without a card. Smartlead allows 2,500 emails and 1,250 contacts during it; Instantly 1,000 emails, 250 contacts and 2 mailboxes.
No, both bill in US dollars only; Emelia’s plans carry one figure, valid in euros or in dollars.
Emelia is an Instantly competitor. We have tried to stay fair: every figure about Instantly comes from its own website or public review sites.
