# AI SDR agents: what AI models recommend, September 2026

GTM AI Recommendation Index, September 2026 Edition. Asked as "AI SDR agent" and as "AI sales development tool that prospects and books meetings", six framings each, to twelve models with search on, on behalf of a mid-market B2B company. Page: https://gtm-ai-index.com/sales/ai-sdr-agents/

**Standing:** Apollo.io leads with 20% of first choices; verdict contested. 46 first choices across the direct, paraphrase, budget and scale prompts.

## First-choice share

| # | Product | Share | Negative rate | Labels |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Apollo.io | 20% | 4% | 23 |
| 2 | Artisan | 13% | 42% | 36 |
| 3 | Amplemarket | 11% | 0% | 17 |
| 4 | Salesforge | 4% | 18% | 11 |
| 5 | AiSDR | 2% | 11% | 37 |
| 6 | Reply.io | 2% | 6% | 18 |
| 7 | Agent Frank | 2% | 0% | 10 |
| 8 | Qualified | 2% | 10% | 10 |
| 9 | Clay | 0% | 0% | 17 |
| 10 | Regie.ai | 0% | 15% | 13 |
| 11 | 11x | 0% | 53% | 43 |

## Each model's first choice on the direct prompt

- Claude Haiku 4.5: RocketSDR; alternatives Apollo.io
- GPT-5.4 mini: Qualified; alternatives Reply.io
- Gemini 3.5 Flash: Artisan; alternatives Clay, Regie.ai, Reply.io
- Perplexity Sonar: Amplemarket Duo; alternatives AiSDR, Artisan Ava
- Grok 4.1 Fast: Apollo.io; alternatives Amplemarket, Reply.io
- Mistral Small: Amplemarket Duo Copilot; alternatives AiSDR, Artisan, Salesforge
- DeepSeek V4 Flash: Amplemarket; alternatives 11x, AiSDR, Artisan, Reply.io
- Llama 4 Maverick: no first choice
- Qwen 3.7 Flash: Amplemarket; alternatives AiSDR, Reply.io
- Kimi K2: Amplemarket, Reply.io; alternatives AiSDR
- GLM 4.7 FlashX: Artisan; alternatives 11x, AiSDR, Regie.ai, Salesforge
- MiniMax M2.5: Amplemarket, SalesTools.io; alternatives Agent Frank, AiSDR, Reply.io

## Sources the answers cite

22 of 72 answers came back with a source list, from 4 of 12 models. Sites named in the most answers:

- salesforge.ai: 9 answers, 9 citations
- amplemarket.com: 8 answers, 8 citations
- 11x.ai: 6 answers, 7 citations
- artisan.co: 6 answers, 6 citations
- saleshandy.com: 6 answers, 6 citations
- salesmotion.io: 5 answers, 8 citations
- getbreakout.ai: 4 answers, 4 citations
- fin.ai: 3 answers, 3 citations

Pages named in the most answers:

- https://amplemarket.com/blog/best-ai-sales-agents (8 answers)
- https://salesforge.ai/blog/ai-sales-agents (5 answers)
- https://artisan.co/blog/the-best-ai-sdrs (4 answers)
- https://getbreakout.ai/blog/10-best-ai-sdr-agents-2026 (4 answers)
- https://saleshandy.com/blog/ai-sdr-tools (4 answers)
- https://fin.ai/learn/best-ai-sdr-tools (3 answers)
- https://getvoip.com/ai-sdr-agents (3 answers)
- https://salesmotion.io/blog/ai-sdr-tools-compared (3 answers)
- https://syncgtm.com/blog/best-ai-sdr-tools-2026 (3 answers)
- https://11x.ai/guides/ai-sdr-agents-b2b-sales-teams (2 answers)

## Warned against

- 11x: 23 of 43 labels negative. "11x.ai targets enterprise buyers with opaque pricing ... users reporting 75 to 90% churn at 3 months, with multiple accounts of "zero results" despite extensive setup." (Claude Haiku 4.5, negative prompt)
- Artisan: 15 of 36 labels negative. "Avoid fully autonomous AI SDRs with annual lock-in contracts, no trials, and documented quality problems (Artisan, 11x.ai especially)" (DeepSeek V4 Flash, negative prompt)
- AiSDR: 4 of 37 labels negative. "AiSDR - Platform compliance issues, quality degradation at scale" (Mistral Small, negative prompt)
- Regie.ai: 2 of 13 labels negative. "Regie.ai — Moderate Risk | High Minimum Commitment | $35K/year floor prices out smaller teams" (Kimi K2, negative prompt)

## Record

- Method: https://gtm-ai-index.com/methodology/
- Raw judge labels and full responses: https://gtm-ai-index.com/data/
- License: CC BY 4.0. Cite as GTM AI Recommendation Index, September 2026 Edition, gtm-ai-index.com.