What does it actually cost to hire an SDR?
Not just the salary number on the offer letter. Here's every cost that stacks on top before a full-time SDR is actually producing pipeline.
A full-time, fully loaded SDR runs roughly $70,000 to $150,000 a year, depending on market and experience level. That range isn't the salary, it's the salary plus everything sitting on top of it: commission or bonus, benefits and payroll taxes, the sales tools they'll need, a slice of a manager's time, and 2 to 4 months of ramp where they're being paid before they're producing much pipeline. Base salary alone for a junior SDR is often $50,000 to $70,000, which is why the headline number on a job posting is usually only half the real cost. If that math is more than your current outbound volume justifies, a fractional SDR (see /fractional-sdr-cost) or a lighter human add-on (/hire-a-closer) covers the same ground for less.
| Cost component | Typical range |
|---|---|
| Base salary | $50,000 to $70,000/yr (junior to mid) |
| Commission / bonus | 10-30% of base, tied to quota |
| Benefits and payroll taxes | Roughly 20-30% on top of salary |
| Tools and software | $1,000 to $3,000+/yr per rep |
| Management overhead | A real slice of a manager's time, hard to isolate but not free |
| Ramp before productivity | 2 to 4 months of full pay, partial output |
Base salary
Base salary for a junior to mid-level SDR typically lands between $50,000 and $70,000 depending on market and how much prior experience the role calls for. More senior SDRs, or ones in higher cost-of-living markets, push toward the top of that band or above it. This number is the one that shows up in the job posting, but it's rarely the number that shows up on the actual bill once everything else is added.
Commission and bonus
Most SDR compensation includes variable pay tied to quota, commonly somewhere in the 10 to 30% of base range once a rep is fully ramped and hitting targets. This is meant to align incentives, and it does, but it also means the full cost of a productive SDR is meaningfully higher than the base salary you budgeted for. A rep who's crushing quota is also the rep costing you the most.
Benefits and payroll costs
Health insurance, payroll taxes, retirement matching, and other employer-side costs typically add somewhere around 20 to 30% on top of base salary, depending on your benefits package and location. This is the part most founders underestimate when they first sketch out the cost of a hire, because it doesn't appear anywhere in the offer letter conversation.
Ramp time before productivity
A new SDR isn't fully productive on day one. Learning your product, your ICP, your objection handling, and your tools typically takes somewhere in the range of 2 to 4 months before output looks like what you're actually paying for. During that stretch you're paying full salary and benefits for partial pipeline, which is a real cost even though it never appears as a line item.
Tools and software
A working SDR needs a stack: a dialer, a sequencing tool, data or enrichment access, a CRM seat, sometimes a LinkedIn automation tool on top. Depending on what you already have licensed elsewhere in the business, this typically runs somewhere in the low thousands per year per rep, and it's a cost that exists whether the rep is fully ramped or still learning the role.
Management overhead
Someone has to hire, onboard, coach, and manage the SDR, and that's usually you or another senior person on a small team. That time isn't free even when no invoice shows up for it. It's the least visible cost on this list and often the one that determines whether the hire actually pays off, because an unmanaged SDR tends to underperform regardless of how good the base compensation package is.
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