What outsourced cold calling costs in the UK.

Outsourced B2B cold calling in the UK is priced four ways: by the hour, by the day, by the appointment, or as one channel inside a monthly SDR retainer. Published agency rates run from around £13 an hour for a low-cost team to £50 or more for experienced B2B callers, and from £150 to £350 per caller per day. The rate tells you less than what an hour buys: who is calling, who they are calling, and whether anyone is listening.

The four ways it is priced

1. By the hour.

   Published UK agency rates run from £13 to £20 an hour at the low end to £30 to £50 or more for experienced or sector-specialist callers. One published package lists £42.50 to £47.50 an hour plus VAT, with a monthly minimum of 57 to 150 hours and a £649 set-up fee.

2. By the day.

   One UK agency puts call-centre rates at £150 to £250 per caller per day, usually for a team, and specialist B2B telemarketing agencies at £300 to £350.

3. By the appointment.

   A fee for each meeting booked. Easy to compare, but it pays for the booking rather than the calls, with the incentives that brings - set out in the three pricing models.

4. Inside an SDR retainer.

   Calling as one channel of a monthly programme alongside email and LinkedIn, with the manager, the data and the dialler included. The UK ranges are in the same pricing post.

What moves the price

• Who calls. A call-centre agent working several campaigns a day, or an experienced B2B rep working yours.
• Who they are calling. A finance director takes more attempts to reach than an office manager, and a shorter list of the right people costs more per name than a long list of anyone.
• The data. Published cold data runs from around 10p a contact for basic lists to £5 for premium ones, and whether the list has direct mobiles changes how many calls reach a person at all.
• Screening. Whether the list is cleansed against the TPS and CTPS before it is dialled, and by whom.
• The dialler and the recordings. Included, or charged per seat.
• Management. Whether anyone listens to the calls and changes what the callers say, or only counts them.

What an hour actually buys

An hour on the phone is not an hour of conversations. Much of it goes on numbers that do not answer, voicemails and the research between calls. So the useful questions are how many conversations with the right person an hour produces in a market like yours, and how many of those become meetings that are held. A cheaper hour that reaches the wrong people is the more expensive one.

The number to compare

Cost per qualified meeting held. Take the total monthly cost - calls, data, set-up spread over the term, anything charged as extra - and divide it by the meetings held that met the criteria you agreed in writing. Hourly, daily, per-appointment and retainer quotes all become comparable once they are put through the same sum.

The rules are part of the price

Business numbers in the UK can be called without consent, but not if they are registered with the Corporate Telephone Preference Service, and sole traders and some partnerships are covered by the TPS. Under PECR the ICO can act against the business the calls are made for as well as the caller, so a low rate that skips screening moves the risk onto you. What applies is in the UK B2B cold calling rules.

How we price calling

We do not sell calling by the hour. It is one channel of the SDR team: we call the mobile of the person who decides, from lists cleansed against the TPS and CTPS before anyone dials, with a manager listening to the calls every day. It is priced as one agreed figure for your market rather than a rate card - what goes into it is on outsourced cold calling and how it works.

Sources: Compare Telemarketing, telemarketing services costs 2026 (updated December 2025); Trifle Solutions, how much does outsourced telemarketing cost (April 2025); Beanstalk, what does a telemarketing campaign cost (March 2025).