UK SDR cost calculator: what one hire costs in year one.

With the defaults below, one mid-level UK SDR outside London costs about £85,500 in the first year. Change any figure and the total, the cost per productive month and the cost per held meeting update as you type.

Pay

Base salaryMid-level UK SDR, outside London

£

Commission at targetWhat they earn if they hit their number

£

Employer pension3% is the automatic-enrolment minimum

%

Hiring and set-up

Recruiter feeShare of base salary; 0 if you hire direct

%

Equipment and onboardingLaptop, phone, headset, first fortnight

£

Tools, per yearData, dialler, sequencing, Sales Navigator

£

Management and output

Manager’s salaryWhoever coaches the rep

£

Share of their timeAn hour a day is about a fifth

%

Months to full productivityThe Bridge Group average is 3.0

mo

Held meetings a month, once rampedThe Bridge Group median quota is 10

First-year cost of one SDR£85,523

£9,503per productive month

£950per held meeting, if the meetings arrive

See what an outsourced team would do with that budget →

Fifteen minutes on your market. No pitch, no deck.

Reset to the defaults

What each line is

• Salary and commission. Published UK ranges for 2026 put a mid-level SDR at £35,000 to £40,000 base and £45,000 to £55,000 on target; entry level is £28,000 to £32,000 base. London adds fifteen to twenty per cent.
• Employer’s National Insurance. 15 per cent of pay above £5,000 a year.
• Pension. The minimum employer contribution is 3 per cent of qualifying earnings, the band between £6,240 and £50,270, held at those levels for 2026/27.
• Recruiter. 15 to 25 per cent of base salary is the usual agency fee for a sales hire. Set it to zero if you recruit yourself; the cost moves into your time instead.
• Equipment and tools. Our estimates from current list prices: a single-licence data source with usable UK coverage, a dialler, a sequencing tool and Sales Navigator, bought separately.
• Management time. The line that rarely makes the spreadsheet. Coaching that changes results is about an hour a day on live calls, reviews and messaging.
• Ramp and meetings. The Bridge Group’s 2025 research puts the average ramp at 3.0 months and the median quota at ten held meetings a month. The calculator counts no meetings during the ramp and assumes the quota is hit every month after it - which, on the same research, 60 per cent of reps do.

What the calculator leaves out

Tenure. The Bridge Group puts the average time in the role at 1.9 years, so the recruiter, the equipment and the ramp are often paid twice inside two years. It also leaves out the months spent recruiting before the rep starts - a UK SDR job description template shortens that part - and anything that goes wrong. The full walk-through is in how much an SDR costs in the UK, and the other benchmark figures are on UK SDR statistics.

To work out how many reps your meeting target needs in the first place, the outbound pipeline calculator runs it back from the diary.

Comparing it with outsourcing

Outsourced SDR providers price by retainer, per meeting or a hybrid of the two; outsourced SDR pricing in the UK sets out what each model pays a provider to do. Whichever way you go, compare on the same number: total cost divided by meetings held with people who fit the criteria you agreed. We do not publish a rate card; how it works covers what drives the cost of ours. Not sure outbound fits yet? The outbound readiness check takes a minute.

Sources: Skipcall, UK SDR salary guide 2026; HMRC, rates and thresholds for employers 2026 to 2027; The Pensions Regulator, earnings thresholds; The Bridge Group, 2025 SDR Models and Metrics report. Recruiter, tool, equipment and management figures are our estimates. Last checked 28 September 2026.