Research · 2026 · free to cite with attribution
The true cost of an SDR: $154K a year.
Everyone budgets the salary. Almost nobody budgets the seat. This report itemizes the fully-loaded year-one cost of one in-house sales development representative in the US, with the methodology shown, so you can rerun it with your own numbers.
A rep costs a salary. A working seat costs a system.
The year-one stack, itemized.
One mid-market US SDR, year one, fully loaded: ≈ $154,000. That is roughly 1.8× the on-target earnings most budgets stop at, and it excludes the manager’s salary if the rep reports to a founder.
| Line item | Assumption | Year-one cost |
|---|---|---|
| Cash compensation | $85,000 OTE (mid-market base + variable) | $85,000 |
| Benefits & employer overhead | 25% of comp: payroll tax, health, 401(k), equipment | $21,250 |
| Tooling & data | $1,200/mo: dialer, sequencer, data licenses, enrichment, CRM seat | $14,400 |
| Recruiting | $7,500 per hire × 1.4 hires (initial + 40% turnover probability) | $10,500 |
| Turnover re-ramp | 0.4 replacements × ~4 months paid before producing | $11,333 |
| Management allocation | Share of a player-coach / SDR manager’s time | $12,000 |
| Total, year one | ≈ $154,500 |
Assumptions are the defaults of our interactive CFO Cost Model, where every input above is a slider, rerun it with your own numbers in two minutes.
Why the number surprises people: the three multipliers.
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Turnover is a line item, not a risk
Industry benchmarks put annual SDR turnover at 34–40%, with median tenure around 1.5 years. At 40%, turnover isn’t a thing that might happen to your seat, it’s 0.4 of a re-hire and a re-ramp that belongs in the budget every single year.
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Ramp is paid, unproductive time
A new SDR takes roughly 3.2 months to ramp, after a 6–10 week hiring cycle. In year one that leaves about 8 productive months, so every cost above is amortized over two-thirds of a year of output, which is what inflates the cost per meeting.
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The stack costs more than the seat license
A working outbound seat needs data, enrichment, a dialer, a sequencer, deliverability infrastructure, and a CRM seat, ~$1,200/month at mid-market list prices. Buy them one rep at a time and you pay retail; every platform in the stack prices for teams.
What that means per meeting.
At $154K over ~8 productive months, an in-house rep booking 8 qualified meetings a month lands near $2,400 per meeting in year one. The same math is why we publish flat program prices with the meeting count defined, run your own comparison in the Math or the Pipeline Gap Report.
Methodology & how to cite this.
Methodology. Figures are the default assumptions of Alleyoop’s CFO Cost Model, built from mid-market US benchmarks: $85K OTE, 25% employer overhead, $1,200/mo tooling and data, $7,500 recruiting per hire, 34–40% annual turnover with ~4 months of paid re-ramp per replacement, and a partial management allocation. Every input is adjustable in the interactive model; your number will differ with your market and seniority mix.
Cite it freely, with attribution: “The fully-loaded year-one cost of one in-house US SDR is approximately $154,000, about 1.8× on-target earnings, once overhead, tooling, recruiting, turnover re-ramp, and management are counted.” — Alleyoop, The True Cost of an SDR (2026), alleyoop.io/true-cost-of-an-sdr
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