TL;DR: InMail is LinkedIn's paid message to someone you are not connected to, and each one uses a monthly credit. LinkedIn gives that credit back when the person accepts, so your real cost is the credits you spend on messages nobody accepts. Most guides say to keep InMails short and rare, and that advice holds up. The math is the part they skip.
Most InMail advice counts messages. The credit is the real cost, and LinkedIn refunds it when someone accepts.
All five guides I analysed say to use InMail sparingly, and four of them list the monthly credits by plan. Only one of them works out what a credit costs, and it leaves out the refund. That gap is where the money goes.
What is an InMail, and who can send one?
An InMail is a message you send to a LinkedIn member you are not connected to. You pay for it with a credit that comes with a paid plan. A Basic (free) account cannot send InMails at all. You need Premium, Sales Navigator, or a Recruiter seat.
A Basic account cannot send an InMail, and no amount of good writing changes that.
LinkedIn states the rule plainly:
"If you have a Basic (free) account, then you can only directly message LinkedIn members that you're connected to. You must upgrade to a Premium account to use InMail messages." — LinkedIn Help, InMail Messages
There is one free route, and it is easy to miss. A Basic member can message a Premium member who has Open Profile turned on, and that message uses no credit. Can you message someone for free? Sort of. LinkedIn does not publish how many of these a Basic member can send each month, so check your own limit.
It works like a reserved seat. Open Profile is the standby list, and LinkedIn does not say how long that list is.
How many credits does each plan give you?
Premium Career gives you 5 InMail credits a month, capped at 15. Sales Navigator gives you 50 a month, capped at 150. Recruiter Lite gives you 30 a month, capped at 120. What happens to the unused ones depends on the plan, and that detail matters more than the monthly number.
Unused credits decide how much you can bank, so the cap sets your real budget.
| Plan | Monthly credits | Cap | What happens to unused credits |
|---|---|---|---|
| Premium Career | 5 | 15 | Expire after 90 days |
| Sales Navigator (Core) | 50 | 150 | Carry to next month, used within 90 days |
| Recruiter Lite | 30 | 120 | Roll over, capped at 120 per seat |
LinkedIn's FAQ on Premium credits says:
"InMail message credits expire after 90 days. However, you will receive InMail message credit back if a recipient accepts your InMail." — LinkedIn Help, InMail Messages FAQ
Plan around the cap, not the allowance. Credits you never send are money you already paid, and they run on a clock.
What does one message cost?
Each InMail uses one credit, and a credit has a price. At list price, a Premium Career credit works out to about $8.00, because the plan costs $39.99 a month for 5 credits. A Sales Navigator Core credit works out to about $2.40, because the plan costs $119.99 a month for 50. These are the list prices I checked on 15 October 2026, from LinkedIn's Premium page and Sales Navigator plans.
LinkedIn refunds the credit when the person accepts, so you pay for every message nobody accepts.
Here is the common advice: keep the message short, make it personal, and use it sparingly. The turn is the money.
Say you send 4 InMails and 1 gets accepted. LinkedIn returns that one credit, so 3 credits are gone for 1 accepted message. I call that gap The Refund Gap: the space between what you send and what comes back. Recruiter works a little differently, because it refunds when the candidate replies.
Why does that matter? Because acceptance, not the message count, sets your real cost. At that 4-to-1 ratio, one accepted message costs three credits, about $24.00 at the Premium Career list price and about $7.20 at the Sales Navigator Core list price. Treat the ratio as an example, not a benchmark, and check current prices first.
Think of it like a tax on silence. Call it The Credit Tax, and budget for it.
What should you do instead? Pick a short list of people where one accepted message would be worth three credits. Write each message by hand, then track the status for a month. LinkedIn shows Accepted, Declined and Pending in your inbox, so the numbers are already there.
When should you spend a credit on someone you do not know?
Spend a credit only when the person can say yes and you have no other route to them. A credit should buy access that email, a phone call or a mutual connection cannot give you. If one of those routes works, use it first and keep the credit.
A credit should buy access you cannot get any other way.
| Route | Who it reaches | Uses an InMail credit? |
|---|---|---|
| Connection request | People you invite to connect | No |
| Message | Your 1st-degree connections | No |
| InMail | Members outside your network, on a paid plan | Yes, returned if accepted |
| Open Profile message | Premium members with Open Profile on | No |
My rule is simple: spend the credit when the person is the one who signs off. A gatekeeper or a junior researcher is usually better reached by email or a call. Each credit works like a ticket to one hearing. Open Profile is the free route, and it only works when the person has it turned on.
How do you send one without wasting credits?
Check your plan first, write a short subject, and keep the body under 1,900 characters. LinkedIn's pages disagree on the body limit, and some say 2,000, so 1,900 is the safe number. Then send one message and wait, because a second message can cost a second credit.
Send one message, then wait, because a second one can cost a second credit.
LinkedIn's rule for follow-ups is strict:
"You cannot send a follow-up InMail unless the recipient accepts and responds to your first message." — LinkedIn Help, Unable to follow-up with InMail Messages
The Sales Navigator help page takes a looser line. It says a second InMail sent before a reply uses another credit. So the rule depends on your plan, and I would check it in your own product before you send a follow-up. Here is the order I would use:
- Confirm the person is the one who signs off.
- Write a subject of 200 characters or fewer that names one reason to reply.
- Keep the body under 1,900 characters, and end with one clear ask.
- Log the status, and wait before any second message.
If you already run follow-ups in a sales engagement tool, the sales engagement platform guide explains how to choose one without breaking follow-up.
What response rate should you expect?
Plan for a reply rate of about 7%, and treat anything higher as a bonus. The best figure I could check is 7.5% for Open InMail campaigns, from Belkins' 2026 study. An older 2025 report put a related figure at 6.38%, but I could not confirm which row that number belongs to.
Plan for single-digit replies, and treat any higher number as a bonus.
Belkins' 2025 report drew on LinkedIn data from more than 20 million outreach attempts in 2024, supplied by Expandi. That is one vendor's data, so treat it as a planning range, not a promise.
LinkedIn's own recruiter data makes a different point. Individually written InMails get response rates roughly 15% higher than bulk ones. That figure is relative, so it gives you no base rate.
One vendor, Skylead, cites 18 to 25% and attributes it to a LinkedIn Learning course. It gives no link, and I could not find a course stating that number. Leave it out of your plan.
If you want the follow-up side in more detail, the lead management guide covers handoffs from first contact onward.
Who should you reach a different way?
If the buyer never opens LinkedIn, an InMail cannot reach them, however well it is written. Email or a phone call is the better route in that case, and neither one uses a credit. Local businesses are a common example of this, so the channel choice starts with where the buyer actually spends time.
If the buyer lives on Google Maps, use email or a call, not a credit.
This is where LeadsAgent fits, and I built it for exactly this problem. It finds local businesses from live Google Maps data, visits each business website, and collects the public emails and social profiles it finds there. It does not send InMails, and it does not use LinkedIn as a source for businesses, so pair it with the messaging route you already use.
Which people should you message first?
Put the people who can say yes at the top of the list, then rank by how well they fit the offer. A short list you can defend beats a long list you hope will work. Start with the people whose job lets them act on your message.
Rank the people before you spend a single credit on them.
A platform score is a weak guide here. The social selling index guide makes the same point: the score tracks activity more than pipeline.
LeadsAgent ranks each business against the needs you describe, then gives you one list to work from. A ranking is not a promise that the owner will buy, though, so keep every message honest about what you offer.
FAQ
What is sponsored InMail now?
LinkedIn renamed Sponsored InMail to Message Ad in December 2019. It still sells the format on a cost-per-send basis, and LinkedIn publishes no frequency cap. A 2020 practitioner article says members see the same ad once every 45 days, but I could not confirm that number for today.
Does a credit come back if nobody replies?
No. LinkedIn returns the credit when the recipient accepts your InMail, so a message nobody accepts keeps its credit spent. That is why acceptance, not the message count, sets your real cost. Check LinkedIn's FAQ for the exact wording.
Should I trust the 800 free InMails claim?
No, not yet. Some vendor pages say every plan includes 800 free InMails a month, including Skylead's guide, but no LinkedIn help page mentions that number. Treat it as unverified.
Next step: pick the people where one accepted message would justify three credits, write each message by hand, and track Accepted, Declined and Pending for one month. If most of your list is local businesses, see how LeadsAgent builds one from Google Maps.
