Linkedin Account Types: All Premium Plans & Costs Comparison

There are 9 types of linkedin accounts:

1. Free LinkedIn Account
2. Linkedin Premium Career: $39.99 /month
3. Linkedin Premium Business: $59.99 /month
4. LinkedIn Sales Navigator Core: $99.99 /month
5. LinkedIn Sales Navigator Advanced: $149.99 /month
6. LinkedIn Sales Navigator Advanced Plus: custom
7. LinkedIn Recruiter Lite: $180 /month
8. LinkedIn Recruiter: $835 /month
9. Linkedin Learnings: $29.99/month

Wondering which linkedin plan you should go for?

Here we compare linkedin premium plans in terms of costs and functionalities so you can clearly see what is the best option for your business.

Let’s dive right now into the different types of linkedin subscriptions plans.

Linkedin Basic Account

A free linkedin account is a good start to discover the platform. However, if your goals it to generate leads or to recruit talents, you will quickly face some limitations.

Linkedin Basic Account Cost

The Linkedin Basic Account is free forever. Linkedin will never charge linkedin members you for accessing the basic features.

Linkedin Basic Account Plan

Here is what is included in the linkedin basic account plan:

1. Build your Linkedin profile and publish content
2. Expand your network by sending connection requests
3. Use the search engine to find profiles

You can also use linkedin boolean search on the free search engine to build a targeted lead and candidate lists.

Linkedin Free Account Limitations

There are some limitations of having free Linkedin membership:

1. The search results limitation
2. The commercial use limit
3. No access to 2nd & 3rd degree connections
4. No access to profile visitors

1. The search results limitation

The search results of the linkedin free search engine are composed of 100 pages of 10 results.

It means you can only see the first 1000 results of your searches. You can get access to the rest.

2. The commercial use limit

The most annoying thing for free linkedin users is the commercial use limit:

It means that if Linkedin detects you are intensively using the free search engine to generate leads or find candidates, they will block your access.

You won’t be able to use the search engine anymore and you will need to wait until the end of the month to use it again.

These limitations can be lifted by the following linkedin premium plans.

3. No access to 2nd & 3rd degree connections

With linkedin free accounts, you don’t get inmails credits. It means you are forced to send connection requests if you want to contact people out of your network.

Given that 50% of connection request get accepted on average, it really compromises your linkedin prospecting capacity and your ability to expand your professional network.

4. No access to profile visitors

With the free version of Linkedin, you can’t access your profile views.

You miss a source of qualified leads or potentially interested candidates.

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Now, let’s see how linkedin premium features can help you overcome these limitations and help you reach your goals.

You will see that linkedin premium costs are low compared to the return on investment you can get from linkedin premium accounts.

Linkedin Premium Career: $29.99 /month.

Linkedin Premium Career have been designed to help you get a job faster. Linkedin claims candidates with Premium Career get hired an average of 2X as fast.

Linkedin Premium Career Cost

Linkedin Premium Career costs $29.99 per month. Or $239 per year if you pay annually.

Linkedin Premium Career Plan

Linkedin Premium Career plan includes:

1. 5 inmails Messages
2. See who’s Viewed Your Profile
3. Job and applicant insights
4. Featured Applicant Feature
5. Company insights
6. Salary insights
7. Access To LinkedIn Learning
8. Access to Interview Preparation toolsv

1. 5 Inmails Messages

With a Linkedin Premium Career account, you get 5 inmail credits per month.

Linkedin Inmail messages are premium messages that allowed to send direct messages to 2nd and 3rd degree connection without having to send a connection request first.

They can be used by jobseekers to easily contact busy recruiters who received a lot of connection request.

2. See who’s Viewed Your Profile

Linkedin Premium Career allow you to see who viewed your profile in the last 90 days.

It might help with your job search if you notice some recruiters visiting your profile.

That is a good way to start the conversation.

3. Job and applicant insights

Each time you apply to a job, you get data about other applicants.

You can leverage information to know what will make a difference during the interview.

4. Featured Applicant Feature

Want to stand out when applying? Use the Feature Applicant Feature.

This feature allows you to appear at the top of the job application list and catch recruiters eyes.

5. Company insights

A good interview is a well-prepared one.

Linkedin Premium Career gives you access to a lot of company data so you can make a difference during the interview.

6. Salary insights

Want to know how to negotiate your salary?

Take a look at Salary Insights.

That will give you the average salaries in the industry and idea how what you can ask your future employer.

7. Access To LinkedIn Learning

Linkedin Premium access gives you access to the 16,000+ LinkedIn Learning Courses.

You can use these resources to improve your skills and prepare for the interviews.

8. Access to Interview Preparation tools

Linkedin Premium Career also offers an Interview Preparation Tool that will prepare you for the most common question asked during job interviews.

A good way to prepare if you are just getting started.

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That was for job seekers.

Now,

Let’s talk about salespeople.

Linkedin Premium Business: $59.99 /month

Linkedin Premium Business is made for sales professionals who are willing to generate leads with the platform.

Linkedin Premium Business Costs

Linkedin Premium Business costs $59.99 per month. Or $575.88 per year if you pay annually.

Linkedin Premium Business Plan

Linkedin Premium Business plan offers:

1. Everything included in Premium Career
2. 10 Inmails credits
3. Unlimited people search

1. 15 inmail credits

Linkedin Premium Business accounts offer 15 inmails per month. So 10 more than Linkedin Premium Career.

2. Unlimited people search

By subscribing to Linkedin Premium Business, you lift the commercial use limit.

You can do unlimited searches on the free Linkedin search engine without fearing to be restricted.

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Linkedin Premium Business honestly doesn’t worth paying for when you compare with what you got with Sales Navigator for $40 more.

Linkedin Sales Navigator Core: $99.99 /month

Linkedin Sales Navigator helps sales reps find, connect and build relationships with potential buyers by using Linkedin’s network data to get all the information they need to better identify and engage with their leads.

Linkedin Sales Navigator Costs

Linkedin Sales Navigator costs $99.99 per month. Or 958.88 per year if you pay annually.

Linkedin Sales Navigator Core Plan

Linkedin Sales Navigator Core plan includes:

1. Unlimited searches
2. Advanced search filters
3. Access to 2500 search results
4. 50 Inmail credits
5. Lead & Account Lists
6. Alerts & Notifications
7. Lead recommendations
8. Account Insights
9. Saved Searches

1. Unlimited Searches

With a Linkedin Sales Navigator account, you are not restricted in the number of searches you can make every month.

You also got access to the account search engine.

2. Advanced search filters

The Sales Navigator search engine which is much more powerful than the basic (job title, company etc..)

It contains a lot more search filters and additional features.

To learn more about this you can check our article on how you can use Sales Navigator features to generate leads.

3. Access to 2500 search results

With the basic linkedin search engine, you only got access to the first 1000 results.

With Sales Navigator, that limit is raised to 2500.

If your searches have more than 2500 results, we got you covered. Here is a tutorial on how to split your searches into several chunks.

4. 50 Inmails credits

With Sales Navigator, you get 50 inmails credits per month, so 35 credits more than Linkedin Premium Business.

By the way, there is a way to send unlimited inmails on Linkedin. Here is a video showing you how to do that.

5. Lead & Account Lists

Sales Navigator allow you to create targeted lists of leads and account so you personalize your outreach, take notes and keep record of your interactions with them.

6. Alerts & Notifications

Once you create lead and account lists, you start getting alerts on their activities on Linkedin.

These alerts give you business insights you can leverage to send personalize your linkedin outreach and your follow-ups.

7. Lead recommendations

Based on the leads you save into lists and your actives on Sales Navigator search engine, Linkedin will recommend leads every week.

8. Account Insights

Looking for account intelligence to personalize your linkedin prospecting?

For every account you get access to:

1. Best decision makers to reach out to
2. Account Map
3. Growth Insights
4. Account Alerts

All you need to send personalized outreach messages.

9. Saved Searches

Saved searches is one of the best features offered by Linkedin Sales Navigator.

It basically allows you to put your linkedin lead generation on autopilot.

When you save a search, Linkedin will update the results weekly and tell you if there are new people that match with your search criteria.

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The only thing that you can’t do with Sales Navigator is export the lead lists into a CSV or an Excel file.

But no worries, you can use a 3rd party tool like Evaboot to get the data.

Linkedin Sales Navigator Advanced: $149.99 /month

Sales Navigator Advanced (previously named Linkedin Sales Navigator Team) is an upgraded version of Sales Navigator Core built for sales team. It facilitates collaboration between the members of sales team.

Linkedin Sales Navigator Advanced Cost

Linkedin Sales Navigator Advanced costs $149.99 per month. Or $1300 per year if you pay annually.

Linkedin Sales Navigator Advanced Plan

With Sales Navigator Advanced, you get all the features in Sales Navigator professional plus:

1. Teamlink
2. Smartlinks
3. CSV Upload

1. Teamlink

Linkedin TeamLink helps sales team detect warm introduction opportunities with their prospects.

Teamlink is doing that by showing you if people in your search results are among the 1rst degree connections of your teammates.

2. Smartlinks

Sales Navigator Smartlinks allows creating Sales presentations aggregating files and websites, and then easily share and track your prospect’s interactions with this content.

3. CSV Upload

This Linkedin CSV upload feature is really useful because it allows to import data from other B2B databases like Crunchbase, Wappalyzer or job boards into Sales Navigator.

Instead of searching for target companies one by one with the search engine, you can bulk upload your excel and save a huge amount of time.

Linkedin Sales Navigator Advanced Plus: custom

Sales Navigator Advanced Plus is designed for enterprises and offers advanced features like CRM integration and real time contact update.

Linkedin Sales Navigator Advanced Plus Cost

Linkedin Sales Navigator Advanced Plus is the most expensive Linkedin premium offers. There are no public prices but it seems it start at $1600/year.

Linkedin Sales Navigator Advanced Plus Plan

With Sales Navigator Advanced Plus, you get all the features in core and Advanced, plus:

1. Teamlink Extend
2. CRM Synchronization
3. Real-Time Contact Updates
4. Advanced Ads Campaign Manager

1. Teamlink Extend

Teamlink Extend which allow you to see if your prospects are connected to anyone in your company (not just your sales teammates).

2. CRM Synchronization

This feature allows you to exclude from your Sales Navigator searches leads already present in your CRM

That way you avoid prospecting people that are already in contact with your Sales team.

You also save time by focusing your efforts on leads that are never been contacted by your company.

3. Real Time Contact Update

The Real Time Contact Update feature allows you to be notified when your prospects change jobs or companies.

Given that 30% of B2B data get deprecated every year, keeping your CRM data updated is essential to ensure the efficiency of your sales team.

4. Advanced Ads Campaigner Manager

With a Linkedin Sales Navigator Advanced Plus account, you get access to more features on Linkedin Ads to precisely target your ideal customers.

Linkedin Recruiter Lite: $180 / month

LinkedIn Recruiter Lite is made for recruiters and hiring managers to find talent on LinkedIn who wants to source candidates.

Linkedin Recruiter Lite Cost

Linkedin Recruiter Lite costs $180 per month. Or $1.480 per year if you pay annually.

Linkedin Recruiter Lite Plan

The feature of Linkedin Recruiter Lite are:

1. 30 Inmails credits
2. Advanced searches filters
3. Recruiting CRM
4. Candidate recommendations
5. Automated sourcing
6. Job posting
7. Inmail & job post analytics

1. 30 Inmails credits

Linkedin Recruiter Lite offers 30 inmails credits per month.

You can use theses Inmails to contact candidates without having to send them a connection request first.

2. Advanced search filters

Linkedin Recruiter give you access to 21 advanced search filters to find the ideal candidates for your company or your clients.

3. Recruiting CRM

Linkedin Recruiter Lite has a mini ATS system built-in that you can use to manage your recruting process.

The cool thing is that you can add people directly from their Linkedin profile but also with their regular information if they are not present on linkedin

4. Candidate recommendations

Once you create a Project in Linkedin Recruiter Lite, it will recommend you candidates fitting with your search criteria daily basis.

That allow you to save a lot of time on candidate sourcing.

5. Automation sourcing

Another way to automate your sourcing is to save your candidates searches.

Once your search is saved, Linkedin Recruiter will notify you of new candidates matching your search criteria every week.

Automatic candidate tracking is a game changer for any recruiter.

6. Job posting

Another great time saver, you can post job offers on Linkedin Jobs directly from Recruiter Lite

You can assign these job offers to specific projects so the people applying will directly be added into the dedicated candidate pipeline.

That way you centralize the candidates you get from outreach and the candidates you get from job offers?

7. Inmail and job post analytics

If you plan on using Inmails for your linkedin outreach, Recruiter get you covered.

They offer detailed analytics so you can analyze your performance and improve your linkedin messages.

Same thing for job posts, it will give you stats like apply rate or completion rate so you can improve your job offers.

Linkedin Recruiter: $835 /month

Linkedin Recruiter is an upgrade version of Recruiter Lite that offers more search filters and advanced integrations with Applicant Tracking System (ATS)

Linkedin Recruiter Cost

Linkedin Recruiter costs $835 per month. Or $8,999 per year if you pay annually.

Linkedin Recruiter Plan

With LinkedIn Recruiter, you get all the features in Recruiter Lite Plus:

1. 150 Inmails credits
2. Inmail bulks endings
3. Additional Search filters
4. Integrations to ATS

1. More Inmails credits

Linkedin Recruiter offers 150 inmails credits per month. 120 more than Linkedin Recruiter Lite.

2. Inmail bulk sending

With Linkedin Recruiter, you can send Inmail messages in bulk.

Meaning you can send the same message to 10 people in 1 click, without having to send them manually to each candidate.

It can save you time but if you use this feature make sure to send well-written messages. Non-personalized mass prospecting is not working anymore.

3. Additional search filters

Linkedin Recruiter offers more filters to find the perfect candidates.

The most useful being “Open to Work”.

It allows you to find all the open to work profiles on Linkedin.

These people are looking for opportunities so you are sure to get good reply rates if you contact them.

4. Integration to popular ATS

You are using an Applicant Tracking System (ATS) to manage your candidate pipeline?

Linkedin Recruiter can easily integrate with it, so the data is sync between the two software programs.

Here is the list of the ATS’s Linkedin Recruiter integrates with.

Linkedin Learnings: $29.99 /month

Linkedin Learning gives you unlimited access to the 16,000 courses are available on the platform.

Linkedin Learning Costs

Linkedin Learning costs $29.99 per month. Or $239.88 per year if you pay annually.

Linkedin Learning Plan

You can use it to learn new skills and be a thought leader in your industry.

Don’t forget that Linkedin Learnings is included in Linkedin Premium Business and Career. All the Linkedin premium members have automatically access to it.

It’s also possible to buy individual courses if you don’t want to subscribe.

They are between $20 and $50 dollar each.

Linkedin Premium Plans Comparison

In this part we compare linkedin premium plans:

1. Linkedin Premium VS Linkedin Sales Navigator
2. Linkedin Premium Business VS Basic
3. Linkedin Premium Career VS Basic
4. Linkedin Sales Navigator Core VS Advanced
5. Linkedin Sales Navigator VS Recruiter Lite

1. Linkedin Premium Business VS Sales Navigator

Sales Navigator has much more value for money than Linkedin Premium Business if your goal is to generate lead on linkedin.

It has way more search filters to find leads and offer more Inmails.

If you are a sales rep, an SD or a founder, there is absolutely no question: you should get Linkedin Sales Navigator instead of Linkedin Premium Business.

2. Linkedin Sales Navigator Core VS Advanced

If you use the CSV upload feature, Sales Navigator Advanced can be a game changer. If you don’t, not so much.

Here is a demo of the features so you can if it’s useful for you.

3. Linkedin Premium Business VS Basic

Linkedin Premium Business doesn’t worth the cost, especially if you want to use for lead generation.

Plus Linkedin Premium Business is included in Sales Navigator. So you can have both tools for $40 more.

Instead of comparing linkedin premium business and your free account, you should compare sales navigator vs. a basic account.

4. Linkedin Premium Career VS Basic

If you are a jobseeker, Linkedin Premium Career does not make a big difference compared to a basic linkedin account. You can spend that money if that you have the budget. However, it would be better to spend that money on improving your skills to get hired to your new job.

5. Linkedin Sales Navigator VS Recruiter Lite

Linkedin Sales Navigator can almost do the exact same thing as Linkedin Recruiter for less money.

If your only interest is getting access to advanced search filters and linkedin database, better choose Sales Navigator over Recruiter Lite.

Sales Navigator is interesting for a recruiting business because you can find candidates and clients with the same tool.

If you are also interested in the ATS and job posting features, you might prefer having a global recruiting solution like Linkedin Recruiter.

FAQ

Here we answer the most common questions about linkedin premium subscriptions

Is LinkedIn Premium worth the cost?

Yes. Linkedin Premium worth the cost if you have the budget. Whether you choose Premium Career or Premium Business plan, it provides valuable tools and insights to help you reach your professional goals

What is the cheapest LinkedIn premium plan?

The cheapest Linkedin premium membership is Linkedin Premium Career which cost $29.99 per month. Or $239 per year if you pay annually.

How do I get LinkedIn Premium for free?

Every Linkedin Premium subscriptions have a one-month free trial. So you can try the tool for free for one month. You just need to provide your credit card details. That’s a good opportunity to evaluate the benefits of linkedin premium.