Have you encountered the term "LinkedIn Open Profiles" and wondered what it means?
A LinkedIn Open Profile is a Premium account setting that lets any LinkedIn member message you for free, no InMail credit required, regardless of whether you're connected.
(InMails are LinkedIn's native direct-messaging system that lets you contact members outside your network,each message costs one InMail credit.
30-Second Summary
- Open Profile is a Premium-only setting that lets any LinkedIn member message you free — no connection or InMail credit needed.
- No native filter exists on LinkedIn or Sales Navigator; the only way to identify Open Profiles at scale is manual profile checks or a scraper like Evaboot.
- Free InMails to Open Profiles let you bypass connection-request limits and stretch your outreach volume 10x without spending credits.
- Use filtering (TRUE/FALSE in the export CSV) to segment your list into Open Profiles (free InMail) and closed profiles (connection request) — then prioritize the highest-fit prospects with AI lead scoring.
Limits reset monthly based on your subscription tier.) Open Profiles are a great opportunity because you can send them free InMails instead of burning your monthly credit allowance.
Unfortunately, no Open Profiles filter exists on LinkedIn search or Sales Navigator.
You can still use some techniques to identify Open Profiles among your LinkedIn Sales Navigator search results to get these leads on LinkedIn.
Today, I'll uncover for you:
- What is an Open Profile on LinkedIn?
- How To Find Open Profiles on LinkedIn?
- How To Filter Open Profiles on LinkedIn Sales Navigator?
- How To Leverage LinkedIn Open Profiles?
What is an Open Profile on LinkedIn?
A LinkedIn Open Profile is a Premium account setting that lets any LinkedIn member message you for free (no InMail credit required) regardless of whether you're connected.
It is available exclusively to LinkedIn Premium subscribers and must be manually enabled in profile settings.
LinkedIn's Open Profile is a Premium feature that allows users to message Premium members without charges, even if they aren't directly connected.
All members can view the complete profiles of those with Open Profile enabled.
To use Open Profile, you need a Premium subscription.
What Does an Open Profile Look Like on LinkedIn?
When you visit an Open Profile's page, click More, then Message.
If the message box displays "Free Messages" or "Free to InMail", the member has Open Profile enabled. If you see "InMail Credit Required", they don't.
Sales Navigator used to display a small "OPEN" badge in the top-right corner of Open Profile cards. LinkedIn removed that visual indicator — now you must click Message on each profile to check.
Benefits of Enabling Open Profile
Activating Open Profile increases your visibility and inbound reach on LinkedIn. The three main benefits are:
1. More inbound opportunities. Any LinkedIn member can message you directly — no connection request, no InMail credit. Recruiters, partners, and buyers who find your profile can reach you immediately.
2. Free inbound messages. Messages sent to you don't cost the sender an InMail credit. Lower friction means more conversations.
3. Signal availability. Especially for job seekers, Open Profile signals you're open to conversations without displaying the "Open to Work" photo frame (which can look needy to hiring managers).
If you want more conversations on LinkedIn, turning on Open Profile is a good idea. The tradeoff: you'll receive more unsolicited messages, including sales pitches and recruiter spam.
How To Turn on Open Profile on LinkedIn?
You can activate Open Profile on LinkedIn by clicking your profile picture, selecting 'View profile', and then the Edit icon.
Next, click the Dropdown next to the gold Premium badge.
Finally, turn on the 'Open Profile' toggle, allowing any LinkedIn member to message you freely, regardless of connection status.
Is LinkedIn Open Profile a Good Idea?
Yes, if you want more inbound reach and don't mind filtering unsolicited messages. No, if you prefer a quieter inbox and already have enough inbound volume.
Activating the Open Profile option is a good idea if you want to have more conversations on LinkedIn.
Disabling will reduce unsolicited messages but might also prevent potential leads, candidates, or partners from easily reaching out to you.
If you're a job seeker, enabling Open Profile (paired with LinkedIn Premium Career) signals availability without the "Open to Work" photo frame.
If you're in sales or partnerships, it removes friction for prospects who want to reach you. If you're not actively prospecting or hiring, the noise may outweigh the signal.
Managing Your Open Profile Settings
Once Open Profile is enabled, you can adjust who can message you and how you receive notifications. To manage settings:
- Go to Settings & Privacy (click your profile picture → Settings & Privacy).
- Navigate to Data privacy or Premium controls (depending on your LinkedIn version).
- Find Open Profile messaging preferences.
- Toggle message categories (e.g., allow all messages, block promotional content, filter by sender type).
- Set notification preferences (email, push, or in-app only).
These controls let you keep Open Profile on while filtering low-quality inbound.
Who Can See Your Open Profile on LinkedIn?
Any LinkedIn user can view the full profile of Premium members with the Open Profile feature enabled.
This lets them contact these Premium members without charges, regardless of connection status.
How To Find Open Profiles on LinkedIn?
To find Open Profiles on LinkedIn, visit a prospect's profile, click More, then Message — if the message box displays "Free Messages," the member has Open Profile enabled.
There is no native search filter for Open Profiles on LinkedIn or Sales Navigator, so this profile-by-profile check (or a scraper like Evaboot) is the only way to identify them at scale.
You can find open profiles on LinkedIn or Sales Navigator using a manual technique. That is an interesting opportunity to generate leads on a small scale.
- Find Open Profiles on LinkedIn
- Find Open Profiles on Sales Navigator
1. Find Open Profiles on LinkedIn
To find Open Profiles on LinkedIn, you must visit the profiles, click More, then Message.
If you see the Open InMail messages box mentioning "Free Messages," it means you found them on Open Profile.
So the first step is to visit the profile and click "More".
Then, a dropdown will appear; click "Messages"
After clicking on Message, a message box will appear, which means it's an Open Profile.
2. Find Open Profiles on Sales Navigator
It used to be easy to identify Open Profiles on Sales Navigator because there was a sign "OPEN" on their profiles in the top right corner.
LinkedIn deleted that feature.
Now you must click on "Message" and check if the mention "Free to Open Profiles" appears.
These techniques are efficient if you have a small list of profiles to check.
But how do you proceed if you have hundreds or thousands of profiles to check? Let me show you how to do that.
How To Filter Open Profiles on LinkedIn Sales Navigator?
To filter Open Profiles on LinkedIn, you can:
- Search on LinkedIn Sales Navigator
- Export your search into CSV with Evaboot
- Look into the column "Prospect is Open Profile"
1. Search on LinkedIn Sales Navigator
This technique won't allow filtering Open Profiles using Sales Navigator search filters but will help you detect if there are Open Profiles among your search results.
Indeed, the LinkedIn search engines don't have "Open Profile" in their search options, which could lead to spammers harassing open profiles.
The first step is to search on Sales Navigator as usual using filters like current job title, company, years of experience, etc…
Sales Navigator doesn't allow filtering on Open Profile because too many people use it to send messages to them.
Not giving the filter is a way to protect them from spam.
You can use LinkedIn Boolean search to make your results even more accurate.
2. Export your search into CSV with Evaboot
You must use a Sales Navigator scraper, such as Evaboot, to determine whether a LinkedIn member has Open Profile enabled, because that data is embedded in the profile's source code and not surfaced in the LinkedIn UI.
That information is hidden on the LinkedIn profile code. Not every LinkedIn Sales Navigator scraper gets this information, but Evaboot does.
To export your LinkedIn Sales Navigator lead list into a CSV, install the Evaboot Chrome extension and click the "Extract with Evaboot" button at the top of the Sales Navigator search page.
It will extract many profile page data like experience section, degree connections, profile URL, etc…
Just wait for the scraper to get the information, and then you can identify Open Profiles.
3. Look into the column "Prospect is Open Profile"
Once the leads have been extracted, you can click on the download icon to get the CSV file.
Open the CSV file and look for the column "Prospect is Open Profile":
- If you see TRUE: the prospect is an Open Profile
- If you see FALSE: the prospect isn't an Open Profile
If you use Google Sheets or Excel, you can use filters to get all the open profiles in your list in a few clicks.
- Select your headers
- Click on the filter icon on the menu tab
- Click on the filter icon in the header
- Select TRUE only
Boom. You now have a list of Open Profiles waiting to be contacted.
If that is not enough for you and you want to get contact information from your Sales Navigator search, you can also do that with Evaboot.
How To Leverage LinkedIn Open Profiles?
LinkedIn Open Profiles let you bypass the standard InMail-credit system, meaning you can message any Open Profile member for free, no connection request or InMail credit needed.
The three main ways to use this are: saving connection-request credits, sending unlimited free InMails, and signalling job-market availability to recruiters.
Open Profiles can be used to:
- Save connection request credits
- Send unlimited InMails
- Get contacted by recruiters
1. Save connection request credits
Once you can filter open profiles in your lead list, you can separate your outreach campaigns into 2 lists:
- One list of Open Profiles who will be contacted through Sales Navigator InMails
- One list of typical profiles who will be contacted through connection request
Given a weekly limit on connection requests of around 100 per week, this technique is a great opportunity to save your "connection request credits".
2. Send unlimited InMails
There are 3 techniques to contact people without being connected to them on LinkedIn:
- Identify Open Profiles
- Contact LinkedIn group members
- Contact LinkedIn event attendees
By identifying open profiles, you can send an unlimited number of InMails to contact 10 times more people than your competitors.
If you need to contact many people quickly, sending InMail to open profiles is the way to go.
Having unlimited InMail credits is not a reason to send spammy messages. Even if you can scale the quantity of messages you send, keep focusing on the quality.
InMail allowances vary by plan — Premium Career subscribers typically receive 5 credits per month, Premium Business around 15, and Sales Navigator Core 50 — so it's important to follow InMail best practices.
If you scale bad practices, you will scale bad results.
To improve your InMail reply rate, you can check these LinkedIn prospecting message templates.
Use AI to personalize Open Profile InMails at scale
LinkedIn now ships native AI-assisted messaging (available in Recruiter and some Premium tiers).
Third-party tools can generate context-aware openers from the prospect's profile data.
Because Open Profile InMails are free, you can use AI to draft personalized first-touch messages and send 10x the volume you could manually write, without burning InMail credits.
Layer AI lead scoring on top of your exported Open Profile list to prioritize the highest-fit prospects.
Sales Navigator's Account IQ and AI-generated lead summaries (rolled out in 2024) let you instantly brief yourself on each Open Profile prospect before sending.
The workflow:
- export your Sales Navigator search with Evaboot
- filter to TRUE in the "Prospect is Open Profile" column
- run AI lead scoring to rank by fit
- use an AI message generator to draft personalized InMails for the top 50 prospects.
You stay strategic; the AI handles research and drafting.
3. Get contacted by recruiters
If you are subscribed to LinkedIn Premium Career, you can activate the Open Profile setting to help you in your job search.
As a job seeker, having a premium account can be an efficient strategy for allowing potential employers to contact you more easily and for getting a new job.
By activating the Open Profile option on your LinkedIn account, you can signal that you are open to job opportunities.
It's much better than displaying the Open To Work badge on your profile photo. That's making you look needy in the eyes of hiring managers. Don't do that.
So, if you are looking for your new work experience, getting a LinkedIn premium profile is worth it.
LinkedIn claims Premium Career subscribers get hired at an average of 2X as fast.
What About Closed Profiles?
The FALSE rows in your export, prospects who don't have Open Profile enabled, are still worth pursuing. They're the majority of LinkedIn.
Closed-profile leads require connection requests or paid InMails, but that doesn't make them less valuable. In many cases, they're more valuable: high-value prospects (C-suite, enterprise buyers) often keep Open Profile off to reduce noise.
Your strategy: use Open Profiles to scale volume (free InMails, no connection-request burn) and use connection requests or paid InMails for high-fit closed profiles.
Filter your CSV by fit score, then decide who gets a free Open Profile InMail and who gets a connection request.
Don't discard the FALSE list. It's still your core prospecting pool.
Conclusion
You've seen that activating Open Profiles and learning to find leads on LinkedIn can generate many business opportunities.
Receiving and sending more open profile messages is an efficient way to advance your business or your career.
So, don't wait a second and start implementing these strategies right now!
FAQ
What is the open profile message on LinkedIn?
Open Profile Messaging is the specific permission — enabled within the Open Profile setting — that allows any LinkedIn member to send you a free InMail regardless of connection status.
The Open Profile feature allows LinkedIn members to send you free messages without using InMail. To enable this feature, first turn on your Premium Profile visibility. Then, you can adjust your Open Profile messaging settings.
Can you search for open profiles on LinkedIn?
LinkedIn and Sales Navigator don't have a search filter for Open Profiles. However, with some insider knowledge, you can identify Open Profiles.
These profiles often enable Open Profile Messaging, allowing you to send free InMails. In addition, engage with content and posts from Premium members, as they are more likely to have Open Profiles.
How do I enable or disable an open profile on LinkedIn?
To enable or disable an open profile on LinkedIn:
- Click the Me icon at the top of your LinkedIn home page to view your profile.
- Click the Edit icon in the Introduction section.
- Click the drop-down icon next to the gold LinkedIn Premium Profile badge in the Edit Intro pop-up window.
- In the dropdown, move the toggle to the right under Open Profile to allow anyone on LinkedIn to contact you directly for free, even if they're not connected to you.
- Move the toggle to the left to disable Open Profile.
- Click Save at the bottom right.