The AI SDR agent that runs your outbound motion.

An AI SDR is software that runs the sales development job end to end: it builds the target list from your ICP, writes and sends the first touches, classifies the replies, and books the meeting. The useful test is whether it chooses the next action inside boundaries you set, or only fires a sequence a person already wrote. The second is a sequencer with better copy.

Not in the way the phrase suggests. It removes the parts of the job that are list building, first-touch drafting and reply triage, which is most of the hours and almost none of the judgement. What it does not do is handle a conversation that goes sideways, or decide that a segment is wrong. Teams that get value from it move their people up to those decisions rather than cutting headcount.

A sales engagement platform executes the sequence you built. An AI SDR builds it, adapts it per account, and decides what to do with the reply. The practical difference shows up on reply handling: a platform puts responses in an inbox and waits for a human, while an agent classifies them and routes or answers.

Three things, and the third is the one teams skip. Contact and account data good enough to target on, a defined ICP so the list means something, and written definitions of what a qualified reply is and what the agent may do without asking. Without the third it produces plausible activity you cannot audit.

Pricing across the market ranges from per-seat software to per-meeting outcomes. graph8 prices execution rather than seats, so cost tracks the work done rather than the number of logins. The figure worth comparing between vendors is cost per meeting your reps accepted, because an agent that books meetings nobody takes is more expensive than it looks.