LinkedIn Account Types: Free vs. Premium vs. Sales Navigator (2024 Update)

This is it. 2024. The year you up your LinkedIn game. 

But let’s be honest. You didn’t land here by accident. You want to know…of all the LinkedIn account types, which is best for you, right?

The answer isn’t exactly cut and dry. There are plenty of LinkedIn account types to choose from. But we want to put you on the right track.

Whether you’re a sales rep trying to figure out if Sales Navigator is worth it or a marketer looking to justify the Premium price tag, you’re in the right place. Let’s start with the basics. 

What are the different LinkedIn account types?

LinkedIn offers plenty of options for professionals and enterprise teams alike, including: 

• Free LinkedIn Account – great for starting out
• LinkedIn Premium Career – great for job seekers
• LinkedIn Premium Business – great for building professional connections
• LinkedIn Sales Navigator Core – great for sales professionals
• LinkedIn Sales Navigator Advanced – great for sales teams
• LinkedIn Recruiter Lite – great for smaller recruiting firms/ individuals
• LinkedIn Recruiter – great for mid-sized and larger recruiting firms
• Bonus | LinkedIn + Wiza – great for exporting high-quality contact info

We’ll focus on breaking down each of the LinkedIn account types so you know exactly what you’re getting and what the differences are between each type. 

Please note that we’ve done our best to provide the most up-to-date pricing but they are subject to change and may vary depending on your business.

Best for getting started with LinkedIn

Your Free LinkedIn account

Anyone can sign up for LinkedIn for free. With a free LinkedIn membership, you can: 

• Build out your professional profile on LinkedIn (work experience, education, interests, etc.). 
• Build a professional network both from your in-person contacts and 2nd degree connections.
• Receive InMail messages from recruiters and those outside your immediate network.
• Search for LinkedIn profiles based on industry, interest, and company.  
• Save a handful of searches (and set up alerts). 

While it’s great for people new to the platform, LinkedIn’s free account level has some limitations:

• Your searches are limited to 100 results.
• You don’t receive any InMail credits to message people outside your network.
• You are only able to see the last 5 people to look at your profile. 

A free LinkedIn account is a great way to get familiar with the platform. But you may soon find yourself wanting to upgrade to another LinkedIn membership level. 

Sign up for your free LinkedIn account.

Best for individuals looking to get hired and get ahead 

LinkedIn Premium Career

Premium Career is your first step up for LinkedIn membership levels.

With LinkedIn Premium Career, you get:

• 5 InMail credits every month
• Unlimited insight into who’s viewed your profile 
• Job and salary insights for your industry
• 1000 results for your advanced searches

People typically use Premium Career for their own professional outreach and career goals. 

LinkedIn Premium Career Pricing

The cost of LinkedIn Premium Career is $39.99 per month.

Check out LinkedIn Premium Career today.

Best for small to medium businesses seeking growth and marketing insights

LinkedIn Premium Business

LinkedIn also offers LinkedIn Premium Business, which includes many additional functions tailored for small to medium businesses. Its standout features are:

• 15 InMail credits every month
• Enhanced search features to find potential partners, clients, or industry insights
• Access to detailed business insights including company growth trends, employment data, and comparative metrics
• Unlimited people browsing

LinkedIn Premium Business Pricing

LinkedIn Premium Business is $69.99 per month.

Check out LinkedIn Premium Business today.

Best for sales professionals looking to generate leads and build pipelines.

LinkedIn Sales Navigator Core

Sales Navigator is the LinkedIn account type built for sales pros. Sales Nav builds on top of LinkedIn’s premium plans, adding:

• On-platform prospecting: Sales Nav gives you the ability to save notes on profiles. 
• Sales spotlights: See when people change jobs, get mentioned in the news, or follow your company. 
• Lead recommendations: These are based on your vertical and audience (they automatically pop up at the top of your saved accounts). 
• Additional InMail credits: Sales Nav gives you 20 InMail credits monthly (or 60 every quarter if you let them roll over). 

But we’re convinced that two features make LinkedIn Sales Navigator indispensable to sales reps everywhere. 

• Advanced Search Filters: Use LinkedIn’s advanced filters to sort leads by geography, job title, company size, and more. You can exclude keywords, search by past company, and specify seniority level to qualify leads.

• Saved Leads & Accounts: LinkedIn is a prospecting tool in its own right. Save searches, lead lists and accounts to keep your lead gen organized and moving forward. You can save up to 15 searches to come back to later, and save 1500 leads at a time. 

These two features alone make Sales Nav a gold mine for lead generation, and it’s played a crucial role in helping grow our business.

LinkedIn Sales Navigator Pricing

Sales Navigator is $99.99 per month when billed monthly or $959.88 when billed annually (which comes to $79.99 per month).

If you want to improve your sales game, check out Sales Navigator Core today.

Best for sales teams seeking advanced collaboration and lead tracking tools.

LinkedIn Sales Navigator Advanced

LinkedIn Sales Navigator Advanced adds some team-oriented features and multiple seats to make collaboration easier across the platform. The best features of Sales Navigator Advanced are:

• Collaboration tools: Sales Navigator Advanced gives you the ability to share lead lists and notes, making it easier to work together and align on targets.
• CRM integration: This allows you to keep track of your leads and sync your work seamlessly.
• More InMail: 50 InMails per month  
• TeamLink: This is a tool that shows you Sales Navigator license holders on your team account and their 1st-degree connections so you can easily connect to a wider network with warmer introductions.

LinkedIn Sales Navigator Advanced Pricing

Sales Navigator Advanced runs $159 per user per month when billed monthly.

If your sales team is ready to level up, check out Sales Navigator Advanced.

Best for small businesses or HR professionals seeking enhanced recruiting tools.

LinkedIn Recruiter Lite

LinkedIn Recruiter Lite is the pared-down version of LinkedIn Recruiter that’s tailored to smaller businesses that don’t need the full functionality of Recruiter. It’s also significantly less expensive compared to the other recruiter. Here are its features:

• Extended access to the LinkedIn network: Search up to your 3rd-degree connections
• Search filters: 20+ filters
• Candidate search alerts: Up to 10 daily or weekly alerts
• Reporting: Get access to InMail analytics report and job analytics reports
• InMails: 30 InMails per month  

LinkedIn Recruiter Lite Pricing

As we’ve covered before, LinkedIn no longer publishes its Recruiter pricing options. However, based on our research, Recruiter Lite comes to $170 per month (billed monthly) or $1680 billed annually (which comes to $140 per month).

Check out LinkedIn Recruiter Lite if you want to find and hire better candidates faster.

Best for larger businesses or dedicated recruitment teams in need of comprehensive recruiting tools.

LinkedIn Recruiter 

LinkedIn Recruiter is a premium LinkedIn recruitment tool with advanced functionality designed for larger businesses and hiring teams. These features include:

• Advanced search filters: 40+ filters including years at current company, spoken languages, and more
• Search insights: Get insights into company trends by talent pool, for example
• Advanced reporting: Everything in Recruiter Lite plus recruiter reports, pipeline analytics reports, and more
• More features: OFCCP tracking, ATS integration, collaboration tools, up to 50 candidate search alerts, Spotlights, and more
• InMails: 100-150 InMail messages per month

LinkedIn Recruiter Pricing

LinkedIn Recruiter offers a lot more features but at a much higher cost, coming in at $10,800 and up when billed annually. Again, you’ll have to talk to a sales representative to find out your own rate, as this may vary.

Check out LinkedIn Recruiter today.

Added bonus | Pair LinkedIn with Wiza to pull high-quality, verified contact info

The biggest drawback of the LinkedIn platform is that it doesn’t allow you to export contact information so you can prospect on your own terms.

Wiza is a platform that gives you the power to export lead contact information from any LinkedIn account with just a few clicks. It doesn’t matter if you’re using a free or premium LinkedIn account.

All of Wiza’s data is ethically sourced and verified in real-time, plus all email addresses are SMTP validated. In other words, Wiza is able to confirm if an email address is live and active.

With Sales Navigator’s saved search function and advanced search filters, you can quickly build and export lead lists with accurate contact info. In fact, with Sales Navigator, you could potentially export up to 2500 contacts at once.

Simply sign up for your free Wiza account and install the Wiza Chrome extension. Once it’s installed and you’re signed in, you can begin to pull contact information.

Want to try it out for yourself? Sign up for a free account today and get 20 free email credits so that you can see how easy it is to pull quality contact info with Wiza.

Choose the right LinkedIn membership level for you 

LinkedIn knows what it’s doing. The professional/social network offers distinct LinkedIn account types because different people use the platform for different purposes. Some need it to step up their career ladder. Others need it to find, qualify, and reach out to prospects. 

If you’re in the sales-oriented category? LinkedIn Sales Navigator is totally worth the cost. For a small investment, you’ll have access to big opportunities thanks to robust, virtually limitless lead data for the next year. That sounds pretty good, doesn’t it? 

Which LinkedIn membership level are you at — and where do you want to go?