Guides · Cost
How much does it cost to cold call 1,000 leads?
Last updated November 4, 2026
Dialing a 1,000-lead list costs about $6 to $36 in total if you run it on your own Twilio account — a dollar or two of connected-call minutes, a $1.15 phone number, and either the free plan or a single $29 month of software. The reason online quotes range from $52 to $9,000 is that they are not all measuring the same thing: some count only talk-time, some bolt on a $500 platform fee, and the headline “$300 a lead” figure is the cost of an acquired customer, not the cost of a phone call.
Why the quotes you’re seeing disagree by 150×
Search this question and you’ll get a mess. One AI-dialer write-up puts 1,000 calls at $52. A B2B lead-gen agency lists cold calling at roughly $300 per lead. A directory shows agency projects at $8,000–$9,000. They can’t all be right — and they aren’t wrong either. They’re answering three different questions and labelling them all “cost to cold call 1,000 leads.” Before you can price your own campaign you have to separate them:
- 1. The cost to dial the list. Telephony + software. This is the number you control, and it’s the small one — single-digit to low-double-digit dollars for 1,000 numbers. It’s what the rest of this page works out.
- 2. The cost of the calling hour. Your time or a rep’s wage. If an SDR earns $25/hour and 1,000 dials take ~12 hours, that’s ~$300 of labor — which, not coincidentally, is where the “$300” figures come from once you trace them back.
- 3. The cost per result. What you spend to book one meeting or land one qualified lead. With connect and conversion rates stacked on top, this is the biggest number and the one agencies quote. It depends on your list and your pitch, not your dialer.
This guide prices question 1 — the one a tool can actually answer — and flags where the other two quietly get folded in.
What 1,000 cold calls actually cost on your own Twilio
Here’s the full bill for dialing a 1,000-lead list through DialSheet on your own Twilio account, in a single month. The one assumption that matters: you’re billed for calls that connect, not for the ones that ring out. On a cold list most dials go unanswered, and an unanswered outbound call costs nothing. Assume ~400 minutes of actual connected talk-time across the ~15–25% that pick up (each connect rounded up to the next whole minute):
| Line item | Cost |
|---|---|
| DialSheet software — Pro, 1 seatNeeded only because 1,000 dials exceeds the 500-call free cap in one month. Split across two months and this is $0. | $29.00 |
| Twilio outbound voice — ~400 connected min × $0.014You pay for the calls that answer, not the ~80% that ring out. Each connect rounds up to the next whole minute. | $5.60 |
| Twilio local number × 1One number dials the whole list. Add more only for extra reps or local presence. | $1.15 |
| All-in, one month on Pro | ~$35.75 |
| Same list, spread over two months on the free plan | ~$6 |
Twilio rates used: ~$0.014/min outbound to US numbers and ~$1.15/month per local number (verified against Twilio’s US voice pricing, 2026). DialSheet’s free plan covers 500 leads and 500 calls a month on one seat; Pro is $29/seat/month. The software is free or flat — the usage is genuinely this small because you only pay for the calls that connect.
The same 1,000 leads, priced five ways
Same list, same goal, five pricing models. This is the table that explains the 150× spread — notice that only the first row is actually the cost of calling, and the bottom two are the cost of outcomes and labor wearing the same label.
DialSheet — bring your own Twilio
$6 – $36You pay: Free/$29 software + wholesale minutes
You and your team do the dialing. Pro only if you run all 1,000 in one month.
Per-seat dialer (Close, PhoneBurner, Aircall)
$70 – $140+You pay: $70 – $140 per seat / month
Billed per seat whether you dial 10 leads or 1,000; most still meter minutes or numbers on top.
Usage-based AI caller
~$552 (month 1)You pay: ~$500/mo platform + ~$0.104/min
The $52 of usage is real; the monthly platform fee is the part the "$52" quotes leave out.
Agency "cost per lead" benchmark
Not a dialing costYou pay: ~$300 per qualified lead delivered
Measures acquired leads, not phone calls. Bundles labor, data, and conversion — a different question.
Outsourced calling agency (full project)
$8,000 – $9,000You pay: Fixed project fee + their reps
Includes human labor end to end. You own neither the number, the recordings, nor the pipeline tooling.
Per-seat prices are public list rates verified August 2026 (Aircall Professional $70/seat with a 3-license minimum, Close Growth $99/seat, PhoneBurner Standard $140/seat). The AI-caller and agency figures are single published examples, not market averages — treat them as directional.
The attempt that trips people up: cadence
“1,000 leads” rarely means 1,000 dials. Most reps hit each prospect several times — published cold-calling data lands somewhere around six to eight attempts before a lead is worked out, and only about one dial in ten connects to a live conversation. So a 1,000-lead list is often 3,000–6,000 actual dials over a few weeks. Here’s the thing: that barely moves the bill. The extra attempts are overwhelmingly no-answers and voicemails, which cost nothing, and the connected minutes don’t multiply with them. Triple the attempts and the telephony on this campaign goes from a few dollars to maybe a few dollars more. The per-seat subscription, by contrast, bills every month the campaign runs — so a slower, more persistent cadence makes the metered models cheaper and the subscription models more expensive.
Run the number for your own list
Change the team size and call volume to match your campaign. It costs out DialSheet on your own Twilio against the per-seat dialers, so you can see the monthly figure for your 1,000 leads rather than ours.
Your team saves up to$3,066per year vs. PhoneBurner
Estimates: ~1.4 min avg call, 21 workdays/mo, Twilio at $0.014/min + $1.15/number. DialSheet Pro is $29/mo for the first seat and $29/mo per teammate. Competitor bars show public list prices, seats only — Aircall and Close also bill call minutes and phone numbers on top (DialSheet's bar already includes them).
Questions people ask about a 1,000-lead campaign
Does it cost money every time I dial, even if no one picks up?
No. On your own Twilio account you are billed only for calls that connect. A number that rings out, goes to a busy signal, or fails is not charged for voice minutes, and most cold-call dials are exactly that. A connected call rounds up to the next whole minute, so a five-second "not interested" hang-up uses one minute (about $0.014). That is why dialing 1,000 leads can cost a few dollars of telephony: you only pay for the fraction that actually answer.
What is the cheapest way to call 1,000 leads?
Bring your own carrier. Open a Twilio account, buy one local number for about $1.15 a month, and point a free or low-cost power dialer at it so you pay wholesale per-minute rates (~$0.014/min) instead of a per-seat subscription. DialSheet's free tier covers up to 500 calls a month at $0 software, so a 1,000-lead list split across two months costs roughly $5–$6 in Twilio usage and nothing else. Run it in a single month on the $29 Pro plan and the all-in cost is about $35. Either way it is a fraction of a per-seat dialer or a calling agency.
Does the "$300 per lead" figure mean 1,000 calls cost $300,000?
No — that is a different metric. The ~$300 cost-per-lead benchmark some agencies publish is the cost of each qualified lead they deliver, which already bundles rep labor, list data, management, and the fact that only a small percentage of dials turn into a qualified opportunity. It is not the cost of making a phone call. The cost to dial a list of 1,000 numbers (telephony plus software) and the cost to acquire a qualified lead from that list are two separate questions, and conflating them is why online quotes range from $52 to thousands.
Is it cheaper to cold call 1,000 leads or cold email them?
On raw tooling cost they are close — both can be done for well under $50 for 1,000 contacts if you run lean (your own Twilio for calls, your own sending domain and an inbox tool for email). The real difference is time and intent: calling 1,000 leads is hours of live dialing but gets you a same-day yes or no, while emailing 1,000 is near-instant to send but spreads replies over weeks and converts cold. Most high-intent outbound teams run both — a call and an email are one combined touch on the same prospect.
Do I have to pay for 1,000 phone numbers to call 1,000 leads?
No. One phone number can dial your entire list. You buy numbers for your callers and for local presence (one per area code you want to appear local in), not for the people you are calling. A solo caller can run a 1,000-lead campaign on a single ~$1.15/month number; a team that wants local caller ID in several regions might carry a handful of numbers. Numbers are a per-rep, per-region cost, never a per-lead one.
How long does it take to actually call 1,000 leads?
A focused rep on a single-line power dialer makes roughly 60–100 dials an hour once no-answers are dropped automatically, so a clean 1,000-lead list is about 10–15 hours of dialing — two or three solid calling days. A parallel dialer that rings several numbers at once compresses that further. The telephony cost does not change with speed; a faster dialer just means you spend the same few dollars of connected minutes in less wall-clock time.
DialSheet is a free power dialer and CRM that runs on your own Twilio number, so a 1,000-lead campaign costs you single-digit dollars of calls instead of a per-seat subscription. Import the list from a spreadsheet, dial it, and get a recording, transcript, and AI summary on every connect.