Cursive vs Hiring an SDR Team

Many companies consider hiring in-house sales development representatives (SDRs) to build their outbound pipeline. Here is how that compares to using Cursive.

Cost comparison

A single SDR costs approximately $50,000 to $70,000 in base salary plus $15,000 to $25,000 in benefits, tools, and overhead. Total cost: $65,000 to $95,000 per year for one rep.

Cursive Outbound costs $2,500 to $5,000 per month, or $30,000 to $60,000 per year, and delivers more volume than a single SDR can produce manually.

Cursive Engine costs $5,000 to $10,000 per month and replaces the work of 2 to 3 SDRs by combining email outreach with AI voice follow-up and automated booking.

Performance comparison

A typical SDR sends 50 to 80 emails per day and makes 40 to 60 calls per day. They can manage 100 to 200 active prospects at a time.

Cursive Outbound sends thousands of targeted emails per month across multiple domains with optimized deliverability.

Cursive Engine adds hundreds of AI voice calls per week on top of email volume.

Other considerations

SDRs require hiring time (30 to 60 days), training (30 to 60 days), and ramp time (60 to 90 days) before they are fully productive. Cursive campaigns begin producing results within 30 to 45 days.

SDRs quit. Average SDR tenure is 14 months. When they leave, you lose their pipeline knowledge and start over. Cursive's system retains all data and improves continuously.

Cursive works best as a complement to or replacement for SDRs, not necessarily a replacement for your entire sales function. You still need closers. Cursive fills the top of funnel so your closers have more at-bats.

Updated on: 11/02/2026