LinkedIn Premium Cost: What Makes Upgrading Worth It? 

When you log into your LinkedIn account, you’ll probably get hit with a prompt on the left side of your profile: “Try Premium for Free.” It’s a tempting offer, with LinkedIn claiming you’d get 4x more profile views. If we follow logic, more views equal more opportunities, right? 

Unfortunately, how valuable LinkedIn Premium is depends on what you want to do on the platform. Some users will get more benefits from it than others. So, if you’re asking yourself if the cost is worth it for your specific use case, you’ve come to the right place. 

Is The Free LinkedIn Premium Trial Worth It? 

The short answer? Yes! LinkedIn matters more than ever if you want more exposure and better chances of building authentic relationships with thought leaders in your industry. However, there is a caveat. You need a complete profile for the trial to be worth it.

Let’s say you’re looking to get hired. Because of Premium, more recruiters see your profile. However, they’ll still click away when they land if your profile doesn’t look like one worth connecting with. The same goes if you’re finding prospects or trying to build your network. 

Still, 30 days is a lot of time to tinker around with the extra tools and features (which we’ll get to later), and LinkedIn practically holds your hand during the trial. This is no surprise, LinkedIn wants you to continue using Premium after. So, are the benefits worth the cost? 

LinkedIn Premium Costs: Here’s What Each Plan Gets You

LinkedIn offers four Premium Plans—Career, Business, Sales Navigator, and Recruiter Lite, each tailored to specific use cases. The more affordable plans are for people looking for career advancement, small and medium businesses, and entrepreneurs. On the higher end, LinkedIn offers plans made for salespeople and recruiters.

If you are unsure what to get, LinkedIn will ask you questions about your goals, what you want to do on the platform, and who you want to connect with. Then, LinkedIn will recommend a plan that fits your needs.

So, how much do they cost? LinkedIn Premium plans range from $39 to $150 monthly, and pricing also depends on your region and country. Here’s a detailed list of the Premium plans, what they cost, and what you can get: 

LinkedIn Premium Career

You can try the Premium Career Plan if you want more career opportunities. It’s the cheapest option, coming at $39.99/month or $239.88/year. The benefits you get include:

• AI-powered job advice and AI profile writing assistant
• 5 InMail credits per month
• Top applicant notifications
• See who viewed your profile in the last 365 days

This plan makes sense if you’re struggling to optimize your profile for searches. LinkedIn’s AI can recommend what to put on your headline, summary, or skills sections. Then, it can recommend jobs based on your profile and show the ones you’ll be a top candidate for.  

You can also see who viewed your profile in the last 365 days. However, this feature has some limitations—the biggest being that viewer insights are subject to the viewer’s privacy settings. That means that if a viewer has a private profile, you still won’t see their details. 

The best part about this plan has to be the free monthly InMail credits. You get 5, which isn’t much (at face value). However, with InMail, you can directly message hiring managers and shoot your shot, even if you’re not connected with them. 

And don’t worry about the 5 InMail credits. They’ll refresh if the recipient you’re sending to replies. So, make sure you’re writing a LinkedIn message worth replying to. 

LinkedIn Premium Business

The Premium Business plan offers excellent value for businesses looking to expand their clientele and use LinkedIn as a 24/7 lead generation machine. It costs $69.99/month or $539.88/year. Here are the core features you can get with this plan:

• CTA Button
• Unlimited searches
• 15 InMail credits
• Personalized invitation notes
• Profile viewer filters

Premium Business users can add a call-to-action button in the top card of their profile, which can be linked to any of your landing pages. It’s fully customizable, so you can adjust the copy to whatever you like. The button also appears in your posts, DMs, and search results. 

If you’re using LinkedIn to find prospecting, the Premium Business plan gives unlimited searches (free accounts are limited to 1,000). And with the added advanced search filters, you can generate more quality leads on LinkedIn. 

Another feature to look forward to is the profile viewer filtering tool, which lets you see who viewed your profile in the last 365 days and filters the viewers based on several categories. This helps you find warm leads who have already shown potential interest in your business.

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LinkedIn Sales Navigator

Sales Navigator is LinkedIn’s poster child for Premium plans. It costs $99.99/month or $959.88/year. With this plan, users can get the following benefits: 

• 50 InMail credits monthly
• Access to the Sales Navigator platform
• Profile views for the past 365 days
• Unlimited people browsing
• More advanced search filters 
• Lead recommendations

This plan is for salespeople who want to run wide-scale outreach strategies on LinkedIn. It’s got higher limits, more tools, advanced filters, and even alerts for companies or decision-maker updates. 

With a Sales Navigator account, you can also run automated sales outreach campaigns at scale without worrying too much about breaking LinkedIn’s limits—if you’re using automation tools like Botdog. 

Botdog prioritizes your account safety above all. Our advanced automation features mimic human behavior, and we also set up multiple safeguards, like random delays and action limits, to ensure no hiccups. 

LinkedIn Recruiter Lite

According to the latest LinkedIn statistics, 77% of recruiters use the platform to find top talents. But that’s easier said than done, especially in competitive markets like tech, healthcare, and programming. So, if you’re a recruiter looking for top talent, Recruiter Lite is worth a try. 

Recruiter Lite costs $169.99/month or $1,679.88/year. Here are the features you can expect when you subscribe to a Recruiter Lite plan:

• 30 InMail credits monthly
• Recruiter Lite platform
• Profile views for the past 365 days
• 20+ advanced search filters
• Daily candidate recommendations

Recruiter Lite would be a no-brainer if you’re hiring all year round and want to do the entire process internally. But, if you’re looking to hire just one position, it’s best to consider other options. 

How to Signup For LinkedIn Premium

Signing up for a Premium account is straightforward. The onboarding is seamless, and LinkedIn has a robust library of guides and informational content to help you make the most of your Premium plan. Here’s what you need to do to sign up for an account:

• Login to your LinkedIn account
• Click on your profile Icon at the top right of your homepage
• Click Settings & Privacy from the drop-down menu
• Go to Account preferences
• Scroll down to Subscriptions and Payments
• Click on Change next to Premium Subscriptions

If you haven’t tried the Premium trial, LinkedIn makes it almost unavoidable. The CTA for the free trial is on the Me button (your profile icon), which appears when you use the search bar and is found on the left side of your home page. 

You can also try any Premium plan, from Careers to Recruiter Lite. So, there’s no reason not to test drive all the fancy new features to see if paying for them is worth the cost. 

What Makes Premium Worth It?: Top Features & Use Cases

A LinkedIn Premium plan can be an excellent investment—if its features match your needs. Here’s a breakdown of the key features for job seekers, sales and marketing pros, and recruiters.

InMails

InMail is arguably the best feature on any Premium plan. It lets you send direct messages without connecting with the recipient first. It’s essentially LinkedIn’s version of cold email, except you get a limited number per month. Here are the number of InMail’s you get for each plan:

• Careers: 5 InMails
• Premium Business: 15 InMails
• Sales Navigator: 50 InMails
• Recruiter Lite: 30 InMails

LinkedIn set InMails this way to avoid plaguing the platform with spammy, unsolicited messages. The good news is that when your InMails refresh, unused ones rollover. They also refresh when a recipient replies to your InMail. 

Everybody can use InMails, but the best use cases are for salespeople and recruiters. But if you don’t know where to start, check out some of our LinkedIn cold outreach templates. 

Who’s Viewed Your Profile

People who view your profile already show some level of interest. For job seekers, that could be a recruiter; for salespeople, a potential client; and for recruiters, a possible candidate. 

Premium users can see those who viewed their profile in the last 365 days. This feature gives insights into trends, where your viewers work, job titles, and industries. But you still can’t view those who don’t want their profiles viewed. 

The key thing to note here is how to approach viewers once you find that they viewed your profile. Saying, “Hey, I saw that you were looking at my profile. . .” might be awkward. So, the next time you reach out, try using uncommon commonalities. 

Unlimited Searches

LinkedIn has strict guidelines regarding searches. You'll get a warning if you’re near the search limit. And you won’t be able to do any more searches until your free monthly usage resets (1st midnight [PST] of each calendar month).

Free accounts get about 300 searches per month. That’s what LinkedIn calls its “commercial use limit.” Premium accounts (except for the career plan) get unlimited searches. However, this isn’t a feature you want to abuse when exporting leads. 

For example, Sales Navigator users can’t view more than 2,500 leads per search, and you won’t be able to export more than 5,000 leads per day. Hitting your limit daily can also lead to potential issues. So, if you want to do automation, ensure your automation or mass messaging tools adhere to LinkedIn’s limits.  

Open Profile

An Open Profile lets people outside your direct network send you free InMails. It’s a great option to grow your network, attract opportunities, or be more accessible to recruiters or potential clients. 

But there are also some downsides to consider. Remember, you’re opening your gates to everyone—even spammers. So, you could get spammy messages, irrelevant cold sales pitches, or a lot of random connection requests. 

Advanced Boolean Search Queries

Boolean search works just fine, even with a basic account. However, combining Boolean operators with LinkedIn Premium’s advanced search filters lets you be more precise when prospecting. 

With Premium, you can filter by company size, seniority level, or years of experience. When you layer Boolean logic on top of these filters, you can exclude irrelevant results, find niche prospects, and streamline your search process.

For example, you could use Boolean to find marketing managers (but NOT interns) in SaaS companies with 200+ employees. 

Custom Alerts For Lead Activity (Sales Navigator)

You can access custom alerts for lead activity if you have Sales Navigator. For example, you can get notified when a lead:

• Changes job positions
• Mentioned you in the news
• Comments or shares your content
• Is mentioned in the news 
• Fits your buyer intent criteria 

This becomes an invaluable tool when prospecting, especially if you want to personalize outreach. Instead of generic open lines, you can get specific and mention company news, recent job changes, or content they recently interacted with. 

With Botdog, you can automate the personalization process using customFields. You can enrich a lead list with data from your custom alerts, export it, and then upload it to Botdog. All that’s left for you to do is to map out the data and Botdog handles the personalization for every lead. 

In this example, we mapped our custom fields to data on new job alerts and potential pain points based on their company and job descriptions. 

Key Takeaways

Is LinkedIn Premium worth it? Absolutely! But the value you get depends on what you’re trying to do in the platform. Luckily, there are different Premium plans fit for every type of user. To recap, here are the Premium Plans you can get on LinkedIn, their cost, and who they’re for:

• LinkedIn Premium Careers: Best for job seekers ($39.99/month or $239.88/year)
• LinkedIn Premium Business: Best for SMBs ($69.99/month or $539.88/year)
• LinkedIn Sales Navigator: Best for salespeople ($99.99/month or $959.88/year)
• LinkedIn Recruiter Lite: Best for recruiters ($169.99/month or $1,679.88/year)

With Premium plans, you get the most out of your LinkedIn account. However, even with all the advanced tools, growing your brand still requires a lot of elbow grease. Botdog’s LinkedIn automation features are here to help lighten the load. Start your free trial today!