# Open-source AI sales agents, compared by who approves a send

> An AI sales agent researches a lead, drafts the follow-up and writes the result back to the CRM. What separates the tools is which of those actions a person approves before it runs. Kortix is open source and runs its own lead follow-up on a scheduled trigger, with every draft waiting for a person to send.

URL: https://aisalesagentsguide.com/

A guide to AI sales agents

**The open-source AI Operating System**

`lead-follow-up.txt`

```
A scheduled trigger sweeps HubSpot every 15 minutes for new leads, and each firing spawns a fresh session in its own sandbox.
The agent researches and drafts freely, but nothing goes out on its own: every follow-up stops at a human approval gate as a draft for a person to review and send.
Credentials are encrypted in the secrets manager and injected at runtime, scoped to the agents you grant them to.
Only the drafts it produces are written back out.
```

Source: https://kortix.com/use-cases/lead-follow-up

Hand a sales agent the research, the pre-call brief, the CRM write-back and the follow-up draft. Nothing sends until you approve it, and every action it took is written down.

[Try Kortix](https://kortix.com) · [Take the quiz](https://aisalesagentsguide.com/#which-approach)

Approval gates you set, off until you set them · Rules are files in your repo · Self-host is free

## The approval step, tool by tool

Rival cells come from each vendor’s own page, checked October 2026; the Kortix cells come from the flow Kortix publishes.

| | Kortix (recommended) | AiSDR | Artisan | 11x |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| What it is | Open-source AI Operating System that runs a sales agent you own | Managed AI SDR writing and sending email and LinkedIn | Managed AI BDR; Ava emails and books meetings for reps | AI agents for outbound, inbound and expansion across voice, email and chat |
| Open source | Yes | No | No | No |
| Before a message leaves | You set the send gate; its lead follow-up flow holds the send | Launch the campaign; pause outbound whenever you want | Approve before sending, lock tone and CTAs, set banned phrases | No approval step published on 11x.ai |
| What it does unsupervised | Researches, drafts, proposes a slot; you set the send gate | Builds campaigns, sends, classifies replies, books meetings | Finds leads, writes outreach, handles replies, books meetings | Researches accounts, runs email, social and dials, books meetings |
| How it is priced | Credits, billed per second while the agent computer runs | $1.50 per person contacted; built for 1,000+ a month | No published rate; a quote sized to lead volume | No published price; 11x.ai/pricing returns a 404 |

Rival cells and prices come from each vendor’s own page, checked October 2026: AiSDR’s and Artisan’s pricing pages, and 11x.ai’s homepage. 11x’s pricing URL returns a 404, so its column states no price.

## Which approach fits?

Three questions. Each answer lands on one of three ways to run a sales agent.

1. Should the agent talk to buyers directly? (Yes, it writes and sends to leads / It prepares the work and a rep sends / It only finds a slot on a calendar)
2. Must every outbound message wait for a person? (Yes, you gate every one / No, launch the campaign and watch it / Not applicable, booking is the whole job)
3. Where do the agent’s rules and the record of what it did live? (In a git repo we own / In the vendor’s dashboard / Nowhere past the calendar entry)

Possible answers:

- **A managed AI SDR sends for you**: AiSDR bills per person contacted and runs the sequence from its own inbox; Artisan sells Ava with approvals you set inside its product. Pick this if you want the campaign run for you and the vendor holding the account is fine.
- **A scheduling tool**: Booking links, routing and reminders cover the job when the agent only finds a slot on a calendar. Kortix is more platform than that job needs.
- **Kortix, an open-source AI Operating System**: Kortix is the open-source AI Operating System that runs the agent, and the send is the step you approve. Its own lead flow sweeps HubSpot on a schedule, drafts the follow-up and stops at a person. The [approval controls](/ai-sales-agent-approvals) and the [CRM write-back](/ai-sales-agent-crm-write-back) are separate settings you scope.

## Open source. Read it, fork it, audit it.

For a buyer, open source puts the agent's rules in front of you before the first run, and every action it takes is recorded.

- The agent's persona, skills and permissions are files in the repo, versioned and changed through a reviewed change request, not a dashboard setting.
- Any model provider with your own keys.
- Run it on Kortix Cloud, in your VPC, or on your own on-prem network.

[Open-source AI sales agent](/open-source-ai-sales-agent) · [Self-hosted AI sales agent](/self-hosted-ai-sales-agent) · [Kortix on GitHub](https://github.com/kortix-ai/suna) · [Kortix docs](https://kortix.com/docs)

## Questions buyers ask before they pick one

Short answers on cost, and on who approves a send.

### Are there any AI sales agents?

Yes. AiSDR, Artisan and 11x sell managed outbound agents, and Kortix runs a sales agent you own. The managed tools send the sequence for you, while Kortix's own lead follow-up flow holds the send for a person.

### How much do AI sales agents cost?

AiSDR bills $1.50 per person contacted; Artisan quotes per account, and 11x publishes no pricing page. For Kortix, free is $0 with 500 credits a month and 1 project, on your own provider keys or a ChatGPT subscription; managed models and the rest are on the credits plan, from $50 a month. Self-host is free.

### Can AI agents do sales?

Yes, for the work around the call: research, the pre-call brief, CRM notes, the follow-up draft and the meeting slot. Kortix’s own lead flow runs those steps and leaves the send to a person, with the [approval controls](/ai-sales-agent-approvals) set on the tool call.

## Run a sales agent you can read before you trust it.

Start with one job, new-lead follow-up, and keep a person on the send.

[Try Kortix](https://kortix.com) · [Read the approval controls](https://aisalesagentsguide.com/ai-sales-agent-approvals)

Approval gates you set, off until you set them · Rules are files in your repo · Self-host is free