SDR Salary 2026: Base, OTE, Commission and Full Cost

The short answer: A US sales development representative (SDR) earns a median base salary of $55,000 to $60,000 and median on-target earnings (OTE) of $80,000 to $88,000 in 2026. The low end is The Bridge Group's 2025 report (351 companies); the high end is RepVue's October 2026 data (8,266 verified submissions). Pay splits roughly 68% base and 32% commission. Broader salary sites report lower base pay: Payscale's average is $43,709. Once you add benefits, payroll taxes, tools and hiring, one SDR costs an employer roughly $112,000 to $122,000 a year (our worked math below). Salesforce's 2026 State of Sales found that sellers spend only 40% of their time selling; Bitscale automates the research and list building that eat into the rest, from $349 a month per account.

Base: $55K (Bridge Group, Feb 2025) to $60K (RepVue, Oct 2026)
OTE: $80K (Bridge Group) to $88K (RepVue); Levels.fyi median total comp $90K
Split: 68:32 base to variable
At quota: only 57% to 60% of SDRs hit it, so many earn less than OTE

How much does an SDR make in 2026?

Salary sources disagree because they measure different people. RepVue and Levels.fyi collect pay that reps report themselves, and RepVue's company rankings come from tech-sector submissions. The Bridge Group surveys companies, 83% of them B2B SaaS. Payscale's figures are much lower, and its page does not limit the data to tech employers. Here is what each one reports, with its date.

Source (date)	Base salary	OTE or total pay	Sample
The Bridge Group (Feb 6, 2025)	$55,000 median	$80,000 median OTE	351 B2B companies
RepVue (Oct 20, 2026)	$60,000 median	$88,000 median OTE; top performers $133,132	8,266 verified submissions
Levels.fyi (Oct 20, 2026)	not split out	$90,000 median total comp (25th %ile $72.6K, 75th $110K)	self-reported, outliers removed
Payscale (Sep 1, 2026)	$43,709 average ($34K to $59K)	$36K to $77K total pay	324 profiles

If you hire for a B2B software company, the RepVue and Bridge Group figures are the closer benchmark. If you hire outside tech, Payscale's range is the more realistic floor. We could not read Glassdoor or Salary.com (both returned bot checks), so they are not included.

For hiring managers, the useful reading is this: the Bridge Group found median SDR OTE has been flat at $80K since 2022, growing at just 0.56% a year over a decade. RepVue shows OTE up 3% in the last year with base unchanged. With pay this flat, the lever left for hiring managers is how much each SDR gets done, and that is where a tool like Bitscale comes in.

SDR OTE and commission: how the split works

OTE is base salary plus the variable pay an SDR earns at 100% of target. The Bridge Group reports a 68:32 base-to-variable split, or $55K base and $25K variable. RepVue's medians land in the same place: $88,000 OTE minus $60,000 base leaves $28,000 variable, which is 32% of OTE.

RepVue notes that SDRs are usually paid incentives "for meeting or exceeding lead generation and appointment-setting targets." In practice that means meetings held or opportunities accepted by an account executive (AE). The Bridge Group puts the median monthly quota at 10 Stage 0 opportunities.

Two numbers matter for anyone reading an offer:

Quota attainment is low. The Bridge Group found 60% of SDRs at quota in 2025, the lowest in its history. RepVue reports 56.9%. Roughly four in ten SDRs earn less than their OTE.
Variable pay depends on list quality. An SDR who spends the day calling stale numbers and bouncing emails books fewer meetings, so earns less commission. Clean, verified contact data from a tool like Bitscale protects the 32%.

We cover which activity metrics predict those meetings in SDR metrics that actually matter.

SDR salary by seniority

No source we could read splits the SDR title itself into SDR I, SDR II and senior SDR, so this table follows the career ladder instead. It starts at entry-level business development representative (BDR), a title many companies use for the same job, and runs up to VP.

SDR pay by level: entry-level BDR, SDR, top-performing SDR, SDR manager, director of sales development and VP, with base and OTE from RepVue, The Bridge Group and Payscale, and a Bitscale callout

Level	Base salary	OTE or total pay	Source (date)
Entry-level BDR (under 1 year)	not split out	$49,455 average total comp	Payscale (Jun 26, 2026), 138 salaries
SDR	$55,000 to $60,000 median	$80,000 to $88,000 median OTE	Bridge Group (Feb 2025); RepVue (Oct 2026)
Top-performing SDR	not split out	$133,132	RepVue (Oct 2026)
SDR manager	$110,000 median (RepVue); $71,598 average (Payscale)	$146,000 (Bridge Group) to $160,000 (RepVue) median OTE	Bridge Group; RepVue, 439 ratings; Payscale (Sep 2026)
Director of sales development	$135,000 median	$189,000 (Bridge Group) to $205,000 (RepVue) median OTE	Bridge Group; RepVue, 97 ratings
VP of sales development	not reported	$240,000 median OTE	Bridge Group (Feb 2025)

The biggest jump is the first promotion. RepVue says SDRs "often advance to Account Executive or Business Development Manager roles." The Bridge Group's average SDR tenure is 1.9 years, so most SDRs move up or out within two years.

SDR salary by US city

RepVue publishes SDR pay for 18 US metro areas. Seattle tops the list on OTE; Boston, Austin, Chicago, Miami and Washington, DC sit at the bottom at $80,000.

City	Median base	Median OTE	Top performer
Seattle, WA	$70,000	$100,000	$161,013
Atlanta, GA	$60,000	$95,000	$151,404
San Francisco, CA	$65,000	$93,000	$133,149
Dallas, TX	$55,000	$92,000	$147,876
New York, NY	$65,000	$90,000	$150,242
Charlotte, NC	$60,000	$90,000	$111,346
San Diego, CA	$60,000	$90,000	$119,900
Phoenix, AZ	$60,000	$90,000	$131,229
San Jose, CA	$60,000	$89,000	$132,309
Denver, CO	$60,000	$86,000	$127,250
Los Angeles, CA	$60,000	$85,000	$115,328
Houston, TX	$55,000	$85,000	$106,413
Philadelphia, PA	$60,000	$85,000	$146,392
Chicago, IL	$55,000	$80,000	$109,727
Washington, DC	$60,000	$80,000	$113,081
Miami, FL	$55,000	$80,000	$115,943
Austin, TX	$55,000	$80,000	$108,652
Boston, MA	$55,000	$80,000	$131,568

Source: RepVue, data updated October 20, 2026.

The spread between cities ($80K to $100K OTE) is smaller than the spread between companies. Among the highest-paying companies RepVue lists, median SDR OTE runs from $110,000 to $200,000. Company and product matter more than zip code.

SDR salary in the UK and India

RepVue also publishes SDR pay outside the US. We report these in local currency, as RepVue does, and did not convert them.

Country	Median base	Median OTE	Top performer	At quota
United Kingdom	£40,677	£61,585	£91,940	53.5%
India	₹1,308,216	₹1,946,896	₹6,252,454	40.0%

Source: RepVue, data updated October 20, 2026. Sample sizes are not shown on these pages, and RepVue's contributors work mostly at tech sales organizations, so treat these as tech-sector benchmarks.

SDR vs BDR vs AE salary

SDR and BDR are often the same job with a different title. Some companies use one title for inbound work and the other for outbound, but many use them interchangeably. The pay data reflects that blur: depending on the source, BDRs earn slightly more or about the same.

Role	Base salary	Variable or OTE	Source (date)
SDR	$60,000 median	$88,000 median OTE	RepVue (Oct 20, 2026)
SDR	$43,709 average	$36K to $77K total pay	Payscale (Sep 1, 2026)
BDR	$72,858 average	plus $10,000 commission	Indeed job postings (Oct 12, 2026), 15.7k salaries
BDR	$56,095 average	$43K to $89K total pay	Payscale (Jun 26, 2026)
SMB AE	$75,000 median	$140,000 median OTE	RepVue (Oct 20, 2026)
AE	$105,000 median	$200,000 median OTE	RepVue (Oct 20, 2026)
AE	$84,681 average	plus $20,000 commission	Indeed job postings (Oct 12, 2026), 44.7k salaries

Two things matter here. First, AEs earn more than twice the SDR OTE on RepVue, which is why the AE promotion matters so much to SDRs. Second, the AE split is closer to even ($105,000 of $200,000 is base, about 53%), so AE pay is far more exposed to the quality of the pipeline SDRs hand over. The Bridge Group's median ratio is one SDR for every 2.4 AEs, so one SDR's list quality affects more than one AE's income.

The fully loaded cost of an SDR

Salary is only part of what an SDR costs. Here is the math, built from published figures. As an illustration only: it assumes the SDR is paid at 100% of OTE, uses a basic two-tool stack, and leaves out manager time, office space, a dialer and a sequencing tool.

Fully loaded annual cost of one SDR: $80,000 OTE, $26,240 benefits and payroll taxes, $2,882 recruiting, $2,748 tools, total $111,870, compared with Bitscale Growth at $3,768 a year per account

Cost line	How it's calculated	Bridge Group OTE	RepVue OTE
OTE (base + commission)	median OTE	$80,000	$88,000
Benefits and payroll taxes	BLS: $8.86 benefits per $26.99 wages for sales workers = 32.8%	$26,240	$28,864
Tools per seat	Sales Navigator Advanced $1,799.88/yr + Apollo Professional $79 × 12 = $948	$2,748	$2,748
Recruiting	SHRM $5,475 per nonexecutive hire, spread over a 1.9-year tenure	$2,882	$2,882
Total per year		$111,870	$122,494

Where the inputs come from:

Benefits: the BLS Employer Costs for Employee Compensation release for June 2026 shows private-industry sales and related workers cost $35.85 per hour, of which $26.99 is wages and $8.86 is benefits (24.7% of total compensation). That ratio, 32.8 cents per wage dollar, covers legally required benefits, insurance, and retirement and savings.
Tools: list prices for LinkedIn Sales Navigator Advanced and Apollo Professional, checked October 7, 2026. Many teams add a sequencer and a dialer on top.
Recruiting: SHRM's 2025 benchmarking puts the average nonexecutive cost per hire at $5,475.

Ramp and tenure: the cost per productive month

The Bridge Group reports an average ramp of 3.0 months and an average tenure of 1.9 years, with 40% median annual attrition. That changes the math:

Tenure is 1.9 × 12 = 22.8 months. Minus 3.0 months of ramp leaves 19.8 productive months.
Total cost over that tenure: $111,870 × 1.9 = $212,553.
Cost per productive month: $212,553 ÷ 19.8 = $10,735.

Every month you cut from ramp, and every hour you take off an SDR's research load, lowers that number. Bitscale's ready-made playbooks give a new SDR a ready-to-run prospecting workflow instead of a blank spreadsheet.

Where an SDR's time actually goes

The salary only pays off during the hours an SDR spends talking to buyers. Salesforce's State of Sales report (February 3, 2026, 4,050 sales professionals) found:

Where seller time goes: 40% of time selling, 35% for Gen Z reps, nearly a full day a week on prospecting, and agents expected to cut prospect research time by 34%, with a Bitscale callout on automating research and list building

The average seller spends 40% of their time selling. Gen Z reps manage only 35%, and lose about two hours a week to manual data entry.
Sellers devote nearly one full day of the workweek to prospecting, yet 48% say they lack bandwidth for adequate cold outreach.
Sellers expect AI agents to cut prospect research time by 34%.

These are figures for all sellers, not SDRs alone. Prospecting is the core of the SDR job, so expect the research load to weigh at least as heavily on them. The Bridge Group's median SDR logs 112 activities a day for 4.1 quality conversations.

As an illustration only: one prospecting day a week is a fifth of the $111,870 loaded cost, or $22,374 a year. If software takes over a third of that day's research and list building, that is $7,458 per SDR per year. Bitscale Growth costs $3,768 a year billed annually, and the price is per account, not per seat. A team of three SDRs would recover about $22,374 of time against the same $3,768.

How to raise SDR earnings and productivity

For SDRs who want to earn more:

Pick the company, not just the city. RepVue's top-paying companies offer $110,000 to $200,000 median OTE, well above the $88,000 median.
Protect your variable pay. With 32% of OTE tied to meetings, verified emails and direct dials are worth more than extra dials to dead numbers.
Work signals, not static lists. Prioritize accounts with a reason to talk now, such as a funding round, a new VP of Sales or SDR job posts. Bitscale tracks 15 buying triggers like these.
Plan the AE move. RepVue's median AE OTE is $200,000. Ask how long promotions take before you accept an SDR offer.

For managers who want more pipeline per SDR:

Take research off the SDR's plate. Account research and contact lookups are repeatable, so they are the first work to hand to software. Bitscale's AI research agent pulls company details, decision-makers, tech stack, funding and hiring data into structured lists.
Fix data before you add headcount. A waterfall across 18+ providers fills gaps no single database covers. Bitscale reports 95% email and phone coverage with bounce rates below 0.5%.
Shorten ramp with ready-made workflows. Playbooks such as Event Attendees prospecting, Competitor Prospecting and Champion Job-Change Tracker give new hires a proven workflow to start from.
Automate the repeatable steps. Our guide to SDR automation covers which steps to automate first.

If you are weighing whether software should replace the role entirely, read AI SDR vs human SDR and why some AI SDR implementations fail. For a review of the tools themselves, see AI SDR tools in 2026.

How Bitscale helps

Bitscale doesn't replace your SDRs. It gives each of them the research and data work that otherwise eats their day, so more of the salary you pay goes into conversations with buyers.

AI research agent. BitAgent scrapes websites and runs Google and Perplexity research inside Bitscale, then turns what it finds into structured lead lists: company details, decision-makers, tech stack, funding and hiring.
One email and phone waterfall across 18+ providers. Bitscale checks providers in the order you set, returns the first valid result and verifies it. That is 95% email and phone coverage, with bounce rates below 0.5% (Bitscale figures), from 100+ data sources overall.
15 buying triggers. Exec hires, tech-stack changes, viral posts, funding and hiring posts, which you can stack, for example Series B plus hiring SDRs plus a new VP of Sales.
Ready-made playbooks. Event Attendees prospecting, Competitor Prospecting, Champion Job-Change Tracker, HubSpot Contact Re-Enrichment and G2 Competitor Review Outreach.
Two-way CRM sync. HubSpot on the Growth plan and Salesforce on Booster, writing back only the fields that changed and flagging job changes, bad emails and dead domains. See CRM enrichment.
Done-for-you setup. Bitscale GTM engineers set up and migrate your workflows. Every paid plan includes GTM engineer support, with a dedicated engineer on Enterprise.

Customers describe the difference in coverage:

"Our email and phone waterfall hits 92% coverage on European ICP. Nothing else we tested came close." — Shannon Jhanji, Growth Operations, Guidebook

"From 10 leads, Apollo was returning results only from two or three. With Bitscale, I can look for email details in multiple sources and verify the email that returned — that's the ideal solution." — Anderson Maia, GTM & Operations, Pensa Systems

Phyllo uses Bitscale to keep its CRM at 94% coverage.

Plan	Price	Credits	CRM sync
Free	$0	200
Growth	$349/mo ($314 billed annually)	15K/mo	two-way HubSpot
Booster	$799/mo ($719 billed annually)	50K/mo	Salesforce
Enterprise	from $15K/yr	custom	custom

Pricing is per account, actions are unlimited on paid plans, and unused credits roll over up to 3x. For the wider tool stack around your SDRs, see our guide to B2B prospecting tools.

Try Bitscale free

run a ready-made playbook, build a verified, signal-based list for your SDRs and see how much research time it takes off their week. 200 free credits, no card required.

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Frequently asked questions

What is the average SDR salary in 2026?

In the US, median SDR base salary is $55,000 to $60,000 and median OTE is $80,000 to $88,000, per The Bridge Group (February 2025) and RepVue (October 2026). Payscale reports a lower average base of $43,709 across a broader mix of employers.

What is a typical SDR OTE split?

About 68% base and 32% variable. The Bridge Group reports $55K base and $25K variable on an $80K OTE, and RepVue's medians of $60,000 base and $88,000 OTE give the same 32% variable share.

Do BDRs earn more than SDRs?

It depends on the source. Indeed job postings show a $72,858 average BDR base plus $10,000 commission, while Payscale shows $56,095 for BDRs and $43,709 for SDRs. Many companies use the two titles for the same job.

How much does an SDR cost a company per year?

As an illustration, about $112,000 to $122,000: $80,000 to $88,000 OTE, plus 32.8% for benefits and payroll taxes (BLS), about $2,748 in tools and $2,882 a year of recruiting cost (SHRM). Manager time and extra tools add more.

How long does it take an SDR to ramp?

The Bridge Group's 2025 report puts average SDR ramp at 3.0 months, the lowest since 2010, and average tenure at 1.9 years. That leaves about 19.8 productive months per hire, which is why faster ramp matters.

How much do SDRs earn in the UK and India?

RepVue (October 2026) shows a UK median base of £40,677 and OTE of £61,585, and an India median base of ₹1,308,216 and OTE of ₹1,946,896. Both reflect mostly tech-sector contributors.

Can Bitscale make SDRs more productive?

Yes. Bitscale automates research and list building with an AI research agent, an 18+ provider email and phone waterfall, 15 buying triggers and ready-made playbooks, and syncs results to HubSpot or Salesforce, so SDRs spend more time talking to buyers.