LinkedIn InMail Credits: How Many Each Plan Gives (2026)

LinkedIn InMail credits are what you spend to message a LinkedIn member you are not connected to. As of 4 October 2026, LinkedIn's help pages list 5 credits a month on Premium Career, 15 on Premium Business, 30 on Recruiter Lite, 50 on Sales Navigator and 150 per seat on Recruiter.

We build Talent Summoner, which finds and ranks candidates and then lets you write to them from your own LinkedIn, Gmail or Outlook, so it uses no InMail credits at all. Your first Role is free with no card (pricing).

If your company already pays for Recruiter seats, your contract sets your limits. If you hire a few times a year and wonder whether credits are worth buying, read on.

How many InMail credits does each LinkedIn plan include?

Sources: LinkedIn Help on Premium credits and renewal, Recruiter Lite InMail, Sales Navigator credits, credit expiry, Recruiter rollover and sending limits.

LinkedIn also says it does not currently offer any plan with unlimited InMail credits. Messages to Open Profile members use no credit up to a monthly cap (350 per seat on Recruiter), and each product keeps its own balance.

Do unused InMail credits roll over?

Yes, up to a cap: the "Most you can hold" column above. Credits beyond it expire, and on Premium and Sales Navigator each credit expires after 90 days.

The renewal rules that matter:

• Premium and Recruiter Lite credits renew on the first day of your billing cycle.
• Sales Navigator credits renew on the first day of each calendar month.
• Recruiter Lite credits you buy on top never expire, but your balance is held to 120 per seat when the billing cycle renews.
• If you cancel Premium, your InMail balance drops to zero.

How do you get an InMail credit back?

LinkedIn returns the credit when the person accepts, declines or replies to your InMail within 90 days.

So in practice you pay for silence, not for replies. In Sales Navigator, deleting an unanswered message does not refund the credit.

What does one InMail credit cost a recruiter?

LinkedIn's help pages print no prices. Recruiter Lite is reported at US$170 a month, or US$1,680 a year, by Skrapp and Pin, with the monthly figure also on Dover, all three checked on 4 October 2026.

Our LinkedIn Recruiter pricing guide covers every tier's reported price.

When InMail credits are worth paying for

Credits earn their keep when:

• The people you want are outside your network, read LinkedIn often, and list no other way to reach them.
• You hire every week or two, so a Recruiter seat's 150 credits a month get used.
• You need to write longer than a connection note allows. An InMail body can run to 1,900 characters in Recruiter Lite.

When InMail credits are the wrong spend

They are a poor fit when:

• You hire a few times a year. A seat bought for 30 credits a month mostly pays for unused months.
• The candidate is already a connection. A normal LinkedIn message costs nothing.
• You can reach the person by email from your own account, which uses no credits.

Our guide on what to say after the shortlist helps whichever channel you use. LinkedIn Recruiter alternatives compares the seat with cheaper options.

Where Talent Summoner fits

Talent Summoner searches LinkedIn, GitHub and other public sources, over 200 million profiles. It ranks each person with must-haves, nice-to-haves and plain-English reasoning.

Outreach then goes from your own Gmail, Outlook or LinkedIn, and nothing sends until you review it. On LinkedIn, connections get a direct message, and everyone else gets a connection request with a note of up to 300 characters.

Your first Role is free and your second is US$4, then US$29 per Role, US$59 a month for 10 Roles or US$299 a month for Unlimited.

Trade-offs, stated plainly: no paid InMail, no always-on pipeline and no ATS integration today. A connection request opens a conversation only once they accept it; an InMail lands in their inbox directly.

We checked these facts on 4 October 2026 and re-check them every quarter.