Recruiter seats · Cost
What LinkedIn Recruiter costs, including the part that is not on the price page
Recruiter Lite is about $170 a month on LinkedIn's list price. That is the seat. The bill has a second line nobody prints: the LinkedIn account the seat has to sit on, and whether it can carry the volume the plan sells you.
- Lite about $170/mo annual, 30 InMails; Professional $899+/mo quoted, 150
- Lite can be monthly with no contract; Professional normally wants twelve months
- Both plans price InMail at roughly $5.70–$6.00 a credit
The plans, and what you commit to
| Plan | LinkedIn's list price | InMail | Commitment | Who it suits |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Recruiter Lite | $170/mo billed annually | 30 / month | Monthly or annual, your choice | Solo recruiters, small agencies, one desk |
| Recruiter Professional | $899+/mo, quoted | 150 / month | Normally twelve months | Agencies with several desks, high-volume sourcing |
| Recruiter Corporate | Annual contract, quoted | 150 / month per seat | Annual, through procurement | In-house TA teams with ATS and seat management |
The word you are actually searching for
Seat, licence, subscription — the same thing from three sides
On Lite they collapse into one. On Professional and Corporate they come apart, and the difference is what you are signing.
Subscription
The billing relationship. Monthly or annual, on a card for Lite, on an invoice for the contract tiers. This is the thing you cancel.
Licence
What the subscription entitles you to — the product tier, the InMail allowance, the feature set. One licence can carry several seats on Professional and Corporate.
Seat
One person's access under that licence, attached to one LinkedIn profile. An admin can reassign a seat between people on the contract tiers. On Lite there is one seat and it does not move.
The expensive misunderstanding
A Recruiter seat binds to the LinkedIn profile that bought it, and LinkedIn does not move it. Buying Lite on your personal profile and later deciding the sourcing should run on a separate identity does not mean transferring the seat. It means buying a second one.
Lite or Professional
What the extra $729 a month buys
Not better search, and not cheaper InMail. Team workflow and ATS — which is worth it when several recruiters share a pipeline and worth nothing when one person sources alone.
| Capability | Recruiter Lite | Recruiter Professional |
|---|---|---|
| InMail credits per month | 30 | 150 |
| Advanced search filters | Yes | Yes, plus boolean and spotlights |
| Candidate pipelines and projects | Basic | Full |
| ATS integration | Limited | Full |
| Team collaboration and shared projects | No | Yes |
| Multiple seats on one contract | No | Yes |
| Can you buy it yourself, today | Yes, by card | Sales call |
Choose Lite if
One person is doing the sourcing, you want to start this week, and you would rather add a second seat on a second account later than sign a contract now. Thirty InMails a month is roughly one focused search per week worked properly.
Choose Professional if
Several recruiters need shared projects and pipeline visibility, or your ATS has to write back into LinkedIn. Do not buy it for the extra InMail alone — five Lite seats on five verified accounts is the same monthly InMail in five separate markets, for less money.
The whole bill
Seat plus account, which is what you actually pay
LinkedIn prices the seat and assumes the account. If you need a sourcing identity that is not your personal profile, here is the arithmetic with both lines in it.
| Setup | Seat | Account | Monthly total | Who carries the account |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lite on your own profile | $170/mo annual | $0 | $170/mo | Your profile carries the sourcing volume |
| Lite on a rented verified account | $170/mo annual | $75–$120/mo | $245–$290/mo | Recovered within 72h if lost |
| Professional, one seat | $899+/mo quoted | $0 – $120/mo | $899+/mo | Twelve-month commitment |
| Five Lite seats, five accounts | $850/mo annual | $375–$600/mo | $1,225–$1,450/mo | 150 InMails across five markets |
The line LinkedIn does not print
The allowance is a ceiling, not a promise
Every plan advertises an InMail number. None of them mention that whether you can spend it is decided by the profile the seat sits on.
What you are buying at $5.70 a credit
The right to send, not the likelihood of a reply. On a verified, aged account with real connection history the full allowance is usable. On a thin or unverified profile the same volume draws restrictions long before the credits run out — the failure people mistake for LinkedIn throttling Recruiter.
What an account costs against a lost seat
If the account goes, the seat goes with it and the subscription is still yours to argue about. On a rented account the recovery is ours: same tier, within 72 hours, inside the guarantee window. That is the whole commercial difference, and it is $75–$120 a month.
Questions
Cost questions, answered
How much is LinkedIn Recruiter Lite per month?
About $170 a month on LinkedIn’s list price when billed annually. Month-to-month costs meaningfully more per month — that is the premium LinkedIn charges for not committing. Those are LinkedIn’s numbers, LinkedIn changes them by market and over time, and you should treat them as an order of magnitude rather than a quote.
Is there a LinkedIn Recruiter contract, or can I cancel monthly?
Recruiter Lite can be bought month to month on a card and cancelled, at the higher monthly rate. Recruiter Professional and Recruiter Corporate are contract products and LinkedIn will normally want twelve months. If the reason you want to avoid a contract is that you are not certain the sourcing motion will work, the cheapest honest test is one Lite seat for one month on an account you also rent monthly, so that nothing you have signed outlives the experiment.
What is the difference between a Recruiter seat, a licence and a subscription?
They are the same thing described from three sides. The subscription is the billing relationship, the licence is what that subscription entitles you to, and the seat is one person’s access under that licence. Lite is a single seat and the three words collapse into one. On Professional and Corporate they come apart: one contract, several seats, and an admin who assigns and reassigns them.
What does the Recruiter price not include?
The account. Recruiter is an upgrade bought on top of a LinkedIn profile, and LinkedIn’s price page assumes you already have one it will accept. If you need a separate sourcing identity — because you do not want outbound volume on your personal profile, or because you need one desk per region — that is a verified account at $75 to $120 a month on top of the seat. It also does not include the outcome: the InMail allowance is a ceiling, not a promise, and what you can actually send is set by the account.
What does an InMail actually cost?
On Recruiter Lite at $170 for 30 credits, about $5.70 per InMail. On Professional at $899 for 150, about $6.00. The two plans price InMail almost identically, which is the tell: you do not upgrade to Professional for cheaper outreach, you upgrade for team workflow and ATS. And both numbers are the cost of a credit, not the cost of a reply — that is decided by the profile the InMail arrives from.
Are five Lite seats cheaper than one Professional seat?
For InMail volume, yes, and by a wide margin. Five Lite seats are 150 credits a month for about $850, against 150 credits for $899 on one Professional seat — and the five are spread across five separate identities in five separate markets rather than concentrated on one. Add five rented accounts and it is roughly $1,225 to $1,450 against $899, for five sourcing desks instead of one. Buy Professional for shared pipelines and ATS write-back, which five Lite seats genuinely cannot do.
Does renting an account mean you control the Recruiter subscription?
No, and deliberately. You add your own payment method to the rented account and buy Recruiter through LinkedIn yourself, so the subscription, the card and the cancellation are all yours. We never touch it. What we carry is the account: if it is restricted inside the guarantee window and you followed the usage rules, we recover it, or hand you a replacement at the same tier, within 72 hours and you re-activate your seat on it.