LinkedIn InMail vs Message: Differences & When to Use Each

Key Takeaways

• LinkedIn InMail reaches 2nd- and 3rd-degree members without a connection, but it needs a Premium, Sales Navigator, or Recruiter plan and spends a credit per send unless the recipient responds within 90 days.
• LinkedIn messages are free, but only reach 1st-degree connections. They reply at nearly three times the rate of InMail in our H1 2026 data.
• InMail wins on reach and inbox visibility. Messages win on replies, trust, and cost per reply.
• Open Profile lets you InMail Premium members for free, without credits, even from a free account.
• The best results come from one sequence: connection request, then message if accepted, then InMail if not, then email. Expandi’s Smart Campaigns run that branching flow automatically, with Signals adding people who already engaged with you.

LinkedIn InMail vs message is a reach-versus-replies decision. 

InMail is LinkedIn’s paid message to anyone on the platform, a message is free but only goes to your 1st-degree connections, and the reply gap between them is wide. In our H1 2026 outreach data, InMail campaigns to Open Profile prospects averaged an 8.37% reply rate across 7,802 campaigns, while message campaigns to existing connections averaged 23.76% across 11,530.

Here’s what this guide covers:

• How InMail and messages differ in reach, cost, limits, and inbox placement.
• What LinkedIn InMail is, how credits work, and when it beats a connection request.
• How to send InMails for free with Open Profile.
• Best practices for each channel, backed by LinkedIn’s data and ours.
• The sequence that combines both, plus the campaign that booked 14 calls in a week.

What is the difference between InMail and message on LinkedIn?

The difference between InMail vs message on LinkedIn comes down to who you can reach and what it costs. 

• InMail is a paid Premium feature that lets you message any member outside your network. 
• A message is the free, standard channel, and it only works with people who have accepted your connection request.

The two channels, side by side:

• LinkedIn InMail: a paid message to 1st-, 2nd-, or 3rd-degree members. It requires a Premium, Sales Navigator, or Recruiter plan and uses one InMail credit per send.
• LinkedIn message: a free direct message to 1st-degree connections only. It works on every LinkedIn account type, including the free one, with no credits involved.

Here’s the overview:

Feature	LinkedIn InMail	LinkedIn message
Reach	1st-, 2nd-, and 3rd-degree members	1st-degree connections only
Cost	One credit per send (returned if the recipient responds within 90 days)	Free
Plan required	Premium, Sales Navigator, or Recruiter	Any plan, including free
Length limit	200-character subject, 2,000-character body	No practical limit for outreach
Best for	Cold outreach, recruiting, reaching decision-makers who ignore requests	Warm outreach, follow-ups, relationship building, networking
Inbox placement	Main inbox, with an email notification	Focused or Other tab, depending on relevance

Reach and results are two different things: InMail gets you in front of more people, while a message to someone who already accepted you gets the reply. 

The rest of this guide covers how each works and where each one earns its place in a sequence.

What is LinkedIn InMail and when should you use it?

LinkedIn InMail is a paid message that lets you contact any LinkedIn member you are not connected to. 

It comes with Premium, Sales Navigator, and Recruiter subscriptions, spends one InMail credit per send, and lands in the recipient’s main inbox with an email notification. A subject line can run 200 characters and the body 2,000.

Key things to know:

• Available only with Premium, Sales Navigator, or Recruiter plans, with 5 to 50 credits a month depending on the plan.
• Credits come back when the recipient accepts, declines, or replies within 90 days. An unanswered InMail costs you the credit.
• You can reach a decision-maker directly without waiting for a connection request to be accepted, but only one InMail per member until they respond.

When to use LinkedIn InMail

Use InMail when the person you need is hard to reach through a connection request:

• High-authority, low-access prospects. Directors, VPs, and founders who ignore connection requests or have their inboxes filtered heavily.
• New accounts or verticals with no warm-up. With no rapport to build on yet, InMail opens the conversation immediately.
• A soft re-entry after a missed touch. An InMail after a pending request or an ignored email reads as less pushy than a repeat request.
• Guaranteed inbox visibility. InMail lands in the main inbox with an email alert, while a regular message can slip into the Other tab.

Reach alone still gets ignored if the message has nothing in it for the reader. Alex Delivet, founder of Collect, a customer onboarding platform, described how he treats incoming InMails in a GTM Society interview:

“For InMail … it depends on the interest of what you are receiving or what you are sending. … It’s working well. At least you are visible. But the thing is you need to create the interest for the people you are trying to connect with. If it’s too salesy and … not the right moment, then you will end up … not in spam, but being ignored.” — Alex Delivet, Collect

How do LinkedIn InMail credits work?

Every paid plan comes with a monthly InMail credit allotment and a cap on how many unused credits you can bank. Per LinkedIn’s help center:

• Premium Career: 5 per month, up to 15 banked.
• Premium Business: 15 per month, up to 45 banked.
• Sales Navigator (Core, Advanced, Advanced Plus): 50 per month, up to 150 banked.
• Recruiter Lite: 30 per month, up to 120 banked.

Unused credits carry into the next month until you hit the cap, and Sales Navigator credits expire 90 days after they arrive. Credits return whenever an InMail is accepted, declined, or answered within 90 days of sending.

Extra credits are off the table on Premium and Sales Navigator, where subscribers cannot buy more beyond the monthly allotment. 

• Only Recruiter Lite accounts can purchase additional InMails, in packs of 10 up to 70 per seat.
• On Premium, the only route to more credits is a higher plan, and Premium credits cannot be spent inside Sales Navigator or Recruiter.

How do you send someone a LinkedIn InMail?

To send a LinkedIn InMail from a profile:

1. Navigate to the profile of your prospect.
2. Click the More button in their introduction section.
3. Select Message [their name] from the dropdown.
4. Type the Subject field (optional) in the New message window.
5. Type your message in the text box.
6. Click Send.

The compose window shows how many credits you have left.

How to send free InMails using LinkedIn Open Profile

Open Profile is a Premium setting that lets anyone on LinkedIn message that member for free, without a connection and without spending an InMail credit. It is the one route to InMail that costs nothing, and it works even from a free LinkedIn account.

How this works:

• Premium members switch on Open Profile from the edit-intro panel on their profile.
• Their profile then shows a Message button to everyone, connected or not.
• Your message reaches them like an InMail, in the main inbox, with no credit deducted.
• LinkedIn caps how many Open Profile messages a free account can send each month, and keeps that number unpublished.

For LinkedIn outreach, that opens up senior, Premium-paying members at a volume credits would never cover. 

Expandi’s Open InMail campaign filters a lead list down to Open Profile members and sends them free InMails within LinkedIn’s cap of 800 a month (we recommend warming up to 25 a day). The full setup is in our guide to automating LinkedIn InMail.

5 LinkedIn InMail best practices to follow

Every InMail costs a credit unless it gets answered, so the copy has to earn its reply on the first send. 

LinkedIn’s own InMail data says short, personalized InMails help improve reply rates, and our own campaign data says the follow-ups around the first send lifts replies further.

The 5 practices below cover length, personalization, the ask, testing, and sequencing, in that order.

1. Keep your InMails short and direct

The shortest InMails get the best response. LinkedIn’s own analysis of InMail response rates, published in 2022, found that InMails under 400 characters performed 22% better than the average, with results falling as the message grew. InMails over 1,200 characters did worst of all, 11% below the global average.

A 400-character InMail is roughly four short sentences: who you are, why them, one ask.

2. Use personalization

The same LinkedIn analysis found that personalized InMails performed 15% better than ones sent in bulk. Angles that give you a genuine reason to write:

• Mutual connections.
• LinkedIn groups in common.
• Companies or education in common.
• A recent post, comment, or job change.

At campaign scale, dynamic personalization handles the mechanics with name, company, and role placeholders plus custom variables per lead.

3. Include a clear CTA

Make sure the recipient knows what you want them to do next. One ask per InMail, closed with an action verb such as:

• Try.
• Register.
• Reserve.
• Join.
• Confirm.
• Download.

For worked examples, see our guide to writing a call to action for outreach.

4. A/B test different InMail templates

Constant A/B testing is the only reliable way to find out whether your InMail beats the average.

Test one of these at a time:

• Audience targeting.
• The pain point you lead with.
• Personalization angle.
• Offer.
• Call to action.

Run two templates with everything else identical and let Expandi’s reply rate per message step, shown in campaign statistics, decide.

5. Combine InMails with connection requests and email

InMail works best as one step in a sequence rather than the whole play. Each extra touch adds a chance to be answered, and a connection request costs nothing while an InMail costs a credit.

A sequence that spends credits only where they are needed:

1. Send a personalized connection request.
2. If accepted within 3 to 5 days, send a message and follow up there.
3. If not accepted, send an Open InMail (free) or a paid InMail via Sales Navigator.
4. If still no reply, follow up by email.

Remember that LinkedIn does impose limits on how many connection requests you can send per week, so that’s important to keep in mind. This will help you run outreach safely and ensure your LinkedIn account doesn’t get restricted or banned.

Mina Golesorkhi, founder of Hi|Remi, an AI recruiting platform, explained why the mix outperforms either channel alone in a GTM Society interview:

“Both. At the end, you have to mix them. … Everyone can send bulk messages out. But you stick out if you connect with them, if you engage with them, but then also send a follow-up InMail to them. So you will have better response rates than maybe someone who just sends the same message once.” — Mina Golesorkhi, Hi|Remi

Expandi’s Smart Campaigns run this as one branching flow: the “If connected” condition routes accepted leads to a message, everyone else to an Open InMail or paid InMail step, and an email step picks up whoever is still silent. For that last step, see our comparison of email vs LinkedIn message outreach.

What are LinkedIn messages and how do they work?

LinkedIn messages are the platform’s standard, free way to talk to people you are already connected to. They cost no credits, work on every account type, and carry the highest reply rates of any LinkedIn outreach channel, because the recipient already said yes once by accepting your request.

Two things define the channel:

• LinkedIn messages are free. You can send them without a Premium plan, but only to 1st-degree connections, meaning people who accepted your request.
• LinkedIn messages read as a conversation, which is why they are the backbone of outreach campaigns.

How LinkedIn messages work

LinkedIn direct messages let you:

• Message any of your 1st-degree connections, on any plan, with no credits.
• Hold real-time conversations with read receipts, attachments, voice notes, and GIFs.
• Send message requests to fellow members of a LinkedIn group you both belong to, even without a connection.

Limits of LinkedIn messages in outreach

Free comes with limits. The ones that shape a message-based campaign:

• Connection requests are capped first. LinkedIn keeps the number unpublished, but the working LinkedIn connections limit is around 100 requests a week, so your pool of messageable people grows at that pace.
• Message volume has a practical ceiling too: around 100 messages a week on a free account and 150 on Premium is the safe range we work to.
• Visibility is unpredictable. LinkedIn’s Focused Inbox sorts messages into a Focused tab or an Other tab by relevance, and the Other tab goes unread by plenty of people.
• Spam flags are real. A cold-volume blast to fresh connections is the fastest way to get reported.

When to use a LinkedIn message instead of InMail

Think of the LinkedIn message as your high-trust, free, warm channel. Use it when:

• Someone has just accepted your connection request.
• You want a natural, conversational tone.
• You are nurturing an existing lead or reviving an old one.
• You are following up with someone who engaged with your posts.
• You want the higher reply rate and have a real reason to start the conversation.

5 LinkedIn message best practices

LinkedIn messages start with an advantage InMail never gets: the recipient already accepted you. 

That is why Messenger campaigns average 23.76% replies in our H1 2026 data. The practices below protect that advantage: an opener that earns a reply, a small ask, follow-up that stops at three, a trigger that gives you a reason to write, and a format that reads like a chat.

1. Personalize your opening lines

Generic “hope you’re doing well, {first_name}” openers go nowhere. Instead, reference:

• The reason for your outreach.
• Something from their profile.
• A mutual connection.
• A shared event, group, or experience.

2. Use micro-asks over big CTAs

The smaller the ask, the better the reply rate. Micro-asks that open a conversation:

• “Curious how you handle X in your role?”
• “Mind if I send over a Loom on this?”
• “Interested in reading the full case study?”

Each one earns the next message.

3. Follow up two or three times, then stop

Three messages is the sweet spot. Across our research dataset in the State of LinkedIn Outreach H2 2026 report, campaigns with three messages replied at 9.8%, against 6.3% for a single message and 5.0% for campaigns with five or more. The second message is the strongest single send at 8.8%, so the clearest pitch belongs in message two.

Simple follow-up templates include:

• “Bumping this in case it got buried.”
• “Hey {first_name}, still interested in the (free value)?”

Or ask a personalized question about their recent content, background, or a pain point their role carries. Our guide to the LinkedIn follow-up message has timing and templates for each step.

4. Trigger-based outreach beats cold messaging

Message people because of something they just did, and the reply rate climbs. Triggers worth building a campaign on:

• They viewed your profile.
• They commented on or liked your post.
• They posted in the last 48 hours, which you can reference.
• They changed jobs.

These people are already active, or you are already on their radar, so the message arrives with context already attached. Alex Fine, co-founder of Understory, a sales and marketing agency for SaaS companies, described the workflow in a GTM Society interview:

“You can say if someone’s engaging with this post, they match my ICP, push it to an Expandi campaign, and then you can send it out immediately. And what that does is it shows relevance. You don’t have to worry about deliverability like you do with email. And you’re going to land in the primary inbox every time and people are going to read your messages.” — Alex Fine, Understory

In Expandi this is the Signals action: it adds profile visitors, company page visitors, and people who engaged with a post to a campaign automatically, syncing new matches about every 24 hours, so the message goes out while the trigger is still fresh.

5. Keep messages short, casual, and platform-native

A LinkedIn message reads like a chat. The format that fits the platform:

• One-line opener.
• One sentence of value or context.
• One small CTA.

Per our H2 2026 data, messages of 151 to 200 characters peaked at an 8.5% reply rate against a 6.8% baseline, and length mattered far less than having one clear ask.

LinkedIn InMail vs message: which gets more replies?

Messages to existing connections get more replies. InMail gets more reach. In our own campaign data, message campaigns replied at nearly three times the rate of InMail campaigns, with the caveat that a message only exists once a request has been accepted.

Benchmarks from our own outreach data

The cleanest comparison comes from the follow-up analysis in our State of LinkedIn Outreach H1 2026 report, which broke reply rates out by campaign type across 108,889 Expandi campaigns:

Campaign type	Campaigns analyzed	Reply rate with no follow-up	Reply rate with 3 follow-ups	Average reply rate
Messenger (messages to 1st-degree connections)	11,530	19.31%	24.97%	23.76%
Connector (connection request plus follow-ups)	89,557	7.99%	12.49%	10.09%
Open InMail (free InMails to Open Profile members)	7,802	6.89%	9.42%	8.37%

Two things to read out of that table:

• Follow-ups lift every channel: three follow-ups add 2.5 points to InMail, 4.5 to connection campaigns, and 5.7 to message campaigns.
• InMail’s 8.37% is a cold number. None of those recipients had accepted anything from the sender, so it sits closer to a cold email benchmark than to a warm-message one.

For context, the platform-wide message reply rate across 6.7 million outbound messages sits at 10.4%, per our H2 2026 data, and 26.05% of campaigns in the H1 dataset already combined LinkedIn with InMail rather than picking one.

Cost per send is the other half: a message costs nothing, while a cold InMail campaign replying at 8.37% hands back roughly four credits per 50 sent from replies alone, so the bulk of a Sales Navigator allotment is spent.

Your own numbers will move with your offer, audience, templates, and the strength of the LinkedIn profile the recipient checks before replying. 

Here is what InMail looked like in one of our own campaigns.

Booking 14 calls in a week with a LinkedIn InMail campaign

Here’s the quick breakdown of this campaign:

• We reached out to 170 people.
• 50 of them replied.
• From the 50, 14 turned into booked calls.

We used:

• Expandi to automate the LinkedIn outreach and prospecting.
• LinkedIn Sales Navigator for advanced targeting.
• Lyne.ai to write AI-driven intro lines for each prospect (optional). Expandi now does this natively with AI Hyper-personalization, which writes each message from the lead’s profile inside the campaign builder.
• Hyperise, through Expandi’s personalization integration, to create dynamic GIFs.

The setup took three steps:

1. For the target audience, we scraped a LinkedIn event with 450+ attendees.
2. Then, we filtered for people with an Open Profile, so every InMail was free.
3. For personalization, we used Lyne.ai to write custom intro lines based on each profile. Running it today, the {personalized_line} placeholder in the template below would be an AI Hyper-personalization step instead.

The InMail template we used:

First cold InMail message

Subject line: Knock knock…

Now you’re supposed to say – “Who’s there?”

Just kidding, {first_name}. I recently bumped into your LinkedIn profile and saw that {personalized_line}

I was wondering if you’d be interested in discovering some new unique LinkedIn outreach strategies?

I do free personalized strategy sessions for marketers like you and I thought you’d want in too.

Open to learning more?

Follow up 5 days later

“Amy – You don’t pick up on subtle cues.”

That’s what my mom tells me every now and then…

That got me thinking, since I haven’t heard from you, I was wondering if you’re not ready to adopt new tactics which can help boost your cold outreach?

Some of these tactics managed to boost our reply rate all the way up to 70%+.

Let me know if you’d be interested in 3xing your reply rate!

Clear personalization, a playful tone, and a direct CTA booked 14 calls from a few hours of setup. 

One campaign is one campaign: the 29% reply rate shows what a tightly targeted Open Profile list can do, and the 8.37% average above is the benchmark. For the full breakdown, see our guide to InMail outreach.

LinkedIn InMail vs message: when to use each

The difference between LinkedIn InMail and message is reach against replies. InMail buys visibility with anyone. Messages earn replies from people who already accepted you. 

Here’s your final cheat sheet:

Metric	LinkedIn InMail (cold)	LinkedIn message
Who you can reach	1st-, 2nd-, and 3rd-degree members	1st-degree connections only
Average reply rate (our H1 2026 data)	8.37% for Open InMail campaigns	23.76% for Messenger campaigns
Cost per send	One credit, returned if answered within 90 days (free to Open Profile members)	Free
Plan required	Premium, Sales Navigator, or Recruiter (Open Profile works on free)	Any plan
Volume limits	5 to 50 credits a month by plan, up to 800 free Open InMails a month	Around 100 messages a week, 150 with Premium, and around 100 connection requests a week
Best for	Cold outreach, executives, decision-makers who ignore requests	Nurturing, follow-ups, warm sequences, relationship building
Risk	Wasted credits on poor targeting	Getting ignored or flagged if you blast
Inbox placement	Main inbox plus email notification	Focused or Other tab

Neither channel is better on its own. 

The highest-performing LinkedIn campaigns combine both in one multi-touch sequence: connection request first, a message when it is accepted, an InMail when it is not, and email for whoever stays silent.

Run InMail and messages in one Expandi LinkedIn outreach sequence

Building that sequence by hand means checking acceptance status daily and switching channels lead by lead. 

Expandi’s Smart Campaigns run the branching flow on autopilot: connection request, message if accepted, Open InMail or paid InMail if not, email for whoever stays silent, with Signals feeding in the people who already engaged with you. Your credits go only where a connection request has failed.

Ready to run InMail and messages in one sequence? Start your free 7-day Expandi trial now.

FAQ: LinkedIn InMail vs message