LinkedIn Outreach Benchmarks by Industry (2026)

LinkedIn outreach performs very differently depending on the industry the sender works in. Connection acceptance runs from 21.8% at the bottom to 36.5% at the top, and the spread on reply rates is wider still. This page lists the benchmarks for connection acceptance, connection-note replies and message replies across the 38 industries with enough sending accounts to report, taken from 13.2 million connection requests sent between May 2025 and April 2026.

Browse benchmarks by industry

Linked industries have a full page carrying that industry’s rank among the 38, the industries whose numbers behave most like it, its end-to-end conversion, and what a below-benchmark number usually means in that sector. The rest are reported here as figures only for now.

Industry	Acceptance	Note reply	Message reply	Accounts
Accounting	29.5%	2.6%	12.0%	113
Automotive	26.4%	2.9%	11.0%	60
Biotechnology	25.8%	2.9%	8.3%	68
Computer & Network Security	26.0%	1.9%	10.7%	140
Computer Software	27.5%	2.8%	8.8%	1851
Construction	26.9%	2.5%	11.4%	119
Consumer Goods	27.3%	2.5%	11.6%	50
Design	31.3%	3.0%	10.5%	118
E-learning	28.4%	2.8%	7.4%	98
Electrical / Electronic Manufacturing	29.0%	2.9%	12.1%	51
Events Services	31.5%	2.3%	13.8%	107
Financial Services	26.0%	2.2%	10.3%	767
Food & Beverages	27.5%	2.0%	13.9%	63
Health, Wellness & Fitness	25.1%	2.5%	9.9%	107
Higher Education	26.4%	2.6%	11.6%	57
Hospital & Health Care	27.7%	3.4%	10.6%	159
Human Resources	30.5%	4.2%	9.7%	213
Information Services	31.6%	2.7%	11.2%	76
Information Technology & Services	28.4%	2.6%	10.5%	1825
Insurance	28.1%	2.4%	8.8%	119
Internet	28.2%	2.6%	10.0%	330
Logistics & Supply Chain	32.3%	3.4%	11.8%	72
Machinery	26.8%	2.3%	9.0%	56
Management Consulting	28.0%	3.1%	9.2%	976
Marketing & Advertising	29.4%	2.4%	10.6%	1115
Mechanical / Industrial Engineering	29.5%	2.3%	10.9%	87
Media Production	23.4%	1.9%	7.2%	78
Medical Device	26.3%	2.5%	8.9%	55
Non-profit Organization Mgmt	29.7%	5.0%	8.0%	83
Outsourcing / Offshoring	26.1%	2.2%	9.2%	109
Professional Training & Coaching	27.4%	4.2%	8.6%	471
Real Estate	28.4%	2.7%	11.8%	253
Renewables & Environment	26.3%	2.2%	12.5%	64
Retail	34.3%	3.2%	16.9%	59
Staffing & Recruiting	36.5%	6.6%	18.9%	462
Telecommunications	21.8%	1.8%	11.2%	61
Transportation / Trucking / Railroad	28.6%	3.6%	10.9%	83
Venture Capital & Private Equity	34.9%	5.5%	11.0%	107
All industries	28.5%	3.0%	10.4%	13,302

What is not reported here

Only industries with at least 50 sending accounts appear above. Fifty more industries in the full appendix fall below that line, and their numbers are left out on purpose rather than for lack of data: at that sample size a single unusual account moves an industry average by several points, and the effect is measurable. In the full appendix the industries with the fewest accounts are also the ones posting the most extreme rates, which is what noise looks like rather than what an industry difference looks like.

Some of the most quotable numbers in the dataset sit in that excluded group. Civil engineering leads every measure in the full appendix on 13 accounts. Broadcast media posts the highest acceptance rate of any industry on 14. Neither is published here, and neither should be quoted as an industry benchmark.

The full report lists every industry including those, along with the breakdowns by sender seniority, by company size and by month, and the complete methodology.

Grade your own outreach

Enter your acceptance and reply rates against any reported industry and grade your outreach to see your grade and your percentile. No signup.

Data updated 19 August 2026. Refreshed quarterly against the source report.