Published benchmarks disagree by 10x because nobody defines positive. One definition, 1,543 real replies split by vertical, and the gaps stated plainly.
Short answer: There is no single cold email positive reply rate benchmark, because the published ones count different things. Belkins reports that 0.45% of emails sent get a reply once auto-replies and bounces are stripped out; Apollo tells SDRs to aim for 4–6% positive replies. Both can be right, and they are ten times apart. What I can give you is one defined number set: 1,543 positive replies from live campaigns between August 2025 and July 2026, classified by what the person said and split by vertical. It will not give you a rate per 1,000 sends, and I say why below.
I run a pay-per-meeting lead generation agency, so I have an interest in positive replies looking like a solved problem. They are not. Read the section on what this data cannot tell you before you quote any of it.
The main published figures, all as of October 2026, with the counting rule each one uses.
Three things move the number. The denominator: emails sent, delivered, unique contacts, or unique opens. The numerator: every reply, or only the ones you would want. And auto-replies: if Sales.co is right that nearly half of replies are automatic, leaving them in roughly doubles the rate. Belkins and Apollo are the same industry describing different fractions.
Belkins is the only one of those pages that publishes both its counting rule and an industry split. None of them says what the replies actually said. This page does, with its limits stated.
A reply from a human that does one of five things:
Not a positive reply: auto-replies, bounces, out-of-office, "not interested", "remove me", and polite declines. "Not now, try me in Q2" sits on the line. I count it, and there were six in 1,543, so it changes nothing.
A positive reply is not a meeting, and a meeting is not a qualified meeting. That last definition is at what counts as a qualified meeting, and it is the one that decides what you pay.
Source: every positive reply across our own and client campaigns on Instantly, first positive reply dated 7 August 2025 to 24 July 2026. The vertical is the client's market. Clients other than PR Noir and P1 Communications are not named.
| Vertical | Positive replies | Share |
|---|---|---|
| B2B PR agencies | 300 | 19.4% |
| Agency partnerships | 289 | 18.7% |
| Hospitality PR (UK) | 208 | 13.5% |
| Unlabelled campaign | 198 | 12.8% |
| B2B SaaS | 142 | 9.2% |
| Own outbound (our lead-gen offer) | 138 | 8.9% |
| Web3 / crypto | 123 | 8.0% |
| Finance / PE-VC data | 111 | 7.2% |
| Local / consumer services | 34 | 2.2% |
Hospitality PR (UK) is P1 Communications, whose case study is public. Own outbound is us selling our own service. Unlabelled campaign is 198 replies from campaigns that never carried a vertical tag; I left them in because removing them would make the shares look tidier than the data is.
Just over half of all positives came from PR and agency campaigns. That reflects where our clients are, not where cold email works best. It is not a ranking of verticals.
Each reply was classified by keyword from its preview text.
| Reply type | Count | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Unclassified positive | 869 | 56.3% |
| Interested | 268 | 17.4% |
| Wants a call | 168 | 10.9% |
| Asked price | 114 | 7.4% |
| Asked for info | 91 | 5.9% |
| Referral | 27 | 1.7% |
| Not now | 6 | 0.4% |
56.3% matched no class: "sure", "ok", "send it over", a bare signature. I am not relabelling those as interested. The clean intent cluster is interested plus wants a call: 28% of all positives.
By vertical, as a share of that vertical's positives:
| Vertical | n | Interested | Wants a call | Asked price | Asked for info | Referral |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| B2B PR agencies | 300 | 16% | 12% | 10% | 6% | 2% |
| Agency partnerships | 289 | 32% | 10% | 10% | 8% | 0% |
| Hospitality PR (UK) | 208 | 7% | 5% | 8% | 4% | 5% |
| Unlabelled campaign | 198 | 13% | 8% | 5% | 3% | 4% |
| B2B SaaS | 142 | 1% | 7% | 1% | 1% | 1% |
| Own outbound | 138 | 17% | 20% | 7% | 7% | 0% |
| Web3 / crypto | 123 | 18% | 17% | 4% | 11% | 2% |
| Finance / PE-VC data | 111 | 23% | 12% | 10% | 7% | 0% |
| Local / consumer services | 34 | 38% | 12% | 3% | 6% | 0% |
Agency partnerships produced the most explicit interest of any large row: 32% said so in words. Local services is higher at 38%, but that is 13 people out of 34.
B2B SaaS is the odd row: 1% interested, 1% asked price, roughly nine in ten unclassified. Two readings, probably both true: SaaS buyers reply short ("sure, send it"), and a keyword classifier is bad at short replies. Do not read it as "SaaS buyers never ask about price".
Hospitality PR had the highest referral share at 5%, so in that market our second email asks for the right name instead of pushing for a call.
114 people, 7.4% of all positives, led with a price question. In B2B PR agencies, agency partnerships and finance it was 10%.
That is a tenth of your warmest replies in three verticals, and the standard playbook answers it with "happy to jump on a quick call to walk you through it". The person recognises the dodge. Two consequences.
First, whoever handles replies needs a price answer ready. If you cannot state your pricing in an email, you cannot state it in a meeting either. Ours fits in one line: pay per qualified meeting, no retainer, no minimum spend, nothing charged for a no-show; the number is quoted on the call once we have seen your deal size.
Second, email two in the sequence should pre-empt it. If one in ten of the people who were going to reply were going to ask about price, stating the model in email two moves some of them from "asked price" to "wants a call" and filters out the ones for whom the model is a no. Fewer replies, better ones. A reply count looks better when you hide the price. A meeting count does not, which is one of the real differences between paying per meeting and paying a retainer.
question, {FirstName}: 225 replies, 15% of all positives, off one subject line.{Company} featured in {Publication}: 403 replies. The hook is a real press mention, found per lead. It only works when the mention is real.partnership with {Company}: 75 replies.One caveat. These are the subject lines of emails that got a positive reply. I do not have, in this file, the subject lines of the emails that got nothing. So I cannot say question, {FirstName} has a higher reply rate than anything else. I can say that 15% of every positive reply we received came off that one line, which is a different claim.
When an agency or a tool quotes you a reply rate, ask for five things: the numerator, the denominator, how auto-replies were handled, the vertical, and the dates. If one is missing, the number is marketing. The rest of the questions are in how to tell if a lead generation agency is any good.
First replies land in weeks two and three and decision-maker conversations in weeks three and four; the phases are in how long until cold outreach books meetings.
Get four things in writing before outreach starts: the qualification definition, the no-show terms, who owns the domains and the data when you leave, and what happens in a month with zero meetings. A qualified meeting is defined at what counts as a qualified meeting. Then use the ROI calculator to work out the most you should pay per meeting before anyone quotes you a number.
Or run the free GTM teardown on your own site for the ICP, cold email and numbers specific to your company.