Sales Navigator AI features: every published row starts at Advanced
LinkedIn names four AI-assisted features in Sales Navigator — Account IQ, Lead IQ, Message Assist and Ask for intro. Its compare-plans grid, stamped 1 August 2026, checks the first three for Advanced at $159.99 a seat a month and for Advanced Plus, and leaves Core at $119.99 blank. Three of LinkedIn's own help articles say Core has them as well. Both positions are below, and so is the $40 a month the disagreement is worth.
- AI features last read
- Prices last read
Three of the four start at Advanced. The fourth has no row at all.
Read the second table before deciding. Most of what people mean by “Sales Navigator AI” is in it, and LinkedIn does not describe any of it as AI.
| Core$119.99 / month | Advanced$159.99 / month | Advanced PlusQuote only | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Account IQ | No | Yes | Yes |
| Lead IQ | No | Yes | Yes |
| Message Assist | No | Yes, public beta | Yes, public beta |
| Ask for intro | No row on the grid | No row on the grid | No row on the grid |
Checkmarks read from LinkedIn's compare-plans grid, which carries its own “Updated: Aug 1, 2026” stamp, on 20 September 2026. Ask for intro appears only in the help centre's list of AI-assisted features that are on by default; no LinkedIn page assigns it a tier, so the row says that rather than guessing. Sold only through a LinkedIn representative, by seat block and annual contract. LinkedIn publishes no list price for it anywhere. What each tier costs in full is on Core, Advanced and Advanced Plus. US list prices in USD, excluding tax. LinkedIn bills in local currency in most markets and the converted figure is rarely a straight exchange-rate conversion, so treat this as the US baseline and confirm in your own billing page before committing to an annual term.
Buyer Intent is not an AI feature, and conversational search is free
These are the four things people are usually pointing at when they say “Sales Navigator AI”. Same tiers, same prices, and LinkedIn labels none of them AI.
| Core$119.99 / month | Advanced$159.99 / month | Advanced PlusQuote only | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Buyer Intent | No | Yes | Yes |
| Relationship Explorer | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Relationship Map | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Alerts | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Advanced lead and account search filters | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Search in conversational language | Free on every account | Free on every account | Free on every account |
Buyer Intent is the one worth knowing about: it is tier-gated exactly like the three AI rows above, so the same $40 a month buys it, but LinkedIn's own list of AI-assisted features does not include it. Searching in conversational language is last because it is the most common mistake of all — both of LinkedIn's search help articles now describe it for free members (Search results for free and Premium members ↗), so no Sales Navigator tier is selling it to you. The rest of the grid, priced, is on Core vs Advanced.
Two briefings, one draft, and one feature LinkedIn will not describe
The price column is the cheapest plan that carries the feature, taken from the same table as every other figure on this site and dated 12 September 2026.
| Feature | What it does | Tier LinkedIn names | Cost of the cheapest tier that has it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Account IQ | A generated briefing on a company you are selling into, assembled in one click on the account. | Advanced and Advanced Plus, per the compare-plans grid updated 1 August 2026. Three LinkedIn help articles say Core as well — see the disagreement on this record. | $159.99 a month on Advanced |
| Lead IQ | A generated summary of an individual lead, drawn from what they have posted and published. | Advanced and Advanced Plus, per the compare-plans grid updated 1 August 2026. The help article says all three tiers — see the disagreement on this record. | $159.99 a month on Advanced |
| Message Assist | It drafts a first InMail to a lead. | The compare-plans grid labels the row "NEW: Message Assist (public beta)" and checks Advanced and Advanced Plus. The help article names no tier at all. | $159.99 a month on Advanced |
| Ask for intro | LinkedIn lists it as one of the AI-assisted features turned on by default in Sales Navigator, and does not describe it further on any page we read. | LinkedIn names no tier. Its generative-AI topic lists Ask for intro among the AI-assisted Sales Navigator features that are on by default, and the compare-plans grid has no row for it. | No tier named, so no price to name |
Two of these names collide with unrelated products. LinkedIn's Lead IQ is a panel inside Sales Navigator that summarises one person; LeadIQ is a separate sales-intelligence company at leadiq.com with its own product and pricing and no connection to LinkedIn. Account IQ unqualified returns iQOO, iQIYI and Salesforce — the LinkedIn feature is Account IQ in Sales Navigator, and the qualified form is the one worth searching.
The 18 limits LinkedIn publishes, and the one feature with none
Every line below is on a LinkedIn help page. They are the reason an AI feature that is switched on can still return nothing on the account or the person you need.
- Not available for companies with 49 employees or fewer, self-employed or owned companies, government agencies, partnership companies, educational institutions, small hospitality entities, or companies that publish news and blogs.
- Financial information is shown only for US public companies.
- Sections are omitted where LinkedIn has no reliable source for them.
- An admin can turn it off for the whole contract.
LinkedIn does not publish which sources the briefing is assembled from, or which model writes it.
- Only when your LinkedIn.com language is set to English.
- Not available in the Sales Navigator mobile app.
- The lead needs at least three publicly visible activities or profile elements, or nothing generates.
- Summaries will not generate for profiles written in other languages.
- An admin can turn it off.
- Six AI-assisted messages per minute.
- Fifty AI-assisted messages per month.
- Each message spends one InMail credit. The credit comes back if the lead replies.
- The monthly ceiling matches the Sales Navigator InMail allowance exactly, so a month spent entirely on AI-assisted first messages leaves nothing for anything else.
- One lead at a time. It does not send in bulk.
- First-touch InMail only.
- English only.
- The recipient is not told that AI was used.
- An admin can turn it off for everyone on the account.
LinkedIn publishes no ceiling for this, because it publishes no description.
There is no help article describing what Ask for intro does, what it draws on, or what its limits are. The only public statement we found is its inclusion in the on-by-default list, which is why this record makes no claim about behaviour.
No tier. Neither the compare-plans grid nor the help topic assigns it to Core, Advanced or Advanced Plus.
Message Assist's monthly ceiling and the Sales Navigator InMail allowance are the same 50, on every tier — the AI drafts do not come with credits of their own. What the allowance is worth per message is on InMail credits, and the ceilings no tier lifts are on Sales Navigator limits.
LinkedIn says the subscription does not entitle you to any of it
This is the paragraph that should change how the upgrade is framed, and it is on LinkedIn's own help page rather than in any terms nobody reads.
“While we may make this feature available to a sub-set of members (for example, Advanced Plus subscribers), this is not an Advanced Plus feature offered as part of that subscription fee, and those subscribers are not entitled to have access to this feature. We reserve the right at any time to limit access and use, change the feature and/or cease providing the feature, including for reasons such as abuse, misuse or overuse.”
Advanced is a tier with published features, and Account IQ, Lead IQ and Message Assist are checked on it. LinkedIn has separately declined to stand behind them as part of the fee. Both things are true at once, so the honest way to price the upgrade is on TeamLink, Smart Links, Buyer Intent and shared lists, with the AI as the part that may move.
Account IQ, Lead IQ and Message Assist all carry a contract-level kill switch. On a managed team the question of whether you have the feature is settled by your administrator, not by your tier.
Read on 20 September 2026 from Generative AI in Sales Navigator ↗. Quoted in full rather than summarised, because a paraphrase of this paragraph is always softer than the paragraph.
LinkedIn does not agree with itself about Core
Both are LinkedIn, both were read on 20 September 2026, and neither carries a note that the other is out of date. Which answer you get depends on which page you land on, so both are here.
The "Account IQ & Lead IQ" row is checked for Advanced and Advanced Plus, and not for Core.
Each says, under "Who can use this feature?", that it is available with all Sales Navigator subscriptions — Core, Advanced and Advanced Plus.
LinkedIn's Sales Navigator product page names Account IQ, Lead IQ and Message Assist and states all three as available on Advanced and Advanced Plus only. That makes it two sales-facing pages against three help articles.
This site publishes the compare-plans answer, because it carries an explicit update date and is the page a buyer is sold from. If your Core seat shows Account IQ, the help articles are the reason, and neither page is out of date in a way LinkedIn has acknowledged.
Message Assist has a second, smaller version of the same problem: its help article's “Who can use this feature?” box names no subscription tier at all, while the grid marks it Advanced and above and labels it a public beta. This page takes the tier from the grid and the ceilings from the help article, because that is what each one actually states. Sources: compare-plans ↗, the Sales Navigator product page ↗ and help articles a1655021, a7475215, a6841315 and a6847751.
An assistant can write the message. It cannot read the account.
Worth knowing before paying $480 a seat a year for the tier: for three of the four, most of the thinking is reproducible elsewhere. For the fourth, nothing public even says what it does.
| Feature | What an assistant does instead | Where it stops |
|---|---|---|
| Account IQ | An assistant with web search will assemble a company briefing from filings, the company site and news — which for a US public company is largely the same public material. | It cannot read the LinkedIn account page, the headcount trend or your saved-account context. LinkedIn blocks assistant crawlers outright and blocks even the AI search crawlers it admits from public profiles. |
| Lead IQ | Paste a person's recent posts into an assistant and ask what they care about. The reasoning is the same and it will show its working. | It cannot fetch the profile or the activity feed. LinkedIn blocks assistant crawlers from public profiles specifically, so you supply the text — and its User Agreement bars using a script or extension to collect it. |
| Message Assist | An assistant drafts the same first message, in any language, as many times as you like, with no per-minute cap and no credit cost for the draft. | It cannot send the InMail, and it spends no credit because it spends nothing — the credit is charged by LinkedIn when you send, whoever wrote the words. |
| Ask for intro | Nothing, because nothing public says what this does. | An assistant has no view of your colleagues' connections, which is the only thing a warm-introduction feature could be reading. |
Three of the four stop at the same wall: LinkedIn blocks ClaudeBot, GPTBot and the other assistant crawlers outright in robots.txt, and its User Agreement bars collecting profile data with a script or an extension. So the workable pattern is the one this site builds its prompts around — you paste, the assistant reasons. The account research prompt covers the same ground as Account IQ, the prospect research prompt covers Lead IQ, and the InMail writer drafts what Message Assist drafts without spending a credit to find out whether it is any good. All three are free to read, and the rest of the LinkedIn AI toolkit carries the same send limits these pages document.
The tier questions underneath the AI questions
Which Sales Navigator plan has the AI features?
Advanced, at $159.99 per seat per month, and Advanced Plus above it. LinkedIn's compare-plans grid, stamped 1 August 2026, checks Account IQ, Lead IQ and Message Assist for those two tiers and leaves Core ($119.99) blank. The fourth feature LinkedIn calls AI-assisted, Ask for intro, has no row on the grid at all and no named tier. So the upgrade costs $40 a seat a month, $480 a year — and it also buys TeamLink, Smart Links, Buyer Intent and shared lists, which is why it is worth deciding on the whole tier rather than on the AI alone.
Does Sales Navigator Core include Account IQ and Lead IQ?
Two official LinkedIn pages answer that differently. The compare-plans grid updated 1 August 2026 shows no Core checkmark; help articles a1655021, a7475215 and a6841315 each say the feature is available with all Sales Navigator subscriptions including Core. LinkedIn has not acknowledged either page as out of date. This site publishes the compare-plans answer, because it carries an explicit update date and is the page a buyer is sold from — but if your Core seat shows Account IQ, the help articles are the reason, and you are not misreading your own screen.
What is Account IQ in LinkedIn Sales Navigator?
A generated briefing on a company you are selling into, assembled in one click on the account. It is off the table for seven company types LinkedIn names — companies with 49 employees or fewer, self-employed or owned companies, government agencies, partnerships, educational institutions, small hospitality entities and companies that publish news and blogs — and it shows financial information only for US public companies. It is on by default, an admin can switch it off for the whole contract, and the cheapest plan that carries it is Sales Navigator Advanced at $159.99 a month.
Is LinkedIn Lead IQ the same as LeadIQ?
No. Lead IQ is a panel inside Sales Navigator that summarises one person from their publicly visible LinkedIn activity. LeadIQ is a separate sales-intelligence company with its own product and its own pricing; it is not a LinkedIn product and LinkedIn does not resell it. The collision is not theoretical: typing "lead iq linkedin" into Google autocompletes to "leadiq linkedin", the company, so a page you land on may not be about the LinkedIn feature at all. Check whether what you are reading describes a Sales Navigator panel or a vendor with a price list.
How many AI messages can Message Assist write per month?
50, at a maximum of six per minute, one lead at a time, first-touch InMail only and in English only. Each one spends an InMail credit, returned if the lead replies. That 50 is also the entire Sales Navigator InMail allowance on all three tiers, so a month spent wholly on AI-assisted first messages leaves nothing for anything else — the ceiling is the credit budget, not a separate allowance on top of it.
Does Advanced Plus cost more because of the AI features?
There is no way to answer that from anything LinkedIn publishes, because it publishes no Advanced Plus price at all — it is quoted per seat block through a representative, sized on team, CRM integration and onboarding. What is published is that Advanced Plus carries the same three AI rows as Advanced and adds CRM data validation, contact enrichment and TeamLink Extend. Any site printing a per-seat Advanced Plus figure is printing a guess.
Can Claude or ChatGPT do what Account IQ and Lead IQ do?
Partly, and the half they cannot do is the half that matters. An assistant with web search will assemble a company briefing from filings, the company site and news, and it will reason about a person from posts you paste in. It cannot read the LinkedIn account page, the headcount trend or the activity feed: LinkedIn blocks ClaudeBot, GPTBot and the rest outright in robots.txt, and shuts the two AI search crawlers it does admit out of public profiles and people search. So you supply the text and the assistant does the thinking.
Are the Sales Navigator AI features part of what the subscription buys?
LinkedIn says no. Its generative-AI help article states that making a feature available to a subset of members — Advanced Plus subscribers are its own example — does not make it a feature offered as part of that subscription fee, that those subscribers are not entitled to have access to it, and that it reserves the right to limit, change or stop providing it at any time. That disclaimer covers Account IQ, Lead IQ, Message Assist and Ask for intro alike.
Decide on the tier, not on the AI
Advanced is $40 a seat a month above Core — $480 a year, $2,400 across five seats. Three AI features ride on that step, and so do TeamLink, Smart Links and Buyer Intent. Price it at your real seat count before you decide which of them you are buying.