Explainer
LinkedIn InMail credits and limits by plan
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By the Bingle team · Published 28 October 2026 · Researched from the sources listed below, drafted with AI help and checked against those sources
Short answer
How many InMail credits do you get on each LinkedIn plan?
LinkedIn's help centre lists 5 a month on Premium Career, 15 on Premium Business, 30 on Premium All-in-One and Recruiter Lite, 50 on every Sales Navigator edition, 100 on Recruiter Professional Services, 140 on RPS+ and 150 per seat on Recruiter. Most plans refund a credit when the person answers, accepts or declines within 90 days, and none of the Premium or Sales Navigator plans lets you buy more. Bingle's sequences send connection requests and LinkedIn messages from your own account rather than InMail, so your credits stay free for the few people you can't reach another way.
How we researched this
On 28 October 2026 we read LinkedIn's help centre articles on InMail for Premium, Sales Navigator, Recruiter and Recruiter Lite, plus the Sales Navigator and Recruiter product pages, and took every number from those pages. Where two LinkedIn pages disagree we show both. We didn't buy each plan to count credits ourselves, and nothing here comes from a third-party blog. What Bingle does comes from its user guide.
Credits, caps and renewal for each plan
The monthly figure is only half of it. Each plan also caps how many unused credits you can hold, renews on its own clock and has its own answer to whether you can top up. Here is all of that side by side.
| Plan | Credits a month | Most you can hold | Renews | Can you buy more? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free (Basic) | None. You can receive InMail without limit but can't send it | Not applicable | Not applicable | Upgrade to a paid plan |
| Premium Career | 5 | 15 | First day of your billing cycle | No |
| Premium Business | 15 | 45 | First day of your billing cycle | No |
| Premium All-in-One | 30 | 90 | Not stated on the renewal page, which leaves this plan out | No |
| Sales Navigator Core, Advanced, Advanced Plus | 50 on each edition | 150 | First day of each month, UTC | No |
| Recruiter Lite | 30 per licence | 120 per seat | First day of your billing cycle | Yes, packs of 10, up to 70 extra a seat |
| Recruiter Professional Services (RPS) | 100 per licence | Not stated separately | See Usage overview | Yes, extra credits can be bought |
| RPS+ | 140 per seat | Not stated separately | See Usage overview | Not stated |
| Recruiter (Corporate) | 150 per seat | Up to four times the monthly allotment | See Usage overview | Yes, by contacting LinkedIn |
On Sales Navigator, the edition makes no difference to InMail. LinkedIn's compare-plans page, updated 27 September 2026, shows 50 a month on Core, Advanced and Advanced Plus alike. Paying for Advanced buys you team and research features, not more messages. Our Sales Navigator pricing post has what each edition costs.
Recruiter has a renewal date problem on LinkedIn's own pages. Its renewal article says credits refresh once a month from the date the account was created, while its newer FAQ says the first day of your billing cycle. If the date matters to you, go to Product settings and open Usage overview, which shows the refresh date for your contract.
Credits also stay inside the product that granted them. Premium credits can't be spent in Sales Navigator or Recruiter, and a Sales Navigator user can only send InMail from Sales Navigator, not from LinkedIn.com, with a separate inbox. Recruiter credits sit in a pool shared by everyone on the contract; an admin can cap what each person sends but can't hand credits to one person. Cancel or change plans and the balance goes with it.
How unused credits roll over and expire
Every plan lets unused credits carry forward up to the cap in the table, but the rules for what falls off differ by product.
- Premium: LinkedIn's InMail FAQ says credits expire after 90 days, so a quiet month's credits don't last forever even below the cap.
- Sales Navigator: unused credits move to the next month and must be used within 90 days. The 150 ceiling is three months of allowance.
- Recruiter: unused credits roll over at refresh, and anything that would push the total past four times the monthly allotment expires.
- Recruiter Lite: credits you bought never expire, but your balance can't go above 120 a seat when the billing cycle renews, and that cap eats the free allotment first.
LinkedIn's Recruiter Lite page gives a worked example of that last rule, and it is easy to lose money on. One seat holding 115 credits at renewal gets only 5 of its 30 new credits; the other 25 are skipped and can't be recovered. If you bought a pack of 70 and sat on it, the monthly grant you were paying for shrinks to whatever fits under 120.
When LinkedIn gives a credit back
This is where InMail stops being a fixed allowance. On most plans a credit comes back for every InMail the person accepts, declines or answers within 90 days, and a tapped Quick Reply counts as an answer. An InMail still waiting gets nothing back. So the number you can actually send in a month depends on how many people answer.
| What earns the credit back | What doesn't |
|---|---|
| Premium | |
| Accepted, declined or answered within 90 days, Quick Replies included | Pending messages. You also can't send a second InMail until they answer the first |
| Sales Navigator | |
| Any response within 90 days. The auto replies Interested, Maybe later and Not interested all count, and the credit returns the moment they tap | No response. Deleting an unanswered InMail. A second InMail before they reply costs another credit |
| Recruiter | |
| Accept, decline or reply within 90 days. If they answer the first message, the follow-up is cancelled and both credits return | A follow-up sent with no reply. Refunds go back to the contract's shared balance, not to the person who sent it |
| Recruiter Lite | |
| Accept, decline or reply within 90 days | Pending messages. Follow-up InMails aren't offered on Recruiter Lite |
A decline is worth knowing about. LinkedIn treats "Not interested" as a response, so a polite no refunds you just like a yes does. What it closes is the thread: on Sales Navigator, once someone declines, you can't send them another InMail in that conversation.
Here is how that plays out, as a made-up example. Send all 50 Sales Navigator credits in a month and suppose 10 people tap any reply within 90 days. You get 10 credits back on top of next month's 50. Send to people with no reason to answer and the 50 are simply gone. Who you send to decides how many InMails you end up sending.
Daily caps, Open Profile limits and character counts
Credits aren't the only ceiling. Recruiter, which allows bulk sending, has its sending limits written down; Premium and Sales Navigator mostly say a limit exists without giving the number.
| Product | Subject | Body | Other published limits |
|---|---|---|---|
| Premium | Up to 200 characters, optional | Up to 2,000 characters | One InMail per person until they answer. Open Profile messages are limited, with no figure given |
| Sales Navigator | Up to 200 characters | Up to 1,900 characters, your signature (up to 150) included | No bulk InMail and no InMail templates. Attachments up to 200 MB. Locked profiles must be unlocked before you can write |
| Recruiter and RPS | Up to 200 characters | Up to 1,900 characters | 1,000 InMails a day per seat, 200 in a new seat's first week, 350 Open Profile messages a calendar month per seat |
| Recruiter Lite | Up to 200 characters, required | Up to 1,900 characters | 1,000 a day and 200 in a new seat's first week. Open Profile: the page's text says 100 a month and its own table says 50. Reaches 1st, 2nd and 3rd-degree members only |
Recruiter's limits run on UTC, and its week starts at midnight UTC on Sunday. That is 11 am on Sunday in Sydney while daylight saving runs, 1 pm in Auckland and 8 am in Singapore, so a new seat that hits its first-week limit of 200 can send again from Sunday morning for most readers here.
Recruiter also polices quality. Its InMail policy bans untargeted mass InMail, marketing campaigns and event invitations, and several flagged messages switch off sending until the next UTC day. A seat that sends 100 or more InMails in a 14-day period with fewer than 13% answered gets a warning, then a grace week, and then loses bulk InMail for two weeks. Answers include a "Not interested". No Premium or Sales Navigator page we read publishes a threshold like that.
Open Profile is the route around credits. A Premium member who switches it on can be messaged free by anyone, and on Recruiter those messages don't touch your monthly credits until the 350 cap is reached. It only reaches Premium members who switched it on, and that setting is separate from showing the Premium badge, so a gold badge alone doesn't mean a message is free.
When a connection request beats an InMail
Set the two side by side and the request usually wins on cost. It spends no credit, and once someone accepts, every message after it is free. An InMail buys one message to someone who stays a stranger: if they don't answer, the thread is all you have, and on Premium you can't write again until they do.
| Better route | Why |
|---|---|
| You want a conversation over weeks, not one message | |
| Connection request | Free, and once accepted you can message again and see their posts |
| The person shares a group, an event or a mutual contact with you | |
| Connection request | The shared context is your reason, and it fits in a short note |
| A senior buyer outside your network, where you need room to explain | |
| InMail | 1,900 to 2,000 characters against a 200-character invitation note |
| Your invitations are restricted for the week | |
| InMail or Open Profile | LinkedIn itself suggests InMail as an alternative to inviting someone you haven't met |
| They have Open Profile switched on | |
| Open Profile message | Free from any account, within LinkedIn's limits |
| You're on a free account and have used this month's notes | |
| Blank connection request, then a first message after they accept | Free accounts can personalise only a few requests a month |
Invitations have their own ceiling, though. LinkedIn's restrictions page names invitations that were ignored, left pending or marked as spam as a reason it restricts sending, and its alternatives page says members often ignore invitations from people they don't know. So a request works best when you can name the reason in its first line, and an InMail earns its credit when the person is worth a longer, specific message and you have no shared context to lean on. Our connection request limit post covers the invitation rules and note limits, and LinkedIn message limits per day covers messages to connections.
Where Bingle fits
Bingle works on the free side of that table. Its sequences are built from LinkedIn steps: visit a profile, follow, like their latest post, send an invite, send a LinkedIn message and wait. They run from your own LinkedIn account, and message drafts wait in an approval queue for you. InMail and Open Profile messages aren't among those steps, so any InMail you send still comes out of your own plan's credits, sent by you in LinkedIn or Sales Navigator.
Where it helps with InMail is choosing who gets one. Bingle ranks people from 0 to 100 on how well they fit your ideal customer and how strong and recent their buying signals are, and each lead shows the dated reason, such as a new role, a funding round or a comment on a competitor's post. Dig deeper reads a person's recent posts and company news and writes a short brief with a suggested opener. With 50 credits a month and refunds only for answers, we'd spend them on the few people who are both a strong fit and outside your network, and send everyone else a connection request.
Bingle is 7 days free with no card. Starter is US$49 a month for one LinkedIn account, Growth US$79 and Agency US$149 for up to three accounts; the pricing page has the details, and how Bingle reads buying signals explains what goes into the ranking. More of LinkedIn's rules are explained on the Bingle blog.
Questions
Do you get an InMail credit back if someone declines?
Yes, on Premium, Sales Navigator and Recruiter a decline within 90 days refunds the credit, and on Sales Navigator the "Not interested" auto reply counts. The catch is that a declined thread is closed to further InMail.
Can you buy extra InMail credits?
Not on Premium or Sales Navigator; LinkedIn says you can't buy credits outside the monthly allotment. Recruiter Lite sells packs of 10, up to 70 extra a seat, and Recruiter customers can buy more through LinkedIn.
Does Sales Navigator Advanced include more InMail than Core?
No. Core, Advanced and Advanced Plus all get 50 credits a month and can hold up to 150, renewed on the first of each month in UTC.
Can a free LinkedIn account send InMail?
No. A free account can receive InMail without limit but needs a paid plan to send one. It can still message Premium members who have Open Profile switched on, a limited number each month.
What is the character limit for a LinkedIn InMail?
The subject can be up to 200 characters on every product. The body is up to 2,000 characters on Premium and 1,900 on Sales Navigator and Recruiter, where a Sales Navigator signature counts toward the total.
Do Open Profile messages use InMail credits?
No. Messaging a Premium member with Open Profile on is free, though LinkedIn limits how many you can send. On Recruiter the cap is 350 a month per seat, after which standard credits are used.
Sources
- LinkedIn Help, InMail message credits and renewal process. read 28 Oct 2026; page shows last updated 3 months ago
- LinkedIn Help, InMail Messages FAQ. read 28 Oct 2026; last updated 2 months ago
- LinkedIn Help, Difference between free LinkedIn and LinkedIn Premium accounts. read 28 Oct 2026; last updated 3 weeks ago
- LinkedIn Help, InMail Messages. read 28 Oct 2026; last updated 3 weeks ago
- LinkedIn Help, Send an InMail Message. read 28 Oct 2026; last updated 6 months ago
- LinkedIn Help, Understand InMail credits in Sales Navigator. read 28 Oct 2026; last updated 11 months ago
- LinkedIn Help, Send an InMail message in Sales Navigator. read 28 Oct 2026; last updated 11 months ago
- LinkedIn Help, InMail messages in Sales Navigator. read 28 Oct 2026; last updated 11 months ago
- LinkedIn Help, InMail message response types in Sales Navigator. read 28 Oct 2026; last updated 2 years ago
- LinkedIn, Sales Navigator compare plans. page updated 27 Sep 2026; read 28 Oct 2026
- LinkedIn Help, InMail messages in Recruiter FAQ. read 28 Oct 2026; last updated 2 months ago
- LinkedIn Help, InMail renewal and expiration process in Recruiter. read 28 Oct 2026; last updated 2 years ago
- LinkedIn Help, InMail sending limits in Recruiter and Recruiter Lite. read 28 Oct 2026; last updated 2 months ago
- LinkedIn Help, Explore Recruiter Professional Services Plus (RPS+) FAQ. read 28 Oct 2026; last updated 1 month ago
- LinkedIn Help, Recruiter Lite InMail messages FAQ. read 28 Oct 2026; last updated 2 months ago
- LinkedIn Help, Purchase additional InMail credits for your Recruiter Lite account. read 28 Oct 2026; last updated 2 years ago
- LinkedIn Help, Recruiter and Recruiter Lite InMail Policy. read 28 Oct 2026; last updated 1 year ago
- LinkedIn Help, InMail Improvement Period in Recruiter. read 28 Oct 2026; last updated 1 year ago
- LinkedIn, Recruiter. read 28 Oct 2026
- LinkedIn, Recruiter Lite. read 28 Oct 2026
- LinkedIn Help, Open Profile and messages. read 28 Oct 2026; last updated 1 year ago
- LinkedIn Help, Manage your Open Profile settings as a Premium subscriber. read 28 Oct 2026; last updated 1 year ago
- LinkedIn Help, Personalize invitations to connect. read 28 Oct 2026; last updated 6 months ago
- LinkedIn Help, Types of restrictions for sending invitations. read 28 Oct 2026; last updated 11 months ago
- LinkedIn Help, Alternatives to inviting someone to connect. read 28 Oct 2026; last updated 2 years ago
More from the blog
- How many LinkedIn messages can you send per day?
- How many LinkedIn connection requests can you send a week in 2026?
- How much does LinkedIn Sales Navigator cost?
- Is Sales Navigator worth it for a small business?
- Does NZ's anti-spam law apply to LinkedIn messages?
- Singapore's PDPA and Do Not Call rules: what they mean for LinkedIn outreach
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