LinkedIn Sales Navigator vs. Premium: Which Plan Makes More Sense for You?

LinkedIn Sales Navigator vs. Premium is a dilemma many professionals face when deciding how to upgrade their experience on this platform. Each plan provides tools that enhance your connections, but in different ways.

This article breaks down the LinkedIn Premium vs. Sales Navigator key distinctions to help you make an informed choice.

TL;DR LinkedIn Premium vs. Sales Navigator: LinkedIn subscription comparison

LinkedIn Premium vs. Sales Navigator comes down to your goals. Premium is ideal for job seekers and professionals seeking to expand their network and increase visibility.

Sales Navigator, on the other hand, is purpose-built for LinkedIn lead generation. It offers advanced filters, real-time alerts, and CRM syncing that help you prospect smarter.

Take a quick look at the table and see what features both plans offer and their key differences:

Now, let’s dive into a more detailed LinkedIn subscription comparison of these plans so you can choose the best fit for your outreach goals.

What is LinkedIn Premium?

LinkedIn Premium is a set of paid plans designed for professionals who want to take their experience to the next level. With it, you can grow your personal brand on LinkedIn, connect with the right people, and access insights that aren’t available on a standard account.

On their official website, LinkedIn states three Premium plans to choose from:

All these Premium plans include such features as seeing who has viewed your profile and InMail messages. Plus, they provide you with insights on how to take a more strategic approach to networking, posting, or job searching.

However, beyond these three solutions, LinkedIn provides a broader lineup of Premium subscriptions, which also include:

• Sales Navigator
• LinkedIn Recruiter
• LinkedIn Learning (standalone plan)

Below, I’ll do a LinkedIn subscription comparison of Sales Navigator and Premium plans in terms of their usage for specific business goals — lead generation and networking. But before that, let’s figure out what the three core Premium tiers offer.

What is LinkedIn Premium Business?

LinkedIn Premium Business is a paid plan designed for professionals and small business owners who use this platform for networking, outreach, research, or hiring purposes.

Key features of LinkedIn Premium Business:

• Unlimited profile views: No restrictions on how many profiles you can view. Browse as much as you need without hitting limits.
• LinkedIn advanced search: Use detailed filters to find people and companies more efficiently. This makes prospecting way more targeted.
• 15 InMail messages/month: Message users outside your network directly – perfect for reaching decision-makers you don’t know yet.
• Custom profile button: Add a link to your website or landing page and direct traffic where you want it.
• Profile view history (365 days): Track who’s viewed your profile and when – great for understanding who’s interested in your account.
• Anonymous browsing: Research profiles without showing your identity. Sometimes you need to stay under the radar.
• Featured content: Pin key items to the top of your profile to support your personal brand. Make sure people see your best work first.
• AI profile assistant: Remove the guesswork from improving your content with AI-powered suggestions.
• LinkedIn Learning access: Take courses on business, tech, and soft skills.

Additionally, this plan offers valuable company insights, allowing you to track growth and hiring trends for informed market research.

This feature helps you stay informed about what’s happening in other businesses, whether they are prospective companies or competitors.

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What is LinkedIn Premium Career?

LinkedIn Premium Career is a subscription plan designed for job seekers. It provides features to enhance your profile, search more efficiently, and connect directly with hiring managers.

The plan also includes insights to help you understand how well you match a job and what you need to do to improve your chances of getting hired.

Key features of LinkedIn Premium Career:

• Top applicant jobs: Highlight roles where you’re more likely to be competitive.
• Top choice jobs: Mark preferred roles to signal interest to recruiters. Let them know you’re serious about specific positions.
• Advanced search filters: Filter job listings by criteria such as the number of applicants or specific job benefits. Find opportunities that actually fit the positions you’re looking for.
• AI profile writing assistant: improve your profile to stand out in search and applications.
• Job fit insights: Get AI-based feedback on how well you match a job and what to improve.
• Who’s viewed your profile: See profile viewers and trends from the past 365 days. Track who’s checking you out and when.
• 5 InMail messages/month: Contact hiring managers or recruiters outside your network. Reach the people who actually make hiring decisions.
• LinkedIn Learning access: Explore 21,000+ courses to build relevant career skills. Keep learning while you’re job hunting.

Additionally, the plan offers an AI assistant that helps you draft outreach messages and posts with less effort.

This feature is especially useful for boosting candidates’ confidence, making their communication with hiring managers more professional.

What is LinkedIn Premium Company Page?

LinkedIn Premium Company Page is a paid subscription designed for small to mid-sized businesses that seek more opportunities to expand their reach and increase visibility on the platform.

It builds on the standard Company Page features by providing Super Admins and Content Admins with additional tools for engagement and prospecting.

Here are the key features of Premium Company Page:

• Auto-invite content engagers: Automatically invite people who engage with your posts to follow your Page. Turn casual engagement into committed followers.
• Invite followers of similar Pages: Expand your audience by reaching people who follow Pages in your industry. Target the right crowd more efficiently.
• Custom testimonial: Add a customer testimonial directly to your Page to support credibility. Let satisfied customers do the talking.
• Business highlights: Feature achievements, awards, or differentiators on your Page and in search results.
• Page visitor insights: Analyze who has visited your Company Page recently and may be interested in your product.
• Custom call-to-action button: Add a personalized button to your Page header, posts, and search results. Guide visitors exactly where you want them to go.
• AI post writing assistant: Use AI to create more efficient company posts. Keep your content consistent without the time investment.

A bonus? As soon as you subscribe to the Premium Company Page, you’ll get a gold Premium badge that strengthens credibility.

This badge adds more value to your brand, helping it stand out to potential customers and partners.

What is LinkedIn Sales Navigator?

LinkedIn Sales Navigator is a paid upgrade to your regular LinkedIn account, built specifically for sales professionals. In a broad sense, it is also a premium feature.

In a narrow sense, think of it as a smart research layer built on top of LinkedIn. It helps you identify prospects that match your ideal customer profile and shows you mutual connections who could introduce you.

The plan also helps track job changes, company updates, and content activity that might signal when your prospect is potentially ready for the outreach.

n other words, Sales Navigator is one of those LinkedIn prospecting tools that handles the initial research, allowing you to spend more time building genuine relationships. You get helpful context about your prospects before reaching out, which makes your messages more personal and relevant.

Here are the main features that make Sales Navigator useful:

• LinkedIn’s advanced search filters let you narrow down prospects using more than 50 criteria, including job title, company size, location, industry, and even the technologies a company utilizes.
• Relationship Explorer helps you uncover paths into a company by showing how you’re connected to people there.
• A relationship map provides a clear view of company hierarchies, allowing you to identify the decision-makers and understand their relationships with one another.
• Lead and account recommendations suggest similar prospects based on who you’ve already saved or interacted with. The more you use the tool, the more relevant the recommendations become.
• Real-time alerts keep you updated when someone changes jobs, posts on LinkedIn, or when their company is mentioned in the news. You can use these milestones as a reason to reach out.
• The account hub organizes all your saved leads, account activity, and team notes in one place, ensuring that nothing gets lost or overlooked.
• Up to 50 InMails per month, which allows you to message people outside of your network directly.

With advanced filters for searching accounts, Sales Navigator is an ideal solution for LinkedIn account-based marketing.

→ Read more about how to use LinkedIn Sales Navigator for account-based marketing.

LinkedIn Sales Navigator subscription tiers

Sales Navigator offers three tiers with different feature sets. Here’s a quick LinkedIn subscription comparison:

You can take advantage of the Sales Navigator 30-day free trial to explore how it supports your LinkedIn sales strategy.

How to use LinkedIn Sales Navigator more effectively?

Sales Navigator helps with LinkedIn prospecting, but here’s the thing: InMail credits are limited. You’ll hit your monthly limit faster than you think, especially if you’re actively prospecting.

That’s why a multichannel outreach strategy makes sense. I recommend pairing Sales Navigator with LinkedIn prospecting tools like Snov.io to

• Find verified emails from LinkedIn profiles so you’re not stuck waiting for InMail credits to refresh.

• Mix LinkedIn and email outreach. Some people ignore LinkedIn messages, but check their email religiously.

• Run coordinated sequences across both platforms instead of random one-off messages.

The truth is that people have different communication habits. Your ideal prospect might live in their inbox but rarely checks LinkedIn messages, or they might be the opposite.

When you use both channels, you’re not gambling on which one they’ll actually see and strengthen your overall LinkedIn sales strategy.

LinkedIn Sales Navigator vs. LinkedIn Premium: Key differences

Sales Navigator vs LinkedIn Premium dilemma resolution boils down to this: Premium is for networking and business growth, Sales Navigator is for selling.

Premium Business gives you unlimited profile views and compelling content posting opportunities. It’s for professionals who want to grow their pool of connections and inbound leads, boosting brand visibility and authority.

Sales Navigator is an entirely different story. You get advanced search opportunities, lead recommendations, and real-time alerts, plus CRM integration — perfect for outbound LinkedIn lead generation and account-based marketing.

LinkedIn Sales Navigator vs. Premium: Pros and cons

Before you choose a plan, it’s also important to weigh all the pros and cons of LinkedIn Premium vs. Sales Navigator.

LinkedIn Premium Business

Pros:

✅ Budget-friendly: This plan costs significantly less than Sales Navigator.

✅ Who is checking you out’ notifications: You can view profiles of people who’ve looked at yours, even beyond your immediate connections.

✅ Profile upgrades: You can add call-to-action buttons, highlight content, and make your profile stand out.

✅ LinkedIn Learning access: You can join unlimited courses for skill development.

Cons:

❌ Basic search only: Unlike in Sales Navigator, in LinkedIn Premium for businesses, you’re stuck with limited filters that won’t help you find specific prospects.

❌ Not built for selling: There’s no CRM sync, no buying signals, no real sales intelligence, and only 15 InMails per month provided.

LinkedIn Sales Navigator

Pros:

✅ Laser-focused search: Over 50 filters let you get incredibly specific about leads you’re targeting.

✅ Timing alerts: You know when prospects switch jobs, post content, or when their companies share news, and can use this information as a nice hook for your outreach.

✅ CRM integration: Sales Navigator syncs with Salesforce, HubSpot, and other popular platforms, ensuring your data remains organized.

✅ Relationship mapping: You can view company org charts and find warm introduction paths through your network.

✅ 50 InMail credits monthly: More than triple what Premium offers.

Cons:

❌ Higher price tag: this plan costs more than Premium for business because you’re paying for advanced sales tools.

❌ Steeper learning curve: If you don’t know how to use LinkedIn Sales Navigator, it can feel a bit overwhelming in the beginning.

LinkedIn Premium vs. Sales Navigator: How to figure out which plan you need

The first step before deciding on LinkedIn Premium vs. Sales Navigator is to determine your professional goals. I’ve broken down the key objectives that specialists usually try to accomplish:

For lead generation specialists

f you’re constantly searching for decision makers, building outbound pipelines, and running multiple outreach campaigns, Sales Navigator s your best bet. With 50 advanced search filters, real-time alerts, buying signals, and CRM integration, it’s indeed worth the money.

For sales representatives

f you’re engaging in outbound sales outreach, consistently following up, or building long-term relationships, Sales Navigator Core or Advanced helps you stay on top of your prospects. Its advanced search, LinkedIn lead tracking capabilities, and lead saving are game-changers for prospecting.

For marketing or business development professionals

f you’re working on brand positioning or partnership building, LinkedIn Premium Business covers what you need. Use it to expand your network, increase your profile visibility, find decision-makers at target companies, and monitor engagement with your page and posts.

For job seekers or freelancers

f you’re applying for positions, reaching out to recruiters, or promoting your expertise, Premium Career s built right for your needs. See where you stand compared to other applicants, message hiring managers directly, and get AI feedback to improve your profile.

How to actually get value from your LinkedIn subscription

No matter which plan you use, Premium vs. Sales Navigator, simply paying for the upgrade won’t magically improve your results. To really make it worth the money, you need to turn your targeted and scalable activity on LinkedIn into a system.

Here are some practical ways to squeeze more value out of using LinkedIn plans:

• Stay consistently active

Being visible through profile visits, post interactions, and regular connection requests boosts your reach and improves your Social Selling Index (SSI). Consider automating your activities to ensure regular and consistent activity on the platform. Snov.io is always here to provide you with a completely safe and secure LinkedIn automation solution.

• Jump on important signals fast

Sales Navigator gives you alerts about job changes, company updates, or content engagement. Keep track of them on a regular basis to reach out instantly with a perfect hook.

• Don’t lean too heavily on InMail

nMail messages have monthly limits, and response rates are hit-or-miss. A more effective approach is to combine LinkedIn outreach with other channels to increase the likelihood that your message will reach its target recipient.

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• Warm up new LinkedIn accounts slowly

Sudden bursts of activity can trigger red flags. Be smart with automation and use only those tools that support a gradual LinkedIn activity ramp-up. They will help you keep accounts in good standing during outreach efforts.

• Spread outreach across multiple accounts safely

Features such as LinkedIn account rotation, available on platforms like Snov.io, enable you to scale campaigns by automatically distributing activities across multiple LinkedIn profiles. With account rotation, you can avoid undesired restrictions while maintaining the activity that will grow day by day.

By using LinkedIn safely, you get more from your subscription and have better chances of growing your performance in the long run.

Key takeaways

hope the LinkedIn Sales Navigator vs. Premium dilemma will no longer be a pain in the neck for you. As you can see from my LinkedIn subscription comparison, both solutions have advantages and limitations.

The right choice depends on your goals. If you’re focused on networking, personal branding, or landing a new role, LinkedIn Premium will give you helpful insights and visibility tools. Meanwhile, if you’re in sales and need to consistently find, track, and engage leads, Sales Navigator will be the perfect option.

No matter which plan you choose, remember that one day you’ll need to scale your LinkedIn activity. Be very cautious about that — the platform is very strict with users who boost their performance out of the blue.

With Snov.io automation tools, your LinkedIn account will always stay protected and compliant. Grow your business, find the perfect prospects, and let Snov.io take care of your safety.