LinkedIn Premium is LinkedIn’s paid subscription that adds tools a free account doesn’t have, like InMail messages, a full list of who viewed your profile, more search, and LinkedIn Learning courses. The main plans are Premium Career for job seekers, Premium Business for professionals and small business owners, and Premium All-in-One, with Sales Navigator and Recruiter Lite built for sellers and recruiters. Pricing starts at US$39.99 a month for Premium Career (price checked October 6, 2026), and it’s worth it when you actively prospect, hire, or job hunt on LinkedIn every week.
Most people, including those in sales, treat LinkedIn like an online resume. It is much more than that. LinkedIn is an excellent resource for the modern seller and anyone involved in social selling to grow revenue, and the value multiplies when you upgrade to a LinkedIn Premium account.
Below, I break down the benefits of each LinkedIn Premium plan, what each one costs, whether a LinkedIn Premium plan is worth the investment, and how modern sales professionals can get full value from its features.
What Is LinkedIn Premium?
Definition and Purpose of LinkedIn Premium
LinkedIn Premium is a paid subscription service from LinkedIn that gives users additional features and benefits. The purpose of LinkedIn Premium is to help users reach their professional goals, whether that’s finding a new job, growing their business, or building their skills. With LinkedIn Premium, users get advanced tools that help them stand out in their industry, build meaningful connections, and stay ahead of the competition.
LinkedIn sells several LinkedIn Premium subscriptions, and the right LinkedIn plan depends on your goal. Job search? Business growth? Sales prospecting? Recruiting? Each goal points to a different plan, which we’ll cover below.
Overview of LinkedIn Premium Features and Benefits
LinkedIn Premium offers a range of premium features across its premium plans. Some of the key features and benefits include:
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InMail Messages: LinkedIn Premium users can send InMail messages to people they’re not connected to. This is useful for reaching potential leads and prospects outside your immediate network.
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Advanced Search Filters: Premium users get advanced search filters to find the right people, jobs, and companies. These search filters make it easier to identify and connect with key people in your industry.
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LinkedIn Learning: Premium subscriptions include LinkedIn Learning access, with more than 25,000 courses taught by industry experts.
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Premium Profile Badge: A Premium badge shows on your profile, which helps you stand out in search results and signals that you take your professional presence seriously.
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Full List of Profile Views: Premium users see a full list of who viewed their profile for the past 365 days. This helps you spot potential leads and prospects who are already curious about you.
What You Get With a Free LinkedIn Account
As many already know, you can have a free LinkedIn account. Salespeople can use LinkedIn search to find, engage, and connect with qualified prospects, then turn those engagements and connections into business conversations. For faster engagement, try the LinkedIn Comment Generator to write thoughtful comments in seconds.
Starting more conversations and expanding existing relationships is what social selling is all about.
A free LinkedIn account lets professionals build their online presence and start connecting with prospects as they grow their professional network. LinkedIn users can handle basic networking in the free version for years before a paid plan makes sense. The free version is a fine place to start, as long as you know where it stops.
Your profile matters on any plan. According to LinkedIn’s State of Sales research, 72% of decision makers look for an informative LinkedIn profile before they engage with a sales rep.
In our sales prospecting training, we teach sellers how to turn their LinkedIn profiles into something that attracts buyers. You learn how to boost your visibility, engage more successfully, build top-of-mind awareness and subject matter expertise, and win more with LinkedIn. Here’s one quick strategy to boost your visibility right now: use LinkedIn Kudos.
Okay, let’s look at other ways to handle LinkedIn profile optimization for free.
How to Optimize Your Profile on a Free LinkedIn Account
Reps can optimize their profiles with these steps:
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Add a LinkedIn banner that reflects their business brand.
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Use the 220-character LinkedIn headline to explain how they help their customer.
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Record a name pronunciation so buyers know how to say their name (available in the LinkedIn mobile app).
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Write in the language of their buyer and keep the focus on the buyer, not on themselves.
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Add content and media to the Featured section that serves as a resource for their buyers. The LinkedIn Post Generator helps you write those posts in seconds.
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Optimize the About section with a call to read and use all 2,600 characters of your LinkedIn summary.
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Share useful, relevant updates for their target buyers.
Profile optimization is key to making a strong first impression on potential connections and potential clients.
Once your sales team optimizes their LinkedIn profiles and creates a cadence for sharing valuable content, they can start searching for potential buyers and send connection requests that are personalized to each person. Use these tips to get more connection requests accepted. No sales pitches, though!
The Auto Text Expander works for connection request notes too. One G2 reviewer, a Verified User in Staffing and Recruiting, uses it that way:
“FlyMSG is very convenient for multiple kinds of engagements on Linkedin and email. e.g. if I have to send a connection request with a message, I can get a template from FlyMSG.”
Verified User in Staffing and Recruiting, G2 reviewer
The free LinkedIn account starts to show its limits for sellers, entrepreneurs, and small business owners right about here. Premium features start to pay for themselves.
The free version is a fine place to start, as long as you know where it stops. #linkedinpremium Share on XIs LinkedIn Premium Worth It?
LinkedIn sets a limit on monthly people searches for free users, called the commercial use limit. If LinkedIn thinks you’re searching the platform to recruit or for lead generation, you’ll see a warning as you get close to that limit. Your free monthly usage resets at midnight PST on the 1st of each calendar month, according to LinkedIn Help.
LinkedIn watches for activity that looks like recruiting or prospecting, not just networking. A free account will hit limits faster if someone:
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Views lots of profiles that are not 1st-degree connections.
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Searches for specific companies.
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Searches for employees of a specific company.
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Searches outside of their network (3rd-degree people searches).
Of course, LinkedIn is right. If your sales professionals are prospecting (and I hope they are!), then they need to pay for it. Premium Business gives users unlimited searches and unlimited access to view profiles beyond their network, which removes the biggest free-account limits for sellers.
Another limit with a basic account is that sellers can only message LinkedIn members they’re connected to. That’s where LinkedIn InMail comes in.
My single biggest reason for a seller to upgrade, though, is Who’s Viewed Your Profile. A free account shows only the three most recent viewers from the last 90 days. Premium Career and Premium Business show the full list of viewers, trends, and insights for the past 365 days.
In prospecting, sellers must know who they’re attracting to their profiles. A profile visit is like a trigger event. It’s an invitation to reach out and connect, with a personalized note, never the blank connect button. With only three viewers showing, reps on the free version miss most of those openings. For prospecting, that alone makes LinkedIn Premium worth a serious look.
One more thing: keep your profile public when you browse. You would never walk into a networking event with a bag on your head. When you view a buyer’s profile with your name and headline showing, they get curious and click back, and that reciprocal view is a free opening.
A profile visit is like a trigger event. It's an invitation to reach out and connect, with a personalized note, never the blank connect button. #linkedinpremium Share on XWhat Is LinkedIn InMail?
LinkedIn Premium subscribers get a feature called InMail. InMail lets members message people they’re not connected to on LinkedIn. It’s like having someone’s email address, but your note lands in their LinkedIn inbox. LinkedIn claims that InMails drive 3x higher response rates than emails.
Your Premium plan sets how many InMail credits you get each month:
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Premium Career: 5
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Premium Business: 15
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Sales Navigator Core, Advanced, and Advanced Plus: 50
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Recruiter Lite: 30 (Recruiter Lite users can also buy more)
Note: An InMail can have up to 200 characters in the subject line and up to 1,900 characters in the body. LinkedIn’s own advice is to stay far below that, around 500 characters. When someone responds to your InMail within 90 days, you get the credit back.
Here’s a subject line trick I teach. Check the buyer’s profile for the languages they speak. If they speak German, translate a short subject line like “Enjoyed your post” into German. It shows you did your homework and makes your note stand out. Then admit it in your first line with a little humor: “I did my best with that German, so forgive me if I mangled it.”
Because InMail credits are limited, every message has to count. Save your best InMails as FlyCuts with the Auto Text Expander, then personalize the first line for each buyer.
Two InMail templates you can save as FlyCuts:
Subject: Quick follow-up, NAME
Hi NAME, I sent you a connection request a few weeks ago and LinkedIn may have buried it. I work with ROLE at companies like COMPANY on TOPIC. No pitch here. Would you be open to connecting so I can share what's working for teams like yours? Either way, thanks for reading.
YOUR NAME
Subject: Thanks for stopping by
Hi NAME, I saw you checked out my profile, so I returned the favor. It looks like you're focused on TOPIC at COMPANY. I share ideas on that every week here on LinkedIn. Want to connect so we can swap notes?
YOUR NAME
For more ideas, see these LinkedIn message templates. Now, let’s look at LinkedIn Premium plans and cost in more detail.
How Much Does LinkedIn Premium Cost?
How much does LinkedIn Premium cost? The LinkedIn Premium cost depends on the plan and on how you pay. These are LinkedIn’s published starting prices in US dollars (price checked October 6, 2026):
| Plan | Monthly billing | Annual billing | InMail credits per month | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Premium Career | $39.99/month | $239.88/year | 5 | Job seekers |
| Premium Business | $69.99/month | $539.88/year | 15 | Professionals and small business owners |
| Premium All-in-One | $89.99/month | $899.88/year | Included | Small business leaders who sell, market, and hire |
| Sales Navigator Core | $119.99/month | $1,079.88/year | 50 | Individual sellers |
| Sales Navigator Advanced | $159.99/month | $1,799.88/year | 50 | Sales teams |
Prices change often and vary by country and currency, so confirm the price on LinkedIn’s checkout page before you buy. Annual billing saves the most on Premium Career, about 50% according to LinkedIn. Recruiter Lite comes with 30 InMail credits a month; we couldn’t confirm a current public price for it, so check LinkedIn’s Recruiter Lite page before you buy.
If you’ve seen lower numbers elsewhere, you’re not imagining it. Older guides, including an earlier version of this one, list Premium Career at $29.99, Premium Business at $59.99, Sales Navigator Core at $99.99, and Recruiter Lite at $170 a month. LinkedIn’s own pages now show the higher starting prices in the table above. Annual billing savings also vary by plan, from about 6% on Sales Navigator Advanced to about 50% on Premium Career, according to LinkedIn.
Which LinkedIn Premium Plan Should You Choose?
Which is the best LinkedIn membership level? It depends. The real question is which LinkedIn Premium plan is best for you.
What are your goals? Why are you using LinkedIn?
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Are you in a job search or planning a career move? Choose LinkedIn Premium Career, the plan built for job seekers.
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Are you expanding your business network, looking for new clients, or trying to generate leads as a small business owner? Choose the LinkedIn Premium Business plan.
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Do you sell, market, and hire for a small business? Look at Premium All-in-One.
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Are you using LinkedIn for sales prospecting? Choose Sales Navigator. Start with LinkedIn Sales Navigator Core as an individual seller, and move to Sales Navigator Advanced when your sales teams need collaboration tools.
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Are you hiring salespeople? Choose Recruiter Lite if you’re a recruiter or one of the hiring managers handling candidate outreach. Bigger hiring teams look at LinkedIn Recruiter, which adds more InMail credits and more search filters than Recruiter Lite.
What Are the LinkedIn Premium Career Benefits?
If you’re a sales leader or a sales rep looking for your next role, LinkedIn Premium Career gives active job seekers useful tools for job hunting. If you’re job hunting quietly, the extra visibility helps.
Premium Career includes 5 InMail credits a month to reach recruiters and hiring managers directly, plus the full list of who viewed your profile for the past 365 days. You also get job insights and applicant insights, so you can see how you compare with other job applicants for a role. Applicant insights show how many job applicants applied and how your skills stack up.
Premium Career helps you find jobs where you’d be a top applicant and mark top-choice roles to show recruiters you’re serious. According to LinkedIn, Premium subscribers who apply using Top Choice Jobs are 2x more likely to get a message back from a recruiter. Premium Career also includes access to LinkedIn Learning.
LinkedIn Premium Business Features
The LinkedIn Premium business plan offers unlimited searches on people and unlimited access to view profiles beyond your network. It’s a strong fit for sales professionals and small business owners focused on business growth. You also get 15 InMail messages each month, with credits that roll over for up to three months.
This is great for sellers who want to expand their networks, research prospects, and contact key buyers directly before they invest in Sales Navigator. Premium Business also adds company insights and business insights, like hiring trends and company growth. Company insights help when you size up target accounts and decide who to call first. And Premium Business users keep the full 365-day list of who viewed their profile.
Trying to decide whether to upgrade from the basic account to Premium Business? Watch the video below to find out how.
The LinkedIn Premium business plan offers unlimited searches on people and unlimited access to view profiles beyond your network. #linkedinpremium Share on XPremium All-in-One and the Premium Company Page
This plan is LinkedIn’s bundle for small business leaders who sell, market, and hire in one place. Along with InMail credits, LinkedIn lists a $50 monthly post boosting credit and a $50 monthly job posting credit. Separately, a Premium Company Page adds tools for your business page, like auto-invites to people who engage with your content, a custom call-to-action button, and competitor insights. If your plans include LinkedIn ads or heavy hiring, compare these options before you buy.
LinkedIn Premium Learning and Development
Access to LinkedIn Learning and Its Courses
LinkedIn Learning offers more than 25,000 online courses on business, technology, and creative skills. With LinkedIn Premium, LinkedIn Learning access is included at no extra cost. You get the full course library without paying for LinkedIn Learning separately. The courses are taught by industry experts. Some of the benefits of LinkedIn Learning include:
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Access to Thousands of Courses: A large library of LinkedIn Learning courses means you can find content that fits your role and goals.
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Personalized Learning: LinkedIn Learning recommends courses based on your interests and skills, so you spend time on what matters most.
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Mobile Access: Courses work on mobile devices, so you can learn on the go.
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Certificates of Completion: You can add completion certificates to your LinkedIn profile to show new skills to your network and potential employers.
With access to LinkedIn Learning, Premium users can build skills faster, stay current with industry trends, and make their profiles more attractive to potential employers and clients.
Is LinkedIn Premium Worth It for Sales Professionals?
By now you may be wondering if a Premium subscription is worth the cost for your professional goals.
Do you, or your sellers, really need all those extra features?
At Vengreso, we believe LinkedIn is one of the best places to start sales conversations. The more conversations sales reps have, the greater the chance their pipeline stays full. For that to happen, you may need more than the basic (free) account.
For instance, if a prospect hasn’t responded to a personalized connection request, the seller can use InMail to reach out. On a free LinkedIn account, they can’t use InMail.
Here’s a story I still remember. Before Vengreso, I was VP of sales at a collaboration company with about 350 sellers. LinkedIn came in and showed me that about 120 of my reps were already paying for LinkedIn Premium out of their own pockets. Then they proposed company-paid Sales Navigator licenses as the more powerful tool. I never thought about that. My best reps had already decided LinkedIn Premium was worth it.
My rule of thumb: if you prospect, recruit, or job hunt on LinkedIn every week, a LinkedIn Premium account pays for itself with one good conversation. If you log in once a month to accept invitations, stay on the free account. Job seekers can follow the same rule: Premium Career earns its price during an active search, then you can cancel.
If you’re serious about using LinkedIn for selling and prospecting, get a LinkedIn Sales Navigator account for you and your team. Sales Navigator Core costs about $50 more per month than LinkedIn Premium Business on monthly billing, and it has many more features. LinkedIn says Sales Navigator includes access to Premium Business features, too.
Each Sales Navigator seller gets 50 InMail credits a month and more than 50 sales-specific advanced search filters to narrow prospects by title, company, region, and more. Sales Navigator uses LinkedIn data to help sellers research prospects at target companies and generate leads. It also gives you lead and account lists, lead recommendations, and alerts on your saved leads.
Sales Navigator comes in three plans. LinkedIn Sales Navigator Core is built for individual sellers. Sales Navigator Advanced is built for sales teams that need collaboration tools like TeamLink and SmartLinks. Sales Navigator Advanced Plus adds CRM integrations, so you can add leads straight to your CRM.
Do you need to upgrade to Sales Navigator to succeed as a modern seller? We answer that question in the following video.
LinkedIn Sales Navigator is one of the deepest social selling tools out there, and it’s easy to underuse it. Even power users can miss some of what it does.
Sales Navigator is a big investment with big expectations for ROI. Put the right program around it and you give it the best shot at paying off. It’s up to leadership to make sure the team isn’t lost in random acts of social. Arm them with a daily sales activity plan and templates that align with your KPIs.
Here’s one of my favorite plays for warm leads: mutual connections. Sales Navigator shows you who you and your target buyer both know. I delete LinkedIn’s default text, drop in my referral request message from a FlyMSG FlyCut, and send it to each mutual connection. I’ll take a warm intro over a cold InMail every day. Learn more in the following video, and see our guide to LinkedIn Sales Navigator training.
Sales Navigator has many features to help sellers prospect, build lead and account lists for structured outreach, and keep track of their interactions with clients. Here are 9 of the most relevant features:
1. Advanced Lead and Company Search
This lead generation feature helps sellers find the right people and companies with more than 50 sales-specific filters, so the most relevant prospects rise to the top.
2. Lead Recommendations
Beyond searching for their own prospects, sellers get suggestions of people at their target accounts based on the leads they save.
3. CRM Integration
On Sales Navigator Advanced Plus, you can add leads and contacts straight to popular CRMs and act on buyer insights inside your CRM.
4. Real-Time Sales Updates
Alerts keep you current on your saved accounts and leads, including job changes.
5. Notes and Lists
Sellers organize leads and accounts with lists and take notes on each buyer.
6. Who’s Viewed Your Profile
Sales Navigator shows who viewed your profile for the previous 365 days.
7. LinkedIn InMail Messages
As mentioned above, InMail lets you message LinkedIn members you’re not connected to, which makes personalized outreach to a potential lead possible. Sales Navigator gives you 50 a month.
8. SmartLinks
On Sales Navigator Advanced and Advanced Plus, SmartLinks let you share sales content and track who viewed it.
9. TeamLink
Also on Advanced and Advanced Plus, TeamLink lets you reach prospects through your company’s combined network.
Buying LinkedIn Sales Navigator for your salespeople isn’t enough. There, I said it.
It’s an all too familiar story among sales managers who buy Sales Navigator. They expect their team to hit the ground running but only provide product training from LinkedIn.
LinkedIn’s in-house training covers the features of the product, but not the strategy for getting results with it. Count the seats your reps barely use and multiply by the license price. That’s money sitting idle. If you want your salespeople to use Sales Navigator to its full potential, they need sales prospecting training that teaches them how to find, engage, and connect with buyers every day.
How to Get Started With LinkedIn Premium
Before you pay for a LinkedIn Premium membership, check whether you can try it with a free trial. LinkedIn says Premium subscriptions may be available to try free for one month. Use the trial to test-drive the premium features, compare LinkedIn Premium subscriptions side by side, and pick the right LinkedIn plan before you pay. LinkedIn Help walks you through how to cancel LinkedIn subscriptions if the plan isn’t a fit. Set a reminder before the trial ends, since a free trial renews into a paid plan unless you cancel.
Once you and your team have LinkedIn Premium Career, LinkedIn Premium Business, or LinkedIn Sales Navigator accounts, you need to learn how to use them well.
As we like to say at Vengreso:
“A fool with a tool is still a fool.”
Whether you have every sales prospecting feature of LinkedIn Premium or the basic account, it does you no good if you don’t know how to use it. Strategy first. Tools second.
Get More From LinkedIn Premium With FlyMSG
LinkedIn Premium gets you in front of more buyers. FlyMSG, the all-in-one AI productivity and engagement platform, helps you show up and follow up fast once you’re there.
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LinkedIn Comment Generator: Write thoughtful, personalized comments on a buyer’s post in seconds, right inside LinkedIn and Sales Navigator.
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LinkedIn Post Generator: Turn an idea, a blog post, or a YouTube video into a LinkedIn post that builds your credibility before the first outreach.
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Auto Text Expander: Save your best InMails, connection requests, and referral messages as FlyCuts and drop them in with a few keystrokes.
On saving LinkedIn messages as FlyCuts with the Auto Text Expander, one Chrome Web Store reviewer wrote:
“I love FLYcuts for LinkedIn DMs. It’s so quick and easy.”
Alice Heiman, Chrome Web Store reviewer
FlyMSG users have saved 284,539+ hours and typed 3.4 billion+ characters with FlyMSG. On the Business Pro plan, you also get on-demand sales prospecting training through FlyLearning, including a course on Sales Navigator. Install FlyMSG free on Chrome or Edge and put it to work on your next LinkedIn session.
Ready to go beyond the free plan? Use code 20PercentYr1 at checkout to get 20% off your first year on an annual paid plan.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much does LinkedIn Premium cost?
The LinkedIn Premium cost depends on the plan: LinkedIn Premium Career starts at US$39.99 a month or $239.88 a year, and Premium Business starts at $69.99 a month or $539.88 a year (price checked October 6, 2026). The all-in-one bundle starts at $89.99 a month. Sales Navigator Core starts at $119.99 a month. Prices vary by country, so check LinkedIn’s checkout page.
Is it worth it to pay for LinkedIn Premium?
Yes, if you use LinkedIn every week to prospect, recruit, or job hunt. The full list of profile viewers, InMail credits, and more search usually pay for themselves with one good conversation. If you only log in once in a while, the basic account is enough.
How do I get 6 months free LinkedIn Premium?
LinkedIn’s standard offer is a free trial that may be available for one month. Longer free periods come only through partner promotions that LinkedIn lists in its Help Center, such as offers for some phone, mobile carrier, or software subscribers. Check LinkedIn Help for offers in your country before you pay.
What’s the cheapest way to get LinkedIn Premium?
Pick the plan that fits your goal and pay annually. Premium Career billed annually costs $239.88 a year, which LinkedIn says is about a 50% savings over monthly billing (price checked October 6, 2026). Start with the free trial if you’re eligible, then decide.
Premium Business gives you unlimited people searches, 15 InMail credits, and business insights. Sales Navigator includes Premium Business features and adds 50 InMail credits, more than 50 sales-specific search filters, lead and account lists, lead recommendations, and alerts. Choose Sales Navigator if prospecting is your job.
Can I see who viewed my profile without Premium?
Only partly. A free account shows the three most recent viewers from the last 90 days. Premium Career, Premium Business, and Sales Navigator show the full list of viewers for the past 365 days.
