LinkedIn Recruiter vs. Sales Navigator: Which Is Better for Hiring?

LinkedIn Recruiter vs Sales Navigator can both help you find talent. But they approach the search differently. The first is built specifically for candidate sourcing. The other one focuses on finding leads, accounts, and professional connections. Before you subscribe to either of the two, learn which platform actually suits your hiring workflow.

Sales Navigator was originally made for… well, sales reps. To cover hiring needs, recruiters mostly stuck to LinkedIn’s dedicated products, such as Recruiter Lite and Recruiter Corporate. However, small talent teams increasingly choose Sales Navigator Core for its powerful search at a price below any Recruiter plans.

In this post, I primarily compare LinkedIn Recruiter Lite vs Sales Navigator Core. Keep reading to discover the differences, pricing, features, and third-party tools like Skrapp that let you work around LinkedIn’s limits.

Sales Navigator vs LinkedIn Recruiter Lite at a Glance

Recruiter Lite is LinkedIn’s paid, entry-level hiring product. It’s a lighter version of Recruiter Corporate, made for individual recruiters and small teams that hire just a handful of roles a year. It gives you candidate-focused search filters and a limited number of InMail credits for contacting and sourcing candidates on LinkedIn.

Sales Navigator Core is LinkedIn’s entry-level, single-user sales and lead generation tool. It lets you explore companies, find prospects, and generally build professional relationships. Since it’s designed for precise targeting, Sales Navigator Core also works well as a recruiting solution.

LinkedIn positions these two products for different audiences. But for the 18M+ small businesses using the platform to grow, they do the exact same thing.

Both are advanced search engines that give you more ways to explore LinkedIn’s database than a free account. Both offer InMail credits for you to contact people outside your existing network.

The differences between LinkedIn Sales Navigator vs Recruiter Lite are most noticeable in the following three areas:

• Pricing
• Search filters
• Network access

See the table below to study these more closely.

LinkedIn Recruiter vs Sales Navigator Pricing

We’ve covered what is LinkedIn Recruiter Lite and how it differs from Sales Navigator Core. Now let’s look at the pricing of both product lines.

The main Recruiter options include:

• LinkedIn Recruiter Lite: $170/month for a single-user license or $270/month for 2–5 licenses.
• LinkedIn Recruiter Corporate: Custom pricing based on your team’s requirements and hiring needs.

Sales Navigator, for its part, comes at three pricing tiers:

• Sales Navigator Core: Made for individual users, either recruiters or sales reps, at $119.99/month.
• Sales Navigator Advanced: Designed for sales teams that need collaboration features without CRM sync for $159.99/month.
• Sales Navigator Advanced Plus: Built for sales teams that require full CRM sync and embedded workflows at custom pricing.

Here’s how these plans compare based on the features you actually need for hiring:

Combining LinkedIn with email finders

Both Recruiter Lite and Sales Navigator Core let you source candidates with great precision. But they still have a limited number of InMail credits. If you regularly reach out to candidates, these credits run out fast.

Sure, you can buy extra InMails directly from LinkedIn. Recruiter Lite lets you purchase up to 70 additional credits each month. Yet, Sales Navigator doesn’t offer that option at all.

There’s a better, more affordable solution. You can pair your LinkedIn plan with an email finder tool like Skrapp. Our Chrome extension extracts verified candidate emails straight from LinkedIn profiles and search lists, one by one or in bulk.

Here’s what it costs to combine either LinkedIn Sales Navigator vs Recruiter Lite with Skrapp Professional:

It’s a perfect combo. Skrapp handles your high-volume email sourcing and outreach. This lets you keep your precious InMails for the most critical hires.

How to Use Skrapp to Find Candidate Email Addresses?

As we just said, you can use Skrapp’s Chrome extension to find candidate emails. Once installed, it works across all LinkedIn products, including basic LinkedIn accounts, Recruiter Lite, Recruiter Corporate, and Sales Navigator.

Here’s how to get started:

1. Install Skrapp’s Chrome extension: Open skrapp.io/linkedin and click Add to Chrome. Pin our extension to the top of your browser for quick access.

2. Log in or sign up with Skrapp: If you don’t have an account, create one. If you do, make sure you are logged in. Create your first candidate list there.

3. Open your LinkedIn account: Log in to Sales Navigator vs LinkedIn Recruiter to start browsing profiles, searches, or candidate lists.

4. Use Skrapp to find emails: Open a specific LinkedIn profile or run a search query. Once you get the results, click on the Skrapp icon to extract emails.

5. Save or export contact information: In the extension popup, you’ll see details, such as candidate name, company, and, of course, email. Save them to Skrapp lists or export them as.CSV or .XLSX.

LinkedIn Recruiter Lite Features

Let’s explore LinkedIn Recruiter vs Sales Navigator differences even further. Here are Recruiter Lite-specific features that aren’t quite available in its opponent:

Candidate-specific search filters

With 20+ search filters, Recruiter Lite lets you run focused searches for the right candidates. You can filter prospects by:

• Job title
• Location
• Industry
• Skills
• Years of experience
• Seniority
• Function
• Company size
• Education
• And more

For faster sourcing, Recruiter Lite puts your most-used filters at the top of your search panel.

30 InMail credits per month

Recruiter Lite gives you 30 InMail credits each month to message candidates right from search results, projects, or profile pages. You can contact anyone in your 1st-, 2nd-, or 3rd-degree network.

Since the InMail allowance in Recruiter Lite is rather limited, you’ll want to keep your messages concise and impactful. In fact, we explain how to improve your InMail response rates in this guide.

Skrapp for email search

If thirty InMails aren’t covering your sourcing workflow, you can always complement Recruiter Lite with Skrapp.

Our Professional tier includes 2,000 email credits per month. Each credit equals one verified email address. You only spend credits on real deliverables. Once you collect contact details, you can launch cold email campaigns without burning your InMails.

Network up to 3rd-degree connections

Recruiter Lite lets you view your 1st-, 2nd-, and 3rd-degree connections. Although it’s more limited than Sales Navigator’s full access, you still can search for and message qualified candidates outside your primary network.

Candidate search alerts

Recruiter Lite saves you time when you need to fill similar positions.

Instead of setting up the same search from scratch every time, you can simply save your parameters as automated alerts. LinkedIn then runs your criteria in the background and sends new matching talent as it appears.

What Recruiter Lite doesn’t include

While LinkedIn Recruiter Lite pricing fully pays off for light hiring, LinkedIn locks its most advanced recruitment features behind its premium Recruiter solutions. Depending on the product, these include:

• 40+ advanced search filters
• #OpenToWork and More Likely to Respond filters
• Bulk InMail messaging and 150 InMail credits
• Unlimited talent pool access
• Applicant tracking system (ATS) integration

However, these extra features cost significantly more. Compared to Recruiter Lite at $170–$270 per month, corporate-level Recruiter starts at around $800+ monthly.

If Recruiter Lite doesn’t cover your hiring needs but you’re not ready to switch to a corporate plan, consider Sales Navigator.

Sales Navigator Core for Recruiting: Main Features

Sales Navigator Core isn’t primarily a recruitment product. But that doesn’t stop recruiters from using it. This is mainly for two reasons:

• It’s cheaper than LinkedIn’s hiring products
• Its search and messaging capabilities are really on point

So, how to use Sales Navigator for recruiting? Check out the following features:

Extended network access

Recruiter Lite limits your search to 3rd-degree connections. Using LinkedIn Sales Navigator for recruiting means you never hit that ceiling. Instead, you get access to LinkedIn’s entire network of more than 1 billion members. This lets you discover candidates even if you have no existing connection with them.

Filters specific to Sales Navigator

Sales Navigator offers over 50 attributes and parameters for a truly granular search.

Along with basics such as job title, location, and industry, you can filter candidates by more specific criteria. Those include keywords, memberships, groups, and even shared experiences.

50 InMail credits per month

For such an affordable Sales Navigator cost, you get plenty of InMail credits. At least, that’s 20 more than in Recruiter Lite.

However, there’s one downside: you can’t purchase additional InMail credits directly from LinkedIn. But you can tackle that restriction with Skrapp and scale your outreach through email.

Company-level insights

Sometimes, to learn more about your candidate, you need to check their current workplace. Sales Navigator Core lets you do just that with company-level insights. In particular, you can view annual revenue, department headcount, senior leadership changes, and other company updates.

Saved leads, accounts, and alerts

Sales Navigator Core lets you save leads and accounts for easier tracking. For recruiting purposes, treat candidates as leads and companies as accounts.

Then, organize talent into lists and set up alerts. Whenever a saved candidate changes jobs, posts an update, or takes part in a similar activity, you’ll get an instant notification from LinkedIn.

LinkedIn Recruiter Lite vs Sales Navigator: Key Differences

Recruiter Lite and LinkedIn Sales Navigator for recruiting are similar at their core. Both act as advanced search engines and let you InMail candidates directly.

Yet, they’re built for different purposes, and that impacts how you use them. The main distinctions are:

• Recruiter Lite is made for recruitment and candidate sourcing. Sales Navigator Core is built for sales prospecting and lead generation
• Sales Navigator Core offers 50 InMail credits per month, compared with 30 in Recruiter Lite
• Recruiter Lite provides over 20 recruitment-focused search filters, while Sales Navigator Core comes with more than 50 search parameters

Eventually, both products hit message limits. But you can easily pair either one with Skrapp to find verified emails and keep your outreach growing.

FAQ: LinkedIn Recruiter vs Sales Navigator