FormulaThe best AI tool for an agency depends on the step that's holding it back: Clay or Apollo to find and enrich contacts, Lemlist or Instantly for cold email, Waalaxy or La Growth Machine for LinkedIn sequences you set up yourself. The Formula is an AI agent that prospects on LinkedIn for your agency, writes the messages and drafts the replies, from $107 a month.
The Formula in 30 seconds
What the agent does: it finds prospects in the audiences of your competitors, influencers, company pages and events, writes to them on LinkedIn based on their profile, drafts your replies and offers a slot in your calendar. It also prepares LinkedIn posts and comments. Email and multichannel outreach are listed as "Soon" on the pricing page.
Who it's for: agencies, consultants and small B2B companies that already sell direct and want meetings without spending their evenings on LinkedIn. Growth connects 2 LinkedIn accounts, Elite connects 3.
Price: Launch plan at $107 a month, plus a $29.97 monthly infrastructure fee (LinkedIn connection and AI credits). No commitment, free 3-day trial.
Monday morning at a six-person agency. The founder has three client projects running late, a proposal to send and no new sales call booked for the next two weeks. Yet there are five AI subscriptions open in the browser tabs.
The problem is rarely picking between two tools. It's that nobody decided which step AI should fix first. So this guide starts with the steps, not the tools.
What are the best AI tools for agencies in 2026?
Short answer, step by step through an agency's new business work:
- Finding and enriching contacts: Clay if someone on your team is comfortable with tables and automations, Apollo if you want a ready-made contact database.
- Sending cold email: Lemlist for polished sequences shared across a team, Instantly for high volume.
- Sending LinkedIn sequences you write yourself: Waalaxy to start small, La Growth Machine to mix LinkedIn, email and calls.
- Handing off LinkedIn prospecting end to end (targeting, messages, replies, booking): The Formula.
You'll notice no tool ticks every box. That's fine. The ones that claim to do everything usually do half of it.
Why do agencies pick AI tools differently from other B2B companies?
Three reasons.
Billable time comes first. Every hour spent prospecting is an hour you don't bill. A tool that needs four hours of setup a week costs more than its subscription.
You usually have several voices to manage. The founder, a partner, sometimes client accounts. A tool built for one sales rep turns into a headache when three LinkedIn profiles each need to keep their own tone.
Smaller companies lag behind on AI agents. In McKinsey's "The state of AI in 2026: On the road to ROI", published August 25, 2026, 40% of respondents from large organizations (more than $1 billion in annual revenue) report scaling AI agents, up from 27% a year earlier. For smaller organizations, the figure stayed flat at 22%. For a ten-person agency, that's an opening: most of your direct competitors aren't running agents at scale yet.
How should an agency owner choose an AI tool?
Here's a grid you can fill in in ten minutes. Score each step from 0 to 2 based on what it costs you today (0: running fine, 1: slowing you down, 2: blocking you). Start with the step that scores highest, and only that one.
| Step | Sign it's blocking you | Type of tool | Examples |
|---|---|---|---|
| Finding prospects | You don't know who to contact this week | Contact database, signal-based targeting | Apollo, Clay, The Formula (LinkedIn audiences) |
| Enriching data | You have names but no email and no context | Waterfall enrichment | Clay, Apollo |
| Writing messages | You keep putting off outreach because writing takes too long | AI writing based on the prospect's profile | The Formula, the AI writing assistants in Lemlist and La Growth Machine |
| Sending and following up | Follow-ups slip through the cracks | Email or LinkedIn sequencer | Lemlist, Instantly, Waalaxy, La Growth Machine |
| Replying fast | Prospects reply and wait two days for an answer | AI-drafted replies | The Formula |
| Staying visible | Your LinkedIn profile hasn't posted anything in weeks | Post and comment drafting | The Formula, LinkedIn scheduling tools |
If "finding" and "writing" both score 2, an agent that handles both saves you the most back-and-forth between tools.
Which AI tools should agencies compare, and what do they cost?
Here are the seven tools in this comparison, The Formula included. Prices taken from the official pricing pages on October 16, 2026.
| Tool | Step covered | Channels | Autonomy | Public entry price | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Formula | End-to-end LinkedIn prospecting, plus posts and comments | LinkedIn (email and multichannel listed as "Soon") | High: the agent searches, reads the profile, writes and drafts replies, you approve | $107/mo (Launch), $247/mo (Growth, 2 LinkedIn accounts), $697/mo (Elite, 3 accounts), plus $29.97/mo infrastructure; no commitment, 3-day free trial | B2B service agencies that want meetings for themselves |
| Clay | Data, enrichment, custom automations | Data (sending through integrations) | Low to medium: you build the tables and rules | Free plan (6,000 actions a year); Launch listed at $167/mo | Growth agencies with a technical person in-house |
| Apollo | Contact database and email sequences | Email, calls | Medium: lists and sequences to set up | Free plan; Basic at $49/mo per user, billed annually | Agencies that mostly need contacts |
| Lemlist | Email sequences, multichannel as an option | Email; LinkedIn, SMS and calls on Multichannel | Medium: sequences to set up | Email plan $69/mo billed monthly ($55 billed yearly); Multichannel $109/mo ($87 billed yearly) | Agencies that run cold email as a team |
| Instantly | High-volume cold email | Medium: campaigns to build | $47/mo (Growth, 5,000 emails a month), billed monthly | Lead gen agencies sending at volume | |
| La Growth Machine | Multichannel sequences | LinkedIn and email; calls and X on higher plans | Medium: sequences to set up | €60/mo per identity (Basic) billed monthly, 14-day trial; agency offer from 6 identities | Agencies running several identities across channels |
| Waalaxy | Simple LinkedIn campaigns | LinkedIn; email on the Business plan | Medium: campaigns to create | €19/mo per user (Pro), billed monthly, 14-day trial | Small agencies starting out on LinkedIn |
Each one has a real strength. Clay pulls from a long list of data providers, as long as someone on your team runs it. Apollo gives you a large contact database without building anything. Lemlist and Instantly are built for cold email first. La Growth Machine handles several identities across several channels well. Waalaxy is still the cheapest way on this list to test LinkedIn.
The limit the six share: you pick the targets and set up the sequences, even when AI helps you write. The tool will send a bad message as fast as a good one. The Formula handles targeting and writing, but stays focused on LinkedIn for now. If your agency mostly sells through email, The Formula isn't the right place to start.
What we couldn't verify on public pages: negotiated discounts for agencies, the real sending caps per account at each vendor, and the terms for reselling to your clients. Ask for them in writing before you sign.
Which AI tool stack fits your agency's size?
Three scenarios built from the public prices above. They're examples, not customer data. La Growth Machine and Waalaxy quote in euros, and billing periods differ between vendors: compare on the same commitment.
A 2 to 5 person agency prospecting for itself
The bottleneck is almost always the founder's time. One tool that targets and writes beats three tools you have to wire together. Example: The Formula on the Launch plan, $107 a month plus the infrastructure fee, on the founder's LinkedIn account. Tighter budget: Waalaxy Pro at €19 a month, plus an hour a week writing the messages yourself.
A 10 to 30 person agency with two or three people selling
Now the question becomes keeping several voices consistent. Example: The Formula on the Growth plan, $247 a month for two LinkedIn accounts (the founder and a partner), plus Lemlist Email at $55 a month billed yearly if the agency also wants cold email, until email ships in The Formula.
A lead gen agency prospecting for its clients
Volume and keeping accounts separate come first. Example: Clay to build lists, Instantly or Lemlist for email, La Growth Machine for clients' LinkedIn identities. It's the most powerful stack here, and the one that needs the most setup. For the question of how many LinkedIn accounts you can run, we covered it in how many LinkedIn accounts an agency can run with an AI agent.
Worked example: what an hour of prospecting really costs an agency
Take a US agency that bills $1,200 a day for 8 billable hours, so $150 an hour. The founder spends 5 hours a week finding prospects and writing LinkedIn messages. Over a 4-week month, that's 20 hours, or $3,000 of time that never gets billed.
Against that, a tool at $107 or $247 a month should be judged on the hours it gives back. If it frees up 3 hours a week, that's about $1,800 of billable time a month (12 hours at $150). If it takes 4 hours of setup a week, it costs you more than it brings in. These figures are assumptions for the calculation: swap in your own rate and your real time.
What mistakes do agencies make with AI tools?
- Stacking tools before picking the step: five subscriptions, no process. Start with one tool, on the step that's blocking you.
- Mixing voices: a message written in the founder's tone, sent from a junior consultant's account. Prospects notice.
- Writing to everyone: in a Gartner survey published June 25, 2025 of 632 B2B buyers, 73% said they actively avoid suppliers who send irrelevant outreach. Volume won't make up for the wrong targets.
- Forgetting who replies: a tool that generates replies nobody handles within the hour means lost meetings. More on that in responding to a prospect in under 5 minutes.
- Thinking AI replaces the offer: if your offer isn't clear, the tool just spreads a vague message faster.
Still torn between hiring a prospecting agency and using an AI agent? We compared both here: B2B prospecting agency or AI agent.
Frequently asked questions
What are the best AI tools for agencies in 2026?
It depends on the step that's holding your agency back. Clay and Apollo to find and enrich contacts, Lemlist and Instantly for cold email, Waalaxy and La Growth Machine for LinkedIn sequences you set up yourself. The Formula, an AI agent for LinkedIn prospecting from $107 a month, handles targeting, writing the messages and drafting replies.
Which AI tool should a small agency use for prospecting?
For a 2 to 5 person agency, the founder's time is the real bottleneck: one tool that targets and writes beats three tools you have to connect. The Formula's Launch plan ($107 a month plus a $29.97 infrastructure fee, free 3-day trial) covers LinkedIn prospecting end to end. On a tighter budget, Waalaxy Pro starts at €19 a month, but you write the messages yourself.
How much do AI tools for agencies cost?
On October 16, 2026, the cheapest public paid plans were Waalaxy at €19 a month, Instantly at $47, Apollo Basic at $49 (billed annually), Lemlist at $69 ($55 billed yearly), La Growth Machine at €60 per identity, The Formula at $107 plus a $29.97 infrastructure fee, and Clay Launch at $167. Clay and Apollo also have free plans. Compare on the same billing period and the same volume.
Can an AI tool prospect for several LinkedIn accounts at an agency?
Yes, as long as each person keeps their own LinkedIn account and accounts are never shared. The Formula connects 2 accounts on Growth ($247 a month) and 3 on Elite ($697 a month). La Growth Machine bills per identity, with an agency offer starting at 6 identities.
Sources and verification date
Prices and features checked on October 16, 2026 on the official pages: The Formula pricing, Clay pricing, Apollo pricing, Lemlist pricing, Instantly pricing, La Growth Machine pricing, Waalaxy pricing. AI agent adoption by company size: McKinsey, "The state of AI in 2026: On the road to ROI", published August 25, 2026, 1,719 respondents surveyed from May 4 to June 8, 2026. B2B buyer behavior: Gartner press release, published June 25, 2025, 632 B2B buyers. The amounts in the scenarios and the worked example are assumptions, not customer data. Prices change: check them again when you choose. This article is published by The Formula and is not an independent comparison.
Find out which step to fix first
Start the free 3-day trial to see the prospects the agent finds and the messages it writes for your agency's offer, then run the grid above with your own numbers.