Both are premium LinkedIn products. They share some filters but were built for very different jobs — outbound sales versus talent acquisition. Here's an honest side-by-side so you can pick the right one (and export leads from either with Scrupp).
Free plan included · No credit card · Works with both products
Quick answer
Pick Sales Navigator ($99/mo) if your job is finding decision-makers for outbound sales — it has the filters, boolean search, and account-based tracking SDRs need, plus clean exports via Scrupp. Pick LinkedIn Recruiter ($170–$835/mo per seat) if your job is finding and contacting candidates — it has InMail credits, pipeline management, and candidate CRM features. The filters overlap ~70% but the workflows are different: Sales Navigator is optimized for B2B sales, Recruiter for talent acquisition. For sales teams, Sales Navigator + Scrupp is a 10× cheaper stack than Recruiter and delivers better outbound data.
At a glance
Short version: if you're selling to businesses, pick Sales Navigator. If you're hiring, pick Recruiter. They overlap more than most people realise — but the specialised features on each side are what make the price tag worth it.
Sales Navigator
Sales Navigator is LinkedIn's tool for SDRs, AEs and anyone running outbound. It's designed around one job: building a list of the right people at the right accounts, then staying on top of buying signals.
Filter by job title, seniority, function, years in role, company headcount, industry, revenue, geography, and keywords. Save searches and get alerts when new people match.
See when a lead changes jobs, when a company posts about hiring, or when an account is flagged as showing buyer intent. Great for timing outbound.
Build a named account list, track decision-makers inside each account, and get alerts on news, funding rounds, and leadership changes.
Send trackable content to prospects. InMail credits included per seat, with open and reply tracking built in.
Sales Navigator Core is $99/month. Advanced and Advanced Plus add team features, CRM sync and admin controls. For solo founders and most SDR seats, Core is enough — and it's what the Sales Navigator scraper is built around.
Recruiter
Recruiter is LinkedIn's tool for sourcing candidates. Same underlying database, but the filters and workflow are wired around hiring: skills, years of experience, openness to work, candidate projects and collaborative pipelines.
Recruiter searches the entire LinkedIn talent graph, including passive candidates and people marked Open To Work. Filters include skills, certifications and years of experience per skill.
Organise candidates into hiring projects with stages (sourced → contacted → interviewing). Shareable across the recruiting team, with notes and tags per candidate.
Spotlight filters like "open to new opportunities", "more likely to respond", "past applicants" and "past colleagues of current employees". These are exclusive to Recruiter.
Recruiter Lite ships with around 30 InMails per month; full Recruiter ships with 150. Candidates with OpenLink can be messaged for free, even without a connection.
Recruiter Lite starts around $135/month, and full Recruiter is $170+/month per seat (with volume discounts for agencies and enterprise). If you hire more than a couple of people per quarter, Recruiter pays for itself fast.
Feature by feature
Everything that matters when you're deciding between them.
Pricing based on LinkedIn's public rates as of 2026. Enterprise seats and team plans can vary.
Which one should you pick?
You need ICP filters, intent signals and account targeting. Recruiter is overkill and missing the signals that matter for outbound.
Projects, skills filters and Open To Work are worth the higher price. Sales Navigator misses the candidate workflow.
At $99/mo it is the cheapest way to build a targeted B2B list. Pair with Scrupp to export leads with verified emails.
You are not recruiting, you are delivering lead lists. Sales Nav gives you the search, Scrupp gives you the export.
Multiple projects, team collaboration and 150 InMails make the jump from Lite worth it once you run more than two roles.
For ABM, lookalike targeting and partner outreach, Sales Nav signals are the right fit. Export via Scrupp into your CRM.
Export either one
Neither product has a native CSV export. Scrupp adds that — and also enriches each result with a verified business email and direct phone number.
Use whichever product fits your job: Sales Navigator for B2B prospecting, Recruiter for sourcing candidates. Build the search with the filters you need.
Install the Scrupp Chrome extension. On any search results page, click "Scrape this search". Scrupp paginates through results in the background, respecting LinkedIn rate limits so your account stays safe.
Every scraped profile is enriched with a verified business email (real-time SMTP check) and a direct phone number where available. Average email find rate is 65%; bounce rate stays under 5%.
Download a clean CSV, push into HubSpot or Pipedrive, or send candidates into your ATS via the REST API and webhooks.
Full walkthrough on the Sales Navigator scraper page. Prefer free LinkedIn or Apollo? Scrupp also works as a LinkedIn scraper and Apollo scraper, and you can use our lead finder to build lists from scratch without a premium seat.
FAQ
You can — the underlying people database is the same. But you will miss the Open To Work signal, skills-and-years filters, and candidate projects. For anything beyond one or two hires, Recruiter is the better tool.
Technically yes, but you are paying more ($135–$170+ vs $99) for features built around hiring. And you are missing buying intent signals, which are the main reason SDRs buy Sales Navigator in the first place.
Sales Navigator Core is $99/month. Recruiter Lite is around $135/month. Full Recruiter starts at $170/month per seat and goes up for enterprise. All prices are per seat per month, billed annually.
Neither one exports to CSV natively. That is where Scrupp comes in — our Chrome extension scrapes any Sales Navigator or Recruiter search and exports the results with verified business emails and direct phone numbers.
Scrupp runs as a Chrome extension and respects LinkedIn rate limits. It does not automate connection requests, messages or profile views — it only reads data from pages you are already viewing. Your account stays safe.
Both products cap at 2,500 results per search. If you need more, split your search by geography, industry or title range — Scrupp can export each slice and merge them into one clean list.
Scrupp works with both Sales Navigator and Recruiter. Scrape any search, enrich every result with verified emails and phones, download clean CSV. Free plan, no credit card.
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