LinkedIn Premium VS LinkedIn Sales Navigator: What's the Best for You?

On LinkedIn, you have the free plan, or you can pay to access the paid features of LinkedIn.

You have two options:

1. LinkedIn Premium 

2. LinkedIn Sales Navigator

(and Recruiter, but I will not cover this plan in this article)

But which one is the BEST for you?

In this guide, you will learn:

• What is LinkedIn Premium?

• What is LinkedIn Sales Navigator?

• Premium vs Sales Navigator: Feature Comparison

• Which Plan Should You Pick?

What is LinkedIn Premium?

LinkedIn Premium is a paid LinkedIn subscription.

You have 2 plans in Premium:

1. Premium Career

2. Premium Business

With Premium, you can see your profile viewers, send InMails, send way more connection requests to 2nd and 3rd degree connections and have access to LinkedIn ressources like LinkedIn Training.

📺 If you want to check if LinkedIn Premium is worth it for you, or not, you can check this video:

What is LinkedIn Sales Navigator?

LinkedIn Sales Navigator is a LinkedIn paid plan.

You have 3 plans:

1. Sales Navigator Core

2. Sales Navigator Advanced

3. Sales Navigator Advanced Plus

It's one of the best tool on the market to find leads, because of the search filters.

It's mostly used by CEOs, sales and marketing teams to source leads.

📺 If you want to learn how to use LinkedIn Sales Navigator, you can check this in-depth tutorial:

Now it's time to see the differences between LinkedIn Premium and LinkedIn Sales Navigator:

LinkedIn Premium VS LinkedIn Sales Navigator: Features comparaison

Let's compare the feature of these 2 plans.

LinkedIn Premium features

1. See your profile viewers

With a LinkedIn paid plan, you have access to the page "Profile viewers".

With this feature, you can see who saw your profile recently.

You can even apply some filters to better find leads that match your ideal customers. Then, you can leverage this information when you send a message to the leads.

For example:

"Hi Vincent, I noticed you saw my profile."

2. Send InMail messages

InMail credits allow you to message LinkedIn members you're not connected with. Unlike standard messages, which require a connection, InMails lets you reach out directly.

They are useful if you want to send a message to someone in your 2nd or 3rd degree connections without sending a connection request.

Here's how it looks like on LinkedIn if I send a connection request:

Sending InMail is useful when you want to reach decision-makers or potential clients who are not directly connected to you.

💡 Pro tip: you can send an InMail to people who haven't accepted your connection request yet.

Here are the number of InMail credits you get depending of your Premium plan:

📺 If you want to learn more about how InMail messages work, you can check this video:

3. Unlimited searches

With a LinkedIn Premium plan, you can do the number of LinkedIn searches you want.

You won't be capped by LinkedIn, saying "You've done too many searches".

It's useful if you want to find specific leads.

Pro tip: Check LinkedIn’s limits to see what actions are allowed based on your plan (Free, Premium, or Sales Navigator).

LinkedIn Sales Navigator features

With LinkedIn Sales Navigator, you have more features compared to a Premium plan.

1. See your profile viewers

You have access to the page "Profile viewers".

But you also have the same information on Sales Navigator. It's the best way to check your profile viewers, because you can add more filters.

For example, people who are CEO, in New Work… and who saw your profile recently.

📺 If you want to learn how to see your profile viewers, you can check this tutorial:

2. Send (more) InMail messages

With Sales Navigator, you have 50 InMail credits per month.

You can use these credits to reach out to ideal clients without sending a connection request.

3. Use Boolean Search

On Sales Navigator, you can narrow down your search by using booleans operators.

It helps you to get very specific search query to find your ideal customers.

You can use 5 boolean operators:

1. OR

2. AND

3. NOT

4. (Bracket)

5. "Quotes"

Here’s a quick breakdown:

For example, if you want to reach out to a decision maker in marketing, you can write this in the "Current Job Title" filter:

("VP" OR "Head") AND "Marketing" NOT "Assistant"

📺 If you want to check how to use the boolean operators in LinkedIn Sales Navigator, you can check this video:

4. Advanced search filters

This is the most useful and powerful feature of LinkedIn Sales Navigator.

It allows you to build qualified list of leads with various filters.

If you want to check the lead filters, you can go on the homepage of Sales Navigator:

Then, you will find all the filters from Sales Navigator.

For example, you can filter your leads by:

• Company size

• Current Job Title

• Years of experience

• Post on LinkedIn

• Geography

• Industry

• Keywords

• Past company

• Following your company

• Connection (useful if you want to export your connections on LinkedIn)

• Connection of (to check the leads in the network of a competitor)

• Etc

The only thing you can't do with LinkedIn Sales Navigator is to export your leads into a CSV or Excel file.

To export your leads you can use a tool like GiveMeLeads.

Here is step by step guide on how to export leads:

Step 1: Create a GiveMeLeads account

Go on GiveMeLeads. Then click on "Get first 10 leads for free".

Then, you have to write your:

1. First Name

2. Last Name

3. Email

4. Password

And click on "Create account".

Step 2: Download the Chrome Extension

The GiveMeLeads Chrome extension allows you to export your LinkedIn Sales Navigator leads with one click.

It's not mandatory to use it — you can also copy and paste the Sales Navigator search URL directly into the platform.

However, using the extension makes the process faster and easier, especially if you're just getting started.

Step 3: Select your target on LinkedIn Sales Navigator

Go to LinkedIn Sales Navigator.

Use filters to find your ideal leads (like job title, company size, or location).

Then click “Extract leads” using the GiveMeLeads extension or paste the search URL on the platform.

Step 4: Add Intent Data (Optional)

Depending on your GiveMeLeads plan, you can add intent data to your searches.

It’s a great way to find warm leads — people who are more likely to reply or book a call.

Let’s say your LinkedIn Sales Navigator filters are:

• Company size: 51–200 employees

• Job title: “Head of Sales”

• Location: San Francisco Bay Area

On top of that, GiveMeLeads will look for people who match these filters and show intent, such as:

• 1st-degree connections

• People in your competitors’ network

• People who follow your company page

• People who viewed your LinkedIn profile

Once you’ve selected your intent data sources, click “Save Changes”

💡 Pro tip: You can set priorities for each source. For example, you can give more weight to 1st-degree connections than profile viewers.

💡Pro tip #2: If you work with multiple sales reps (or co-founders), you can use all of their LinkedIn accounts to get more and better leads. Each account brings its own network, 1st-degree connections, and profile viewers — which means more warm leads for your team.

Step 5: Launch your export

You target is set up. Now it's time to export your leads.

For that, click on "New Leads Export".

You will get a pop-up where you can select:

• The number of leads you want to export

• If you want to schedule this export on a weekly basis.

Then click on "Export Leads".

Step 6: Schedule Your Leads Export (Optional)

GiveMeLeads lets you schedule lead exports. Pick the day you want, and you’ll receive fresh leads weekly.

Once set up, you'll get a fresh list of leads every week — automatically.

Each lead is unique, and the system ensures there are no duplicates. This saves you time and keeps your CRM clean, so you can focus on outreach, not data cleaning.

Then, you’ll automatically receive new leads every week — no manual work needed.

You can focus 100% on what really matters: sending emails, starting LinkedIn conversations, and booking meetings.

💡 Pro tip: With scheduled exports, you can easily build lead files with more than 2,500 fresh, qualified contacts delivered straight to your inbox every week.

Step 7: Download your leads file

When your export is finished, you’ll receive an email with a download link.

You can also download your file directly by clicking the "Download" button in your dashboard. You’ll see two options.

1. "Open in Sheets"

This gives you a simple version of your lead list.

You have:

• Source (Sales Navigator, 1st-degree, profile viewers…)

• First Name

• Last Name

• Profile picture

• Company name

• Job title

• Headline

• LinkedIn URL

• Email

It doesn’t include all the data, but it’s perfect if you just want to import leads into your CRM or outreach tool like Lemlist or Expandi.

2. "Download CSV"

This gives you the full file with all available data. For each lead, you’ll see extra info like:

• Whether they have LinkedIn Premium

• Their total years of experience

• Company details like size, industry, and location

• Etc

Here's all the informations you can have:

💡 Pro tip: Don’t forget to scroll horizontally — there's a lot of valuable data in your lead file, including job titles, company size, verified emails, and even intent signals.

On top of that, GiveMeLeads automatically cleans your data:

• Fixes capital letters in names and job titles

• Removes emojis from job titles

• Removes legal suffixes in company names (like LLC, GmbH, etc.)

GiveMeLeads also checks if each lead matches your LinkedIn Sales Navigator filters.

If a lead doesn’t fit — for example, they have:

• An invalid job title

• Invalid location

• Wrong company size work

• Etc

We tag them in the column "filters" with the reason they’re invalid (like “Invalid job title” or “Wrong company size”).

That way, you keep full control of your data and don’t waste time guessing why a lead doesn’t match your targeting.

With GiveMeLeads, you get the verified professional email of every lead — even if they’re in your 2nd or 3rd-degree connections.

💡 Pro tip: No need to use separate tools to find or verify emails. Everything’s already cleaned, verified, and ready to go.

👉 Try GiveMeLeads today and turn LinkedIn into a lead machine.

📺 If you want to check if LinkedIn Sales Navigator is worth it for you, or not, you can check this video:

LinkedIn Premium VS LinkedIn Sales Navigator: Pricing comparaison

It's time to talk about the cost of these paid plans!

LinkedIn Premium pricing

Here are the details of the LinkedIn Premium pricing:

Monthly Pricing

• Career: $29.99/month

• Business: $59.99/month

Annual Pricing

• Career: $239/year

• Business: $575.88/year

💡 Comparison Table

LinkedIn Sales Navigator pricing

Here are the details of the LinkedIn Sales Navigator pricing.

You will see that the Sales Navigator plans are more expensive than the Premium plans. But if you want to build qualified lists of leads, it's a no-brainer.

Monthly Pricing

• Core: $99.99/month

• Advanced: $149.99/month

• Advanced Plus: Custom pricing

Annual Pricing

• Core: $959.88/year ($79.99/month)

• Advanced: $1,679.88/year ($139.99/month)

💡 Comparison Table

Pro tip: For 99% of people, the Sales Navigator Core is the best plan to use. You don't need more.

LinkedIn Premium VS LinkedIn Sales Navigator: What's the best for YOU

All right! It's time to breakdown what LinkedIn paid plans is the best for you:

Conclusion

It's hard to tell "this plan is better than this one" because the best plan for YOU depends of your situation, and your use cases.

LinkedIn Sales Navigator is by far the best choice if you're doing sales and outreach.

If you only want to grow your network, build credibility and check who are your profile viewers, it's better to stay on a LinkedIn Premium plan.