A connection request is free and carries an optional note of up to 200 characters (300 on Premium, per LinkedIn’s comparison page). An InMail is a paid Premium message with a body of up to 2,000 characters that reaches people outside your network, and LinkedIn returns the credit if the recipient responds within 90 days. For most prospecting, send the request first and save InMail for the few contacts worth a paid credit.
Several pages ranking for this comparison skip the credit-back rule and Open Profile, and this post covers both.
What is the difference between an InMail and a connection request?
A connection request asks someone to join your first-degree network. Any free or Premium member can send one, with an optional short note. An InMail is a direct message to someone you are not connected to. It needs a Premium plan, costs one credit, and does not add the person to your network.
LinkedIn’s help page puts it plainly: on a Basic (free) account, “you can only directly message LinkedIn members that you’re connected to.”
| Connection request (with note) | InMail | |
|---|---|---|
| Cost | Free | 1 InMail credit, Premium plans only |
| How many | Free accounts get a small number of notes per month (LinkedIn’s pages say three or five, see below). Premium notes are unlimited | Monthly allotment by plan, for example 5 on Premium Career and 15 on Premium Business |
| Text limit | 200 characters on free. 300 on Premium per LinkedIn’s comparison page | Subject up to 200 characters (optional), body up to 2,000 |
| Who can receive it | Most members. LinkedIn’s invitation limits apply to the sender | Anyone who has not turned off InMail in their message preferences |
| If they never respond | The invitation stays pending. If you withdraw it, you cannot invite that person again for up to three weeks | No credit back without a response within 90 days. You cannot send that person a second InMail until they answer the first |
| Reply data (vendor) | Expandi: 3.0% connection-note reply rate; 10.4% reply rate on outbound messages | Belkins, using Expandi platform data: “Open InMail Campaign” 7.5% reply rate on 13,600 contacts |
The reply figures are vendor data with different definitions, explained below.
How many characters can you use in an InMail or a connection note?
A connection note is capped at 200 characters on a free account, and LinkedIn’s comparison page gives Premium members 300. An InMail allows a subject line of up to 200 characters and a body of up to 2,000. The InMail body holds about ten times the text of a free note.
LinkedIn’s help pages disagree on how many personalized notes a free account gets. The “Invitation limit reached” page and the InMail comparison page both say five per month. The “Personalize invitations to connect” page, updated more recently, says “up to three connection requests per month.” Plan around three until LinkedIn makes the pages match.
If you see 1,900 characters quoted for the InMail body, that comes from an older Recruiter help page. The current InMail pages say 2,000.
A 200-character note has room for one reason to connect. Save the offer for the first message after acceptance; our guide to LinkedIn outreach messages covers how to write it.
How do LinkedIn InMail credits work, and when do you get one back?
Premium plans add a fixed number of InMail credits every month. LinkedIn’s credit-back rule reads: “Every InMail message that is accepted/declined or responded to directly within 90 days of it being sent is credited back.” An unanswered InMail keeps its credit spent, and LinkedIn counts a pending InMail as neither accepted nor declined.
A polite “no thanks” gets your credit back. Silence does not. Quick Replies count as a response.
Monthly allotments and caps, from LinkedIn’s credits page:
| Plan | Credits per month | Maximum you can accumulate |
|---|---|---|
| Premium Career | 5 | 15 |
| Premium Business | 15 | 45 |
| Sales Navigator Core | 50 | 150 |
| Recruiter Lite | 30 | 120 |
The InMail FAQ adds Premium All-in-One at 30 per month, up to 90 total. One more rule shapes how you spend them: you cannot send a second InMail to a member until they respond to the first. There is no InMail follow-up to someone who ignores you.
Can you message someone on LinkedIn without connecting?
Yes. A Premium member can send InMail. Anyone can message a Premium member who has turned on Open Profile, without spending a credit. And a free account can attach a note to a connection request, which LinkedIn says the recipient can reply to without accepting the invitation.
Open Profile is a setting only Premium subscribers can switch on. LinkedIn says it allows “anyone on LinkedIn to contact a Premium member for free, even if they’re not in the sender’s network,” though free members “can only send a limited number of open profile messages each month.” If a prospect shows a Premium badge, check whether you can message them before spending a credit.
Some people cannot be reached by InMail at all. LinkedIn states: “You can’t message a member if they’ve chosen not to receive InMail messages in their message preferences settings.” For them, a connection request is the only direct route.
Which one actually gets answered?
The published numbers come from automation vendors, and the two datasets below overlap because Belkins partly uses Expandi’s platform data. In Belkins’ campaign breakdown, “Open InMail” campaigns got a 7.5% reply rate and request-then-message campaigns got 7.9%. InMail did not come out ahead.
Expandi’s LinkedIn Outreach Benchmarks 2026 (published May 19, 2026) covers 13,218,869 connection requests and 6,730,447 outbound messages across 13,302 active accounts, May 2025 to April 2026. It reports 28.5% acceptance, a 3.0% connection-note reply rate and a 10.4% message reply rate. That message figure mixes welcome messages, follow-ups, InMails and emails, so it is not an InMail number. Expandi also reports the connection-request reply rate falling “from 3.5% (May 2025) to 2.2% (April 2026).”
Belkins’ 2026 LinkedIn Outreach Study (updated June 29, 2026) uses Expandi platform data from 2025. It reports a “Connector Campaign” (connection request, then messages after acceptance) at a 7.9% total reply rate across 8.5 million contacts, and an “Open InMail Campaign” at 7.5%. Belkins notes the InMail sample was only 13,600 contacts and says to treat it “as directionally useful rather than conclusive.”
With reply rates this close, cost decides it. A connection request is free and counts toward LinkedIn’s invitation limits. An InMail spends a credit you may not get back, from a pool of 5 to 50 a month on most plans.
When should you use InMail instead of a connection request?
Use a connection request by default. It is free, and acceptance opens the door to follow-up messages. Switch to InMail when a contact is worth a paid, one-shot message and a request has failed, for example an invitation that has sat pending for weeks. A decision rule for each contact:
- Start with a connection request. Belkins reports a 25.3% connection rate with a note and 27.6% without, but an 8.2% reply rate with a note against 5.3% without. A note costs a little acceptance and buys more replies.
- If the contact has a Premium badge, check for Open Profile before spending a credit.
- If the request is still pending after your set waiting period, leave it in place. If you withdraw it to try again later, LinkedIn blocks a new invitation to that person for up to three weeks.
- Send InMail only to the contacts that justify a credit, such as a named decision-maker at an account you are actively pursuing.
- Write that InMail as the only one you can send until they reply.
Say a founder on Premium Business is working a list of 300 prospects. That plan gives 15 InMail credits a month, capped at 45 banked, so InMail cannot cover the list. Sending requests to all 300 and holding InMail for the 10 or 15 highest-value people who never accept fits inside one month’s allotment.
If you send requests at volume, read about LinkedIn connection request limits first. LinkedIn says a restriction from hitting the limit “typically lasts one week” and that withdrawing pending invitations will not remove it.
How HypeLab Campaigns handles request-first, InMail-fallback
HypeLab Campaigns builds LinkedIn outreach sequences from steps. The builder includes both Send Connection Request and Send InMail, so a sequence can send the request first and keep InMail for the high-value contacts who never accept.
Based on the Campaigns page, the workflow looks like this:
- Import a list by CSV or from a Sales Navigator saved lead list or search (see Sales Navigator vs LinkedIn automation).
- Build the main sequence: Visit Profile, Send Connection Request, Wait X Days, then Send Message for people who accept.
- Set daily action limits and active hours for the account.
- Track the acceptance rate in the campaign dashboard.
- Move the high-value contacts who never accepted into a sequence with a Send InMail step.
The Campaigns page also says that when a contact replies, the sequence pauses and routes the conversation to your inbox for a human follow-up.
Whatever tool sends it, an InMail draws on the LinkedIn account’s own Premium or Sales Navigator credits, so an account without one of those plans has none to spend. For HypeLab plan details, see the pricing page. For what to send after acceptance, see our post on LinkedIn drip campaigns.
If a request-first sequence with InMail saved for your shortlist is how you want to run outreach, build it on the Campaigns page. Get Started for Free.
FAQ
Can a free LinkedIn account receive InMail?
Yes. LinkedIn lists “Receive unlimited InMail Messages” among Basic account features. Members can also choose not to receive InMail in their message preferences.
Can I buy more InMail credits?
No. LinkedIn’s “Send an InMail Message” page says you cannot purchase additional credits outside the monthly allotment.
Does the person know if I withdraw a connection request?
No. LinkedIn says the recipient is not notified. You will not be able to invite that member again for up to three weeks.
Do Premium InMail credits work in Sales Navigator?
No. LinkedIn states that Premium InMail credits cannot be used to send InMail on Sales Navigator or LinkedIn Recruiter. Sales Navigator has its own allotment.
What happens to unused InMail credits?
They build up to a cap that depends on the plan (45 on Premium Business, for example). LinkedIn’s InMail FAQ also says credits expire after 90 days, and your balance goes to zero if you cancel Premium.
Sources
- LinkedIn Help, Differences between InMail Messages and personalized invitations: https://www.linkedin.com/help/linkedin/answer/a6239760
- LinkedIn Help, InMail message credits and renewal process: https://www.linkedin.com/help/linkedin/answer/a543695
- LinkedIn Help, InMail Messages FAQ: https://www.linkedin.com/help/linkedin/answer/a554514
- LinkedIn Help, Send an InMail Message: https://www.linkedin.com/help/linkedin/answer/a546814
- LinkedIn Help, InMail character limits (Recruiter): https://www.linkedin.com/help/linkedin/answer/a411986
- LinkedIn Help, Personalize invitations to connect: https://www.linkedin.com/help/linkedin/answer/a563153
- LinkedIn Help, Invitation limit reached: https://www.linkedin.com/help/linkedin/answer/a550555
- LinkedIn Help, Withdraw an invitation: https://www.linkedin.com/help/linkedin/answer/a568295
- LinkedIn Help, Open Profile and messages: https://www.linkedin.com/help/linkedin/answer/a545663
- LinkedIn Help, Manage your Open Profile settings as a Premium subscriber: https://www.linkedin.com/help/linkedin/answer/a541684
- LinkedIn Help, Difference between free LinkedIn and LinkedIn Premium accounts: https://www.linkedin.com/help/linkedin/answer/a545596
- Expandi, LinkedIn Outreach Benchmarks 2026 (vendor data, May 19, 2026): https://expandi.io/blog/linkedin-outreach-benchmarks-2026/
- Belkins, 2026 LinkedIn Outreach Study (vendor data, updated June 29, 2026): https://belkins.io/blog/linkedin-outreach-study
