LinkedIn Outreach Benchmarks 2026
What actually happens when you reach out on LinkedIn, measured across 967 connection requests from 19 sending accounts and 3,660 timed conversations. Every number below states the cohort it came from.
41%
Connection request acceptance rate
5.8h
Median reply time
76%
Replies within 24 hours
217,000+
Connections managed
Connection requests: 41% get accepted
Across 967 connection requests sent through Crispy and given at least 60 days to resolve, 41% turned into a connection. That spans 19 sending accounts, and no single account contributes more than a fifth of the total, so this is not one unusually good sender carrying the average.
It is well above what generic outreach achieves, and the reason is not the tool. Requests in this cohort go to people who were searched for on specific criteria rather than scraped in bulk. Targeting is the variable that moves this number; volume is the one that hurts it.
Why this number excludes some invitations
Two exclusions, both of which would otherwise bias the result downward, and both worth stating because most published acceptance rates do not say what they measured.
Recent sends are out. A request sent last week has not had a fair chance to be accepted. Counting it as a miss understates the rate, so the cohort stops 60 days before today.
Imported invitations are out. Crispy can pull in connection requests you sent by hand on LinkedIn, so your daily limits stay accurate. Those come from LinkedIn's list of outstanding invitations, which means they arrive already marked pending by definition. Folding them into an acceptance rate measures how the list was collected, not how the outreach performed. Including them would report roughly 10%, and that number would be an artifact.
Platform totals elsewhere on this page (11,500+ requests, 217,000+ connections) count everything. Only the acceptance rate uses the narrower cohort.
Most replies come within a day
Across 3,660 conversations with measured timing, the median time to a reply was 5.8 hours and 76% got a response within 24 hours. The mean is 18.5 hours, far higher, because a small number of very slow replies drag it up. The median is the number to plan around.
If you have not heard back in two days, a short and specific follow-up is usually worth more than waiting.
Methodology
Aggregated, anonymized data from real outreach run through Crispy, current as of 1 August 2026.
Acceptance rate: 967 outbound connection requests sent by Crispy between 60 and 365 days ago across 19sending accounts. Requests the user withdrew are excluded, as are invitations imported from LinkedIn's outstanding list. A request counts as accepted once the connection is confirmed.
Response times: 3,660 conversations carrying a measured response time. Median reported alongside the mean, since the distribution has a long tail.
Limitations: 19 accounts is a modest sample and these are self-selected users of an outreach tool, targeting audiences they chose. Read this as a reference point, not a universal LinkedIn average. We previously published a 25% acceptance rate on this page; that figure predated the imported-invitation feature and blended two populations that are not comparable, so it has been restated. No individual, contact, or account-level data is exposed, and we refresh these numbers as the dataset grows.
Frequently asked questions
What is a good LinkedIn connection request acceptance rate?
Across 967 connection requests sent through Crispy and given at least 60 days to resolve, 41% were accepted. That figure spans 19 sending accounts, and no single account accounts for more than a fifth of it. Treat 20-30% as ordinary and anything above 40% as the result of tight targeting rather than volume.
Why is the acceptance rate measured on a cohort rather than all invitations?
Two reasons. First, a connection request sent last week has not had time to be accepted, so including recent sends understates the rate. We only count requests sent at least 60 days ago. Second, we exclude invitations imported from LinkedIn's own outstanding-invitation list, because those enter our records already marked pending by definition and would drag the measured rate down for reasons that have nothing to do with outreach quality.
How fast do people reply to LinkedIn messages?
The median response time across 3,660 conversations with measured timing was 5.8 hours, and 76% saw a reply within 24 hours. The mean is much higher at 18.5 hours, because a minority of very slow replies pull the average up. The median is the more useful number.
Where does this data come from?
Aggregated, anonymized data from real outreach run through Crispy, current as of August 2026. No individual, contact, or account-level data is exposed. It reflects how Crispy users perform against their own target audiences, not a universal LinkedIn average, and the sample is modest enough that it should be read as a reference point rather than a law.
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