The LinkedIn Sales Navigator free trial, from who qualifies to what you keep after you cancel.

What is the LinkedIn Sales Navigator free trial?

The LinkedIn Sales Navigator free trial is a limited period in which an eligible LinkedIn member uses a paid Sales Navigator plan at no cost. You choose the plan, enter a credit card, and the features of that plan switch on for your account.

It is not a free version of the product. LinkedIn Help describes the trial as a subscription that has not started billing yet, which is why it converts to a paid plan on the renewal date unless you cancel before that date arrives.

That single detail shapes everything else on this page. A trial with a card attached is a purchase with a deadline, so the useful question is not whether to try LinkedIn Sales Navigator, but what you need to learn before the deadline.

This guide sticks to what LinkedIn publishes on its own help and product pages, and adds an evaluation plan written for this page, so the trial answers a question instead of filling a month.

The rules LinkedIn publishes about the trial

Everything in this table comes from LinkedIn Help pages for Sales Navigator and Premium. They are the terms you are agreeing to, whatever a review site tells you.

Who is eligible for a Sales Navigator trial

LinkedIn does not publish a single checklist, and it says so: eligibility depends on several factors. The factors it names across its help pages are consistent enough to plan around.

• Trial history: if you are already using, or have already used, a free Premium trial, you may not be eligible for another.
• The 12-month rule: canceling a free Premium trial makes you ineligible for another free trial for at least 12 months.
• Existing subscriptions: the referral rules exclude people who already subscribe to Sales Navigator or hold another active Premium subscription.
• Region: LinkedIn states that trial eligibility and duration may vary based on regional availability or promotional terms.
• Account standing: a declined card stops the trial, and LinkedIn suggests checking the details or using another payment method.

If a teammate already burned a trial on the same account, the account is spent for the year. On teams that matter, keep a simple record of who used a Sales Navigator trial and when, alongside the rest of your sales tech stack notes.

How long a LinkedIn Sales Navigator free trial runs

LinkedIn gives two answers, and both matter. Its Premium trial pages say that trial eligibility and duration may vary based on regional availability or promotional terms, without naming a fixed length.

Its Sales Navigator auto-renewal page is more specific for trials started on LinkedIn.com: it describes the billing date as falling one month after the trial began, and points you to LinkedIn Admin Center to see that date.

The practical rule is simple. Whatever a blog says the standard length is, open Admin Center on day one and read the renewal date from your own account. That date, not a number from an article, is the deadline you plan around.

LinkedIn also notes that billing, cancellation and renewal dates are based on the date and time the subscription was activated, in local United States time zones for US-based English-speaking members, and in Coordinated Universal Time everywhere else.

How to start a LinkedIn Sales Navigator free trial

LinkedIn documents the redemption path through your account settings. The steps below follow its help article for redeeming a Premium trial.

1. Click the Me icon at the top of your LinkedIn homepage.
2. Select Settings and privacy from the dropdown.
3. Click Account preferences in the left pane.
4. Under Subscriptions and payments, click the upgrade option.
5. Choose the plan that fits what you want to test.
6. Follow the prompts on the page to complete the upgrade, including the card.

LinkedIn says it sends an email reminder to the primary address on your account before the trial ends, for subscriptions bought on the LinkedIn desktop site. It also warns that a trial bought on an Android device does not get that reminder email.

Two housekeeping jobs belong in the first hour. Put the renewal date in your calendar with a reminder two days earlier, and write down the one question this trial has to answer.

Why a card is required, and what it commits you to

LinkedIn Help is unambiguous: you are required to input a credit card number to get the free trial. There is no published route that skips it.

The card is not a formality. It is the mechanism that turns the trial into a subscription at the end, which LinkedIn describes as automatic unless you cancel beforehand. Nothing else has to happen for the charge to occur.

LinkedIn adds a related warning for existing trials: if your billing information is out of date, update it in Admin Center within five days of the renewal date, or the account can be downgraded to a Basic free account.

What the Sales Navigator free trial includes

A trial gives you the features of the plan you selected, not a reduced version. LinkedIn's plan comparison page lists what belongs to each plan, and the items below are the ones a solo seller will actually touch in a trial window.

Saved searches sit alongside the lists. LinkedIn says a saved search notifies you by weekly email and through homepage alerts when new people or companies match your criteria, and that you can store 50 lead searches and 50 account searches.

The upper plans add team features. LinkedIn's comparison page puts team seat management, TeamLink, team reporting and the advanced CRM integrations with Salesforce, HubSpot, Microsoft Dynamics and others on the higher tiers.

What the trial will not do for you

Trials disappoint when people expect the wrong thing from them. Sales Navigator is a targeting and signal tool, and the trial inherits its boundaries.

• It does not supply email addresses. You are working inside LinkedIn messaging, so finding an email address is a separate job.
• It does not write the message. Better targeting with the same weak message produces the same weak results.
• It does not permit bulk extraction. The LinkedIn User Agreement restricts scraping, and LinkedIn automation tools carry account risk whether or not you are on a trial.
• It does not carry data out. LinkedIn says there is currently no option to save the data tied to the account when you cancel.
• It does not replace a process. Without a sales cadence to follow up, the lists just sit there.

Sales Navigator trial vs the LinkedIn Premium trial

People often start the wrong trial and burn their eligibility, a trap our guide to free LinkedIn Premium covers from the Premium side. LinkedIn treats Sales Navigator as part of the Premium family, so the same 12-month rule applies across them.

If a seller wants to compare the two, they should compare them on paper first. Our LinkedIn Premium entry covers what the consumer tiers include, so you can spend the one trial you are eligible for on the right product.

How to evaluate the tool in the trial window

A trial is a test, and a test needs a hypothesis. The steps below were written for this page, and they assume one seller with one segment, not a team-wide rollout.

1. Write the decision the trial has to settle

   Before signing up, put one sentence on paper: what has to be true by the renewal date for your team to pay for seats.

2. Check that you are eligible

   LinkedIn Help says eligibility depends on factors including whether you have used a Premium trial before, and that an active paid LinkedIn subscription can rule you out.

3. Start the trial and record the renewal date

   Redeem from Subscriptions and payments in settings, enter the card, then copy the renewal date from LinkedIn Admin Center into your calendar.

4. Build one account list and one saved lead search

   Keep the scope narrow: one segment that matches your ideal customer profile, so the results are readable at the end.

5. Turn on alerts and work them every morning

   Saved leads and saved searches generate alerts. Reacting to them is the behavior you are actually testing, not the search filters.

6. Run one honest outreach batch

   Same message quality you use today, only the targeting changed, so the comparison with your normal LinkedIn work is fair.

7. Copy what matters into your CRM as you go

   Canceling removes saved leads, saved accounts and Sales Navigator messages, so anything you want to keep has to live somewhere else.

8. Decide, then cancel or keep before the cut-off

   Compare the trial against your written decision, and cancel at least one day before the renewal date if the answer is no.

Narrow beats broad here. One segment worked properly tells you more than five segments skimmed, and it keeps the comparison with your pre-trial LinkedIn prospecting honest.

A week by week plan for the trial window

The table below splits a roughly month-long window into four parts. If your trial is longer or shorter, stretch or compress the middle two, never the last one.

The last week is the one people skip, and it is the one the card punishes. Treat the review as a calendar appointment with yourself, not as something you will remember.

A scorecard for the keep or cancel decision

This scorecard was written for this page. It deliberately avoids anything a vendor can inflate, and it compares the trial against your own baseline rather than against a published average.

Anything that depends on a number you cannot verify does not belong on this list. If the honest answer to most rows is no, the paid months will not change it, and canceling is the right outcome of a good test.

Saved leads, lists and searches during the trial

Lists are where a Sales Navigator trial either becomes a workflow or stays a search box. LinkedIn's own overview describes saved leads and saved accounts as custom lists you build, plus several lists it generates for you.

• Custom lists: your own lead and account lists, used to organize and prioritize what you work.
• Recommended leads: LinkedIn describes a list of up to 100 recommended leads based on your past activity and buyer intent signals.
• New executives at saved accounts: a generated list of CXO and VP level people who joined a company in your saved accounts in the past three months, refreshed weekly.
• Recently accepted connections and InMails: people who accepted a connection request or responded to an InMail in the last 30 days, refreshed daily.
• Saved searches: stored filter sets that notify you by weekly email and homepage alerts when new matches appear.

Build the list the way you would build any prospect list: from a defined segment, not from whoever the filters happened to return. The ideal customer profile is the input, and the filters are only the instrument.

Alerts are the part worth testing

Search is impressive on day one and forgettable by day ten. Alerts are the part that changes a week, because they tell you when something moved at a company you already care about.

LinkedIn describes alerts as real-time signals such as job changes and new content, and saved searches as a source of notifications when new people or companies match your criteria. Both feed the same homepage.

Test them as a habit, not a feature. Open the alerts every morning for two weeks, and count how many produced a message you would not otherwise have sent. That count, and not the filter list, is your answer.

Alerts are also the cleanest kind of intent data available inside LinkedIn: they are observed events at named companies, not a model's guess about a market.

Testing InMail without wasting the allowance

LinkedIn's plan comparison page lists a monthly InMail allowance on every Sales Navigator plan, so a trial comes with a finite batch. Spending it badly is the most common trial mistake.

Send a connection request first where the person is likely to accept, and save InMail for people who are out of reach or who ignored a request. That keeps the allowance for the cases only InMail can solve.

Write each one against a specific trigger from an alert. A message that names a new role, a funding announcement or a published post outperforms a message that names your product, and it is the only fair test of the tool.

How to cancel the free trial before it renews

LinkedIn documents cancellation through LinkedIn Admin Center. The path below follows its article for canceling a Sales Navigator Core account.

1. Sign in to your LinkedIn account.
2. Click the icon in the upper-right corner and click Settings and privacy.
3. Select Account preferences in the left menu and scroll to Subscriptions and payments.
4. Click Manage Premium account, then Manage subscription, which opens LinkedIn Admin Center.
5. Click Purchases in the left menu and select the subscription you want to cancel.
6. Under Actions, select Cancel free trial and follow the on-screen steps.

Timing is the whole game. LinkedIn says to cancel at least one day before the auto-renewal date to make sure you are not charged for the billing period after the trial, and that you can check that date in Admin Center.

Two exceptions matter. LinkedIn says a subscription bought through its sales team is canceled through your account manager, and a subscription bought on an iOS device must be canceled on that device.

Note also what canceling a trial does to your access. LinkedIn states that canceling a free trial ends it immediately, unlike canceling a paid subscription, which runs to the end of the current billing cycle.

What happens to saved leads and lists afterwards

This is the part most trial guides skip, and it is the part that costs people work. LinkedIn's own considerations page is blunt about it.

• Data is removed on cancellation. LinkedIn says there is currently no option to save critical information such as messages, saved leads and saved accounts, and that it is removed as soon as you cancel.
• Coming back does not bring it back. If you buy Sales Navigator again later, LinkedIn says you start over with a new account and none of the previous data.
• InMail credits do not transfer. Unused credits do not move to your personal LinkedIn account, and Sales Navigator messages are not readable from it.
• Your personal profile is untouched. LinkedIn says canceling Sales Navigator does not affect the information or data in your personal LinkedIn account.
• Corporate transfers are a special case. LinkedIn documents transferring data from a single-user subscription to a corporate Sales Navigator account when your employer adds you to a license.

The practical answer is to treat the CRM as the system of record from day one. Notes, owners and next steps belong there, because that is what survives the renewal date either way.

Work within the rules while you do it. The sales intelligence you build should be your own notes about accounts and conversations, not a bulk copy of LinkedIn's database.

If you forget and get charged

LinkedIn publishes a refund policy, and it is narrow. Premium subscriptions, Sales Navigator included, may be refundable within 7 days from the date the subscription is charged, without Premium usage, and a previous refund can affect eligibility.

There are regional rights on top of that. LinkedIn notes, for example, that citizens of the European Union are entitled to a full refund during the 14 days after the subscription begins, and that this period starts on the first day of a free trial.

If the purchase went through the LinkedIn iOS app, LinkedIn says all refunds must be issued by Apple and directs you to contact Apple instead.

None of this is a substitute for a calendar reminder. Ask for the refund if you missed the date, but design the trial so you never need to.

Can you get a second Sales Navigator free trial?

Not quickly, and not by changing your mind. LinkedIn states that after you cancel a free Premium trial you will not be eligible to sign up for another free trial for at least 12 months.

It goes further on eligibility in general: if you are already using, or have already used, a free Premium trial, you may not be eligible for any further free Premium subscriptions. Treat one trial per account per year as the ceiling.

There is one documented path to more time, and it is a referral, not a second trial. LinkedIn's referral program FAQ says a subscriber can refer up to 15 of their 1st-degree connections from the Referral hub, reached with the gift icon.

Anyone who signs up through that link receives their first two months of Sales Navigator Core free. LinkedIn adds that each referral link is unique, can be redeemed once per member account, and that admins can switch the program off for a contract.

The eligibility rules still apply to the person being referred. LinkedIn lists three conditions: no current Sales Navigator subscription, no LinkedIn.com free trial of any product in the past 12 months, and no other active Premium subscription.

Trials on an employer-owned account

If your company already holds a Sales Navigator contract, your situation is different from a solo trial. LinkedIn says that when a subscription is provided by your employer, you contact your admin to be removed from the account rather than canceling yourself.

The trial eligibility also travels with the member, not the company. A seller who used a Premium trial last year personally can be ineligible even though the employer has never bought anything.

For team evaluations, run the trial on one or two sellers with the clearest pipeline, then judge the tool on their results. Rolling it out to everyone during a trial produces noise, not a decision, and it wastes the eligibility of every account involved.

Common Sales Navigator free trial mistakes

• Starting the trial with no written question it has to answer.
• Never opening Admin Center, so the renewal date is a guess.
• Picking the wrong plan first, then discovering you cannot switch for free during the trial.
• Saving hundreds of leads and reading none of the alerts they produce.
• Spending the InMail allowance on people who would have accepted a connection request.
• Leaving every note inside Sales Navigator, then losing it all on the day you cancel.
• Canceling on day two to be safe, which ends access immediately and wastes the rest of the window.
• Burning a trial on the wrong LinkedIn product and being locked out for 12 months.
• Judging the tool on how the search feels rather than on meetings booked.

A message for asking about a referral

If a connection already pays for Sales Navigator, a referral gives you a longer window than a standard trial. The template below asks for one plainly, gives the person an easy way to decline, and was written for this page.

Subject: Small ask about Sales Navigator

Hi {{firstName}},

You have been using Sales Navigator for a while, so a small ask. LinkedIn lets subscribers refer 1st-degree connections, and the person referred gets the first two months of Sales Navigator Core free.

I want to test {{useCase}} properly before we pay for seats, and that is enough time to see whether it changes anything. If you have a referral spare, I would use it this week.

If the program is switched off on your contract, no problem at all.

{{senderName}}

Frequently asked questions