Kairon vs Origami
the honest comparison.
Both turn a description of your buyer into outreach. Origami searches the live web and sends from a built-in Sequencer. Kairon runs your LinkedIn seat with a verdict per company. Checked against both products, dated, and linked so you can verify it yourself.
Same goal, different ways to get there.
- You want LinkedIn outreach from one seat at $49 a month, without buying a plan of credits first
- You want an ICP verdict per company that cites the evidence behind it
- You want outreach to wait for a public signal: a job change, a new post, a profile view, a new follower, or engagement on a rival’s post
- You want to connect Claude or ChatGPT by signing in, with no API key to paste
- The bottleneck is finding: your buyers are hard to reach and not cleanly described by LinkedIn filters
- You need people who barely exist on LinkedIn, sourced from Google Maps, job boards and company sites
- You want verified emails and phones from waterfalls of 5 and 9 providers, for less per lookup. A verified email costs about $0.04 at Starter’s included credits, against $0.089 in Kairon
- You want email and LinkedIn cadences in one tool: Starter at $99/mo includes 5 email and 3 LinkedIn senders, and cadences run up to 10 steps
- You want to export to CSV into a stack you already have
- You want to drive it from your own code or an assistant: their docs describe a v3 API and a hosted MCP endpoint
What each one actually costs.
Feature by feature.
| Kairon | Origami | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is built to do | Run the outreach: invitations and messages going out on your LinkedIn seat, paced and logged | Find the people across the live web, then reach them: a prompt returns a verified table, and the Sequencer runs email and LinkedIn cadences |
| Where the data comes from | LinkedIn and Sales Navigator, plus public signals that decide the timing: a job change, a new post, a profile view, a new follower, engagement on a rival’s post | 50+ live sources per prompt, including Google Maps, social profiles, job boards and company sites |
| Contact data | Priced per lookup. Work emails come from Clay first, then Apollo for Clay’s misses: $0.089 when found and $0.063 when the person has none. Mobile phones come from ContactOut: $0.325 when found and $0.025 when not. Checked October 3, 2026 | A genuine strength, priced at cost: a verified email is 3 credits (5 providers) and a verified phone 15 credits (9 providers), free if not found. At Starter’s included credits that is about $0.04 and $0.20, as of 2026-10-17 |
| Sending | It sends the invitation from your own LinkedIn account, waits for them to accept, sends the message, and stops the moment someone writes back | A Sequencer with social and email cadences of up to 10 steps each, and unlimited sends from every connected mailbox and social account. LinkedIn senders come with every paid plan: 3 on Starter and Pro, 10 on Max, as of 2026-10-17 |
| ICP qualification | Every company gets a verdict against your ICP with the evidence it was based on | Each lead gets a fit score from 0 to 100 with a written reason, per their API docs read on 2026-10-17 |
| Approval before send | Autopilot by default, with time to review or cancel each normal send. Manual mode waits for approval before every message | Optional: a campaign setting holds every message until a person releases it, and each unsent message can be edited, per their API docs read on 2026-10-17 |
| Driving it from an assistant | The product is a hosted MCP server plus a CLI, so Claude or ChatGPT can run it directly. Listed in the Official MCP Registry as com.heykairon/kairon | A v3 API, a hosted MCP endpoint and a CLI, all with a bearer API key, per their API docs read on 2026-10-17. We did not find which plan includes them |
| Pipeline & CRM | HubSpot and Salesforce, built in. When a lead reaches the stage you pick, it lands in your CRM with its whole LinkedIn conversation | We found no CRM integration documented on their site as of 2026-08-05 |
| How you pay | $49 a month per seat, with $10 of usage balance included. Data lookups and AI come out of that balance, and you can add more | Per credit, consumed by searching and enriching. Plans renew monthly, and auto top-up keeps you running past the allowance, with a limit you set |
| Free tier | No free tier: a 7-day trial, card required | No free tier: a 7-day trial of Starter with 2,000 credits, card required |
What Origami is genuinely better at.
Finding people who are hard to reach through LinkedIn filters. Each prompt searches 50+ sources in real time, including Google Maps, job boards and company sites, which is where a lot of real businesses actually live.
origami.chat · 2026-08-05Contact data depth: emails run through a waterfall of 5 providers and phone numbers through 9, with the first verified result winning.
origami.chat · 2026-08-05Contact data at cost. A verified email is 3 credits and nothing when not found: about $0.04 at Starter’s included credits, against $0.089 in Kairon. A verified phone is 15 credits, about $0.20, against $0.325 in Kairon. Origami’s dollar figures are derived from $99 for 7,500 credits.
origami.chat/pricing · 2026-10-17Sending capacity inside the plan price. Starter includes 5 email and 3 LinkedIn senders, Pro 20 and 3, and Max 50 and 10. Cadences run up to 10 steps, with unlimited sends from every connected account.
origami.chat/pricing · 2026-10-17Breadth across verticals it names itself: healthcare, fintech, e-commerce, biotech, proptech, hospitality, logistics, manufacturing and nonprofit.
origami.chat · 2026-08-05It fits an existing stack rather than replacing it: free CSV export on every paid tier, and it positions itself squarely against Apollo, ZoomInfo and Clay.
origami.chat · 2026-08-05What Kairon does differently.
One LinkedIn seat at $49 a month, with no plan of credits to buy first
A verdict per company against your ICP, with the evidence behind it, so you can see why a lead was kept or dropped
Outreach can wait for a public signal: a job change, a new post, a profile view, a new follower, or engagement on a rival’s post
Connects to Claude or ChatGPT with an OAuth sign-in, with no API key to paste. Listed in the Official MCP Registry as com.heykairon/kairon since August 2026
Every action on every campaign is recorded, so months later you can still answer who was contacted, with what, and when
What to actually expect.
Origami scales with how well you can describe a buyer. Give it a precise profile and it returns a verified table with contact data, sourced live rather than from a static database. Its Sequencer can then run email and LinkedIn cadences to those people. The work it removes is research and sending. It also scores each lead’s fit from 0 to 100, with a written reason.
Kairon scales with timing and restraint. It reaches out where a public signal fired and the evidence supports the ICP match, on a real LinkedIn seat, with time to edit or cancel each send. Expect fewer sends, aimed at people more likely to already be in-market.
Our own numbers, because we are asking you to judge ours too. Kairon used Kairon for a month: 444 invitations sent, 169 accepted (38.1%), and 59 of those 169 people wrote back (34.9%). They come straight out of our own database, not from a survey. It is one account and one month, so take it as a reference point, not a promise. The query that produces it is published, in case you want to run it yourself. We do not invent numbers, ours or theirs.
What we could not confirm about Origami.
Correction, October 17, 2026: this page used to say we found no LinkedIn sending path on Origami’s pricing or product pages as of August 5, 2026. Their pricing page now includes LinkedIn senders on every paid plan (3 on Starter and Pro, 10 on Max) and social cadences in the Sequencer.
origami.chat/pricing · 2026-10-17Correction, October 17, 2026: this page used to say we found no MCP server or public API on Origami’s site. Their API docs describe both: a v3 API and a hosted MCP endpoint at origami.chat/mcp, with a bearer API key. We did not find which plan includes them.
docs.origami.chat · 2026-10-17Credit pricing means cost moves with usage. Their own pricing page offers pay-as-you-go beyond the plan allowance with a limit you set, which is honest, but a heavy prospecting month will not cost the same as a light one.
origami.chat/pricing · 2026-08-05When to actually pick Origami instead.
If your problem is that you cannot find your buyers in the first place, pick Origami. It searches the live web rather than a database. It reaches people who barely exist on LinkedIn. It hands you verified emails and phone numbers for less per lookup than ours, at the credits each plan includes. It also sends email and LinkedIn cadences from the same plan. If your buyers are well described on LinkedIn and you want a verdict per company with its evidence, Kairon is aimed at that.
Fair questions.
Is this comparison biased?
We built it, so read it with that in mind. Every price and feature claim above links to Origami's own pages so you can check it yourself, and where we could not confirm something we said so instead of guessing.
How often is this updated?
Whenever we notice something has changed. Prices and features are marked with the date we last checked them.
Can I use Kairon and Origami together?
Yes. One split is Origami for finding and enriching people the LinkedIn filters miss, and Kairon for judging them against your ICP and sending from your LinkedIn seat. Both can send on LinkedIn, so pick one tool to own the sending and avoid two tools writing to the same person.
Is Kairon or Origami cheaper?
At entry, Kairon: $49 a month per seat against $99 for Origami Starter. Per contact lookup, Origami: a verified email is about $0.04 at Starter’s included credits against $0.089 in Kairon, and a verified phone about $0.20 against $0.325. Origami’s plans include email senders; Kairon Starter does not, so you add your own Instantly account or mailboxes. Kairon lookup prices were checked October 3, 2026. If you buy mostly contact data, Origami is the better value, and we would rather say so.