We analyzed 196,696 LinkedIn connection requests. Here’s what actually gets replies.

Our LinkedIn Outreach Benchmarks 2026 covers 180,155 requests sent between January 2025 and August 2026.

The baseline funnel:

• 27.1% of connection requests get accepted

• 27.6% of accepted connections reply

What surprised us:

1. A note nearly doubles your reply rate. Accepted connections who got a note with the request replied 47.8% of the time, versus 25.5% without one. Notes didn’t clearly change acceptance, but they changed what happened after it.

2. Sending less gets you accepted more. Accounts sending 10 to 19 invites a day saw 32.0% acceptance. At 20 to 29 a day, it dropped to 26.7%. Yet 75.8% of active account-days ran at 25+ invites.

3. Weekends work as well as weekdays. Acceptance ranged from 26.4% to 28.2% across the week, and weekends were within 0.3 points of weekdays.

4. Follow-ups matter. 14.7% of all replies came only after a follow-up message. Follow-ups turned 13.9% of silent new connections into conversations.

5. Getting people to reply is getting harder. From 2025 to 2026, acceptance went up (26.3% to 28.1%) but replies dropped (32.2% to 22.0%). People still connect; they’re just choosier about responding. Generic first messages are what’s dying.

6. It’s faster than you think. The median time from cold request to booked meeting was 5.8 days. 56% of meetings were booked within a week.

Full report: https://reachium.io/research/linkedin-outreach-benchmarks-2026

This all considered I feel like if you are better then 50% of people at outreach you should be able to beat these benchmarks.

What is your guys highest rates you have ever gotten?