What is a good cold email reply rate?

On a tightly built, well-researched list in 2026, a realistic benchmark is 6–12% total reply rate (including negative replies) with a 1.5–3% positive reply rate. Anything claiming 30%+ is usually warm intros mislabelled as cold, or pre-privacy-update screenshots.

Open rate has become an unreliable metric thanks to privacy proxies and bot openers, so judge performance on positive replies and meetings booked rather than opens. Reply rate climbs most when you tighten the ICP and sharpen the opener.