AI SDR

Why did a lead source add no contacts?

In short

Why did my AI SDR lead source not add any contacts?

Lead sources fail quietly by design: almost every reason below produces no error message at all. The two most common are a preview that expired before you finished the wizard, which stops the search from ever starting, and a monthly sourcing allowance that has run out. The third is a setting the server rejected and did not tell you about.

Quick fix

Check your monthly sourcing allowance. Every AI SDR lead source draws from the same one, and at zero nothing runs.
If you used the web search source and previewed companies first, set it up again without pausing; the preview is only valid for 30 minutes.
Open the source's settings and confirm they saved. A source saved with nothing in it will never run.
Check every LinkedIn address you pasted is a real LinkedIn address. Anything else is discarded without warning.
If you were expecting the "changed jobs" signal, look in the Autopilot filters instead; it is not a lead source.

Didn't work? Contact Reply support; the team can check your account directly.

Symptom

An AI SDR sequence has a contact source attached. The sequence is active. No contacts have arrived (not a reduced number, none at all) and nothing anywhere reports a problem.

Which source is this about?

This page covers the sources that search on your behalf:

AI web search – you describe the companies you want and Reply searches the open web
Competitor's followers – people who follow competitor pages on LinkedIn
Post engagers – people who liked or commented on LinkedIn posts
Technology used and hiring signals

If contacts arrived and then stopped, read Why did Autopilot stop adding contacts? instead. This page is about a source that never delivered anyone.

The six reasons a source delivers nothing

1. The preview expired before you finished

This applies to the AI web search source, and it is the sharpest failure on this page.

When you preview sample companies, Reply holds the context of that preview for 30 minutes. If you take longer than that to work through the rest of the wizard, the context is gone. When the sequence is finalized the search does not start: no warning at setup, no error afterwards, and the sequence finishes with zero contacts.

How to recognize it: you previewed companies, saw sensible results, then spent time on the other steps. The sequence launched cleanly and stayed empty.

What to do: set the source up again and complete the wizard promptly. If you need to think about the other steps, do that first and add the search source last.

2. The monthly sourcing allowance is used up

Every AI SDR lead source draws on the same monthly allowance of sourced contacts, shared across web search, the intent signals and Autopilot together. It resets on your billing month.

When some allowance remains but less than you asked for, the request is quietly reduced to what is left, so you can ask for 300 and get 40 with no explanation. When none remains, the source is skipped entirely.

How to recognize it: other sources in other sequences also stopped delivering around the same time.

What to do: check where you are in the billing period. The allowance is set by your plan.

3. The settings were rejected and you were not told

If the source's settings do not pass validation on the server, the run is abandoned and the failure is recorded internally rather than shown to you. The source still looks correctly configured in the interface.

The usual triggers are an empty required field, a fit threshold outside the allowed range, or a count of contacts outside what the source accepts.

How to recognize it: the settings look complete, the sequence is active, and nothing has ever run.

What to do: open the source, re-enter the values deliberately, and save again. If it still never runs, contact support; this one is hard to diagnose from outside.

4. The addresses you pasted were discarded

Competitor pages and creator profiles must be LinkedIn addresses. Anything that is not one is discarded silently. If every address you supplied is discarded, the source is left with nothing to watch and the sequence ships without a working source.

This also happens when the sequence was generated for you: if the generator could not resolve a description into real LinkedIn profiles, it drops the signal and still reports success.

How to recognize it: you pasted company or person names, or a non-LinkedIn URL.

What to do: paste the LinkedIn page addresses themselves.

5. A post-engagers source was saved with nothing in it

The server accepts a post-engagers source with no addresses at all; only the browser checks. A source saved that way is valid, active, and will never produce anyone.

How to recognize it: the source exists but its list of posts or profiles is empty.

What to do: add at least one post or creator profile and save again.

6. The posts you chose stopped being watched

Two modes behave differently:

Specific posts you paste are scraped for a few days and then stop. Engagement after that window is not collected.
Creator profiles are re-checked daily for as long as the source is active.

Competitor pages are also re-checked daily.

How to recognize it: you pasted individual posts some time ago and expected them to keep producing.

What to do: use creator profiles for continuing intake, and paste specific posts only for recent ones. Expect a creator source to deliver most of its contacts in the first run and a trickle afterwards, because each later run only has new posts to work with. If you re-run a source within a few hours you may also see the same engagement as before; the underlying data is cached briefly.

7. The run was abandoned without reporting back

Searching happens away from your sequence, and a run that takes too long is given up on. When that happens nothing is sent back at all: no contacts, no error, no change of state. The source stays as it was.

This is the reason a source can appear to be still working days later. It is not still working.

How to recognize it: the source shows as running or as generating, and has done for far longer than a search should take. Nothing has arrived and nothing has failed.

What to do: set the source up again rather than waiting. If it happens twice on the same query, narrow the query; very broad searches are the ones that run long enough to be abandoned.

8. A company was reached but nobody came back from it

When the search can see a company but cannot retrieve people from it, that company is reported as having nobody rather than as having failed. The two are indistinguishable from your side.

How to recognize it: the company count looks right but the contact count is far below it, with no pattern to which companies produced people.

What to do: re-run the source. A retrieval failure is usually temporary, whereas a company that genuinely has no matching people will keep returning none.

"Changed jobs in the last 90 days" is not a lead source

If you are looking for it among the contact sources, it is not there. It is an Autopilot search filter, not a source you add.

It also behaves unlike the other filters: switching it on clears your other company-level criteria: account lists, industries, company locations, revenue and headcount ranges, keywords and the hiring flag are all removed, because it is an exclusive targeting mode. There is no confirmation before this happens.

It is also not supported when importing a Sales Navigator search: that filter is skipped, and the rest of the search still applies.

How many contacts a source can deliver

Each source has a ceiling per run, and the number you ask for is reduced to fit both that ceiling and your remaining allowance; whichever is lower. A single run will not exceed 500 contacts whatever you request.

Each post is read once per sequence, not once a day. There is a cap on how much of a post's engagement is read, and once that post has been read to the cap in a sequence, it is finished there; permanently. It does not refill tomorrow. So a source watching several posts collects more than one watching a single post, and re-adding a post you have already used adds nothing.

That is also why a creator-profile source keeps producing while a specific-post source does not: the daily re-check finds value only in posts the creator has published since the last run. Posts already read are done.

FAQ

Why did contacts arrive with no job title or email address?

Follower and engagement sources often return little more than a name and a company. That is the nature of the data, not a fault. Personalization falls back to what it has.

Will I be told when a source finds nothing?

No. None of these sources notifies you when a run returns nobody. That is why this page starts with the allowance rather than an error message.

Does a lead source use credits?

Sourcing is metered against your monthly AI SDR contact allowance, not against credits.

Still stuck? Contact Reply support

If these steps didn't solve the problem, the Reply support team can look at your account directly. Open the Reply Help Center and send the team a message.

To get an answer faster, include:

which lead source you added, and its settings
how many contacts you asked for
where you are in the billing period
when the sequence was finalized, and your timezone

Don't send passwords, API keys, or access tokens.

Why did Autopilot stop adding contacts? – contacts arrived and then stopped
Why did a search return too few contacts?
Why is the fit score empty? – contacts arrived but are not scored

Build with Reply

REST API: AI SDR sequences – read and change a sequence's intent signals