The best parallel dialers in 2026 are Orum, Nooks, Salesfinity, Trellus and Apollo’s Advanced Dialer, with Kixie’s multi-line PowerDialer and JustCall’s predictive dialer as close alternatives. A parallel dialer rings several numbers at once for one rep, usually 3 to 5, and connects the rep to the first person who answers.
This page explains how parallel dialing differs from power and predictive dialing, when it pays off and when it backfires (including the FCC’s 3% abandoned-call rule), and compares eight dialers on the same six fields.
The 8 parallel dialers at a glance
Here are all eight dialers with identical fields. Prices are monthly billing, read on each vendor’s pricing page on 27 and 28 September 2026.
| Tool | Lines at once | Entry price (monthly) | Pricing model | HubSpot / Salesforce |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Orum | Up to 5 | Not published | Quote, 9-seat minimum | Both |
| Nooks | Not published | Not published | Quote, by module | Both |
| Salesfinity | Up to 5 | 299 USD / user (Gold) | Per user | Both |
| Trellus | Up to 5 | 149.99 USD (Power + Parallel) | Per individual plan | Both |
| Apollo | Up to 5 (3 recommended) | Add-on 149 USD / team, plus seats | Seats plus add-on | Both |
| Kixie | Up to 4 (plan) or 10 (help center tier) | Not published | Not published | Both |
| JustCall | Up to 10 (predictive) | Not published (SalesPro) | Per user, 2 minimum | Both |
| PhoneBurner | 1 (no parallel mode) | 165 USD / user | Per user | Both |
What is a parallel dialer?
A parallel dialer is sales dialing software that calls several phone numbers at the same time for one rep and connects the rep to the first person who answers. The other lines are hung up, and the next batch starts when the rep finishes the call.
It differs from a power dialer, which calls one number at a time, and from a predictive dialer, which dials ahead for a whole team of reps. Some vendors call it a multi-line dialer. Among the dialers here, parallel dialing usually tops out at 5 lines per rep, with answer detection that skips voicemail and busy signals.
How a parallel dialer works
A parallel dialer works in rounds: it rings a batch of numbers, sorts the answers in a fraction of a second, and puts one human through to the rep.
- Lines per round. You set the batch size. Apollo lets each rep choose up to five and “recommends three”; Kixie has a “Dial at a Time” setting on every PowerList.
- Answer detection. The dialer decides whether a person, a voicemail greeting or a phone tree picked up. Apollo’s help center says it “is unable to differentiate between a voicemail and an interactive voice response (IVR) system”. Orum’s Operator also handles Apple and Google call screeners.
- The connect. Orum cites “a median connect time of .7 seconds”. Apollo puts its latency at “approximately three seconds if you use a voicemail drop”. Both are the vendors’ own figures.
- The rest of the batch. Apollo “connects you to the first prospect who answers and automatically disconnects the remaining calls.” Kixie still counts a line “dropped when another number picks up” as a dial attempt.
Parallel dialer vs power dialer vs predictive dialer
The three modes differ in who waits: the rep, the person who answers, or nobody.
With a power dialer, the rep waits through every ring and voicemail, but a rep is on every answer. With a parallel dialer, the rep waits less, and whoever answers second can be left with nobody. A predictive dialer dials for a pool of reps based on when it expects one to be free, so the answer that finds no free rep is built into the model.
Our power dialer comparison draws all four modes, including preview dialing, and covers the single-line tools in depth.
When a parallel dialer helps
A parallel dialer helps when calling is the whole job and the list is long: it removes the minutes a rep spends listening to rings, greetings and busy signals.
- The volume problem. Phone-centric SDR teams average 56 dials and 4.6 quality conversations a day, in The Bridge Group’s 2025 survey of 351 B2B companies. That is about one quality conversation per 12 dials.
- Rounds, not dials. Across 300M+ calls, Gong puts the average rep’s connect rate at 5.4%, about 19 dials per conversation. With 5 lines, those 19 dials take about 4 rounds. The connect rate per dial stays the same; the dead time between conversations shrinks.
- The vendors’ own numbers. Nooks says teams using its dialer “generate 5x more dials, 4x more conversations, and 3x more meetings”. Salesfinity promises “10-15 live conversations an hour”. We found no independent study that compares meetings booked per dialing mode.
It fits SDRs with multi-hour call blocks, long lists of similar buyers who hear the same opener, and lists built on direct mobiles.
When a parallel dialer hurts
A parallel dialer hurts when a second person answers, when the list is short or high value, and when your campaign falls under the FCC’s abandoned-call rule.
The second person who answers
Picture a batch of four calls. Dana, a plant manager in Columbus, Ohio, and Luis, an operations director in Indianapolis, both say “hello” within the same second. Dana hears your rep. Luis hears the line close.
Luis is a prospect you paid to find. He picked up to a closed line, and if he calls back, your rep is on another call. Every extra line you add raises the odds of that collision.
The FCC’s 3% abandoned-call rule
The FCC rule on abandoned calls, 47 CFR 64.1200(a)(7), bars abandoning “more than three percent of all telemarketing calls that are answered live by a person, as measured over a 30-day period for a single calling campaign.”
- What counts as abandoned. A call is abandoned “if it is not connected to a live sales representative within two (2) seconds of the called person’s completed greeting.”
- What must play instead. When no rep is free within those 2 seconds, the caller must play a prerecorded message that identifies the business, says the call was for “telemarketing purposes”, and gives a number and an automated option to opt out.
- Ring time. A separate rule, 64.1200(a)(6), bars hanging up an unanswered telemarketing call before “15 seconds or four (4) rings.”
- Records. The seller or telemarketer “must maintain records establishing compliance”.
- Business calls. The FCC defines telemarketing as a sales call “transmitted to any person”, and (a)(7) exempts only tax-exempt nonprofits. The FTC’s own abandoned-call rule sits in the Telemarketing Sales Rule, which exempts most business-to-business calls (16 CFR 310.6(b)(7)).
How this applies to your campaign is a question for counsel. This is a summary of the regulation, not legal advice. The wider rules, including autodialer consent for mobiles, are in our guide to B2B cold calling laws.
Short lists and high-value accounts
At 5 lines, a 200-contact list is dialed through in 40 rounds, and the context for each person loads only as the call connects. For 40 named enterprise accounts where the research matters, a power dialer or click-to-call leaves time to read the record first.
How we picked these parallel dialers
We picked parallel dialer software that runs several lines per rep, plus the two modes sales teams most often weigh against it.
- Parallel first. Orum, Nooks, Salesfinity, Trellus and Apollo run parallel dialing as a core mode; Kixie adds it as a multi-line PowerDialer.
- Two reference points. JustCall for predictive dialing, and PhoneBurner for single-line power dialing.
- Published facts only. Pricing pages, product pages and help centers, rendered in a browser with a US locale on 27 and 28 September 2026. When a vendor sells on quote, we write “not published”.
- Six identical fields. Lines dialed at once, entry price, pricing model, CRM integrations, best for, and where it falls short.
- Left out. Aircall and Dialpad publish power dialers but no parallel line count; Salesloft and Outreach publish no parallel mode for their built-in dialers.
The 8 parallel dialers compared
1. Orum
Orum is an AI dialer for outbound SDR teams that switches between parallel and power dialing, with an agent called Operator that handles voicemails, call screeners and dead numbers.
Lines dialed at once: Up to 5 (“Run up to 5 lines at once with parallel dialing”).
Entry price: Not published. The pricing page asks you to request pricing, and the free trial is limited to 500 dials (Orum pricing).
Pricing model: Quote only, by package and number of users, with a 9-seat minimum.
CRM integrations: Salesforce and HubSpot, plus Outreach, Salesloft, Gong Engage and Apollo.
Best for: SDR teams of 9 or more who call all day and want parallel lines inside their CRM and sequencer.
Where it falls short: The 9-seat minimum rules out small teams, AI Coaching is an add-on, and its speed figures are its own.
2. Nooks
Nooks is an AI sales platform built around a parallel dialer, with sequencing, coaching and a contact data module, sold on custom quotes.
Lines dialed at once: Not published. Nooks says the dialer “runs several lines at once and detects a pickup in milliseconds” (Nooks AI dialer).
Entry price: Not published; the pricing page offers a custom quote (Nooks pricing).
Pricing model: Quote only, by module: dialer, sequencing, signals, coaching and contact data enrichment.
CRM integrations: Salesforce and HubSpot, plus Outreach, Salesloft and Gong. Teams on other CRMs can dial a CSV of up to 2,000 records.
Best for: SDR teams that want parallel dialing and mobile-number enrichment from one vendor.
Where it falls short: No public prices and no published line count. CSV dialing must be switched on by an admin, and calls made from a CSV list do not log back to a connected CRM (Nooks help center).
3. Salesfinity
Salesfinity is an AI parallel dialer for SDR teams, with rotating caller IDs, number scoring and pay-per-found phone enrichment, sold self-serve on its Gold plan.
Lines dialed at once: Up to 5; the dialer “skips voicemail and busy signals”.
Entry price: 299 USD per user a month on Gold, bought by credit card with no sales call (Salesfinity pricing).
Pricing model: Per user on Gold. Enterprise and Enterprise Plus are custom quotes on annual agreements only.
CRM integrations: HubSpot (lists and call tasks, with calls written back) and Salesforce (list views, reports and tasks), plus Outreach, Salesloft, Apollo and Gong.
Best for: SDR teams that want a published per-seat price and a dialer that can add numbers itself, at 0.30 USD per valid phone number found.
Where it falls short: The highest published per-seat price of the parallel dialers here. Gold seats are individual workspaces, so team admin and coaching need an annual Enterprise contract, and “Unlimited dials and parallel lines are subject to fair-usage terms.”
4. Trellus
Trellus adds power and parallel dialing inside the tool a rep already works in, such as HubSpot, Salesforce, Salesloft, Outreach or Google Sheets.
Lines dialed at once: Up to 5, per its home page (“Dial up to 5 parallel lines”). The pricing card says “Multi line dialing” without a number.
Entry price: 149.99 USD a month for Power + Parallel, the individual plan with multi-line dialing. Power dialing alone is 99.99 USD (Trellus pricing).
Pricing model: Per individual plan, monthly. The Business plan for teams is custom.
CRM integrations: HubSpot, Salesforce, Pipedrive, Zoho CRM, Close and Attio, plus Salesloft, Outreach and Google Sheets, among 28 platforms.
Best for: Founders and individual reps who want to parallel dial from the CRM or spreadsheet they already use, at the lowest published parallel price here for one rep.
Where it falls short: Team analytics and coaching are on the quote-only Business plan. Annual pricing and security certifications are not published on the pages we reviewed.
5. Apollo Advanced Dialer
Apollo.io is a sales platform with a contact database, sequences and a dialer. Parallel and power dialing need its Advanced Dialer add-on.
Lines dialed at once: Up to 5. “Apollo recommends three, but allows up to five active calls at once” (Apollo help center).
Entry price: The Advanced Dialer add-on is 149 USD per team a month (119 USD billed annually), on top of Apollo seats from 65 USD per seat a month on Basic (Apollo pricing).
Pricing model: Per seat plus credits, with the dialer add-on priced per team. Calls on the US dialer use “2 credits per minute”.
CRM integrations: Salesforce and HubSpot, plus Outreach and Salesloft.
Best for: Teams already prospecting in Apollo that want parallel dialing without adding a vendor.
Where it falls short: You “can only use parallel or power dialing with saved contacts”. Apollo puts its latency at about three seconds with voicemail drop on, so ask how that compares with the FCC’s 2-second window, which starts after the greeting.
6. Kixie
Kixie is a business phone, SMS and CRM-connected dialer whose PowerDialer runs one line or several.
Lines dialed at once: Up to 4 on the Multi-Line PowerDialer plan, per the pricing page. Kixie’s help center lists PowerDialer add-ons of 1, 4 and 10 lines, and an AI Human Detect tier of up to 10.
Entry price: Not published. The pricing page lists the plans without prices, with a 7-day free trial (Kixie pricing).
Pricing model: Not published.
CRM integrations: HubSpot, Salesforce, Pipedrive, Zoho and HighLevel natively. HubSpot contact lists import straight into a PowerList.
Best for: SMB teams that want to start single-line and add a few parallel lines, with SMS, on one platform.
Where it falls short: No public prices, a line count that differs between pages, and AI Human Voice Detection and Do Not Call screening sold as add-ons.
7. JustCall
JustCall is a cloud phone and SMS platform whose SalesPro plan adds predictive and dynamic dialing for teams.
Lines dialed at once: “Dial up to 10 numbers at once” in predictive mode, which dials for the team rather than for one rep.
Entry price: Not published. SalesPro, which includes the predictive dialer, is quote only (JustCall pricing).
Pricing model: Per user, with a 2-license minimum.
CRM integrations: HubSpot, Salesforce, Pipedrive, Zoho CRM and Close, plus Apollo, Outreach and Salesloft on SalesPro.
Best for: Teams with several reps on one large list who want predictive dialing next to their phone system.
Where it falls short: Predictive mode carries the most exposure to the abandoned-call rule, and its price is not published.
8. PhoneBurner
PhoneBurner is a single-line power dialer with a built-in CRM. It is here as the benchmark for teams deciding whether they need parallel lines at all.
Lines dialed at once: 1. Its FAQ says “PhoneBurner is a single-line dialer” (PhoneBurner FAQ).
Entry price: 165 USD per user a month on Standard, or 140 USD billed annually (PhoneBurner pricing).
Pricing model: Per user, monthly or annual.
CRM integrations: HubSpot, Salesforce, Zoho CRM, Close and HighLevel, plus its own CRM.
Best for: Reps working short or high-value lists, where every person who answers must reach a rep.
Where it falls short: No parallel mode, by design, and number add-ons such as ARMOR and Connect Scores have no listed price.
Why data quality matters more with parallel dialing
Data quality matters more with parallel dialing because every number in a batch takes a line: a dead number wastes a slot, and a wrong person who answers takes the rep.
In Belkins’ 2025 data from 175,000+ dials on the Nooks dialer, 9.9% of dials reached a live person, gatekeepers included, and 58% of those pickups became conversations. So about 4 in 10 live pickups were not a conversation. On a parallel dialer, each of those pickups wins the race and disconnects the other lines.
- Dead and disconnected numbers. Detection skips them, but each one takes a line. With 5 lines and a list where 1 number in 5 is dead, the average round runs on 4.
- Switchboards and phone trees. They answer like a person, and Apollo’s dialer cannot tell an IVR from a voicemail greeting.
- The wrong person. A number that now belongs to someone else reaches a live human, so the rep gets the stranger and the real prospect on another line is dropped.
- Attempts on the prospect. Kixie counts each line in a round as an attempt, even one dropped when another number picks up, against a daily cap per number that defaults to 2 (Kixie help center).
- Number type. In Nooks’ data from nearly 3 million dials, mobiles connected 45% more often than other numbers. Our breakdown of direct dial vs mobile explains why.
Already have names and companies? The Mobile Finder adds mobiles to your CSV. The steps for each dialer are in send Scalelist mobiles to your dialer, and every connector is on the Scalelist integrations page.
Scalelist is not always the cheaper option. If you already pay for Salesfinity seats, its enrichment at 0.30 USD per valid number found costs less per number than a Scalelist mobile, which runs from about 0.65 USD (Scaler 20K) to 1.16 USD (Scaler 500). Nooks and Orum also bundle numbers into their contracts.
Scalelist fits when you need the people as well as the numbers, in a list that works with whichever dialer you pick.
Describe the people you call in one sentence, see how many match at no cost, and pay 20 credits only for each mobile found.
Find your first 20 contactsHow to choose a parallel dialer
Choose the mode from how long your reps call and how clean the list is, then ask six questions before you sign.
- How many lines per rep, and can we cap it per list? Apollo and Kixie let you set it; start at 3.
- What does the second person who answers hear? A closed line, or an identification and opt-out message.
- How fast does a rep connect after the greeting, and how is it measured? Compare the answer with the 2-second window.
- Can you report our abandonment rate per campaign over 30 days? The rule requires records.
- How long does an unanswered line ring? The FCC floor is 15 seconds or four rings; Kixie’s PowerList default timeout is 30 seconds.
- Does every list source log calls to our CRM? At Nooks, calls from a CSV list do not.
Test with 50 of your own prospects, not the demo list. Orum’s trial covers 500 dials and Kixie’s runs 7 days. For the full calling stack around the dialer, see the best cold calling software; for scripts, cadence and metrics, the complete guide to cold calling.
FAQ
What is a parallel dialer?
A parallel dialer is sales dialing software that calls several numbers at once for one rep and connects the rep to the first person who answers. The other lines are hung up and a new batch starts after the call. Orum, Salesfinity, Trellus and Apollo run up to 5 lines per rep; Nooks does not publish its line count.
What is the difference between a parallel dialer and a power dialer?
A power dialer calls one number at a time and starts the next call when the rep hangs up, so every person who answers reaches a rep. A parallel dialer rings several numbers at once and keeps the first answer. It cuts the time spent on rings and voicemail, but a second person who answers can be disconnected.
Is parallel dialing legal in the US?
Parallel dialing is widely used, but it carries rules. The FCC bars abandoning more than 3% of telemarketing calls answered live, measured per 30-day campaign, and counts a call as abandoned if no rep connects within 2 seconds of the greeting. Autodialer consent rules for mobiles can also apply. Check your setup with counsel; this is not legal advice.
How many lines should a parallel dialer run?
Start with 3 lines per rep. Apollo recommends three and allows up to five, and most dialers here cap at 5. More lines mean fewer idle seconds but more moments when two people answer together. Raise the count only when your abandonment report and list quality support it.
How much does a parallel dialer cost?
Three dialers publish a parallel price: Trellus Power + Parallel at 149.99 USD a month, Salesfinity Gold at 299 USD per user a month, and Apollo’s Advanced Dialer add-on at 149 USD per team a month plus seats. Orum, Nooks, Kixie and JustCall’s predictive plan sell on quote; Orum starts at 9 seats.
What happens when two people answer a parallel dialer at the same time?
The rep is connected to one of them and the other call is disconnected. Apollo, for example, “connects you to the first prospect who answers and automatically disconnects the remaining calls.” Under the FCC rule, a call not connected to a rep within 2 seconds of the greeting counts as abandoned unless the required message plays.
Does a parallel dialer find phone numbers?
Some do. Nooks sells mobile number enrichment as a module, Orum includes data enrichment in its plan, and Salesfinity charges 0.30 USD per valid phone number found. Apollo reveals numbers from its own database at 8 credits each. Trellus, Kixie, JustCall and PhoneBurner call the numbers you load. Scalelist finds direct mobiles at 20 credits each, only when found.
Sources
- Orum pricing and Orum dialer
- Nooks pricing, Nooks AI dialer and Nooks help center: using CSVs to dial
- Salesfinity pricing, home page and integrations
- Trellus pricing, home page and integrations
- Apollo pricing and Apollo help center: parallel or power dialing
- Kixie pricing and Kixie help center: how to set up PowerLists
- JustCall pricing and JustCall predictive dialer
- PhoneBurner pricing and PhoneBurner FAQ
- 47 CFR 64.1200 (eCFR), 16 CFR 310.4 (eCFR) and 16 CFR 310.6
- Gong: insights from 300M calls, The Bridge Group 2025 SDR report, Belkins cold calling benchmarks 2026 and Nooks Insights: who picks up the most
- Vendor pages rendered in a browser with a US locale on 27 and 28 September 2026. Regulations read on the eCFR (version dated 1 September 2026) on 28 September 2026.
