vs
Substrait vs Lead Engage: which AI should work your Sierra database?
This is not Substrait against Sierra. Both of these are add-ons to the Sierra account you already pay for, and Sierra stays your system of record either way.
Lead Engage is good at first touch on a fresh lead. Substrait is built to hold the whole conversation, for months, including the contacts that went quiet a year ago.
Two add-ons to the same account.
| Substrait | Lead Engage | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | An add-on to your Sierra account | An add-on to your Sierra account |
| How a message is written | Composed for that lead, from their own record | From a template set |
| When the lead answers | What they said changes what comes next | The question list carries on |
| Your controls | Voice, stages, hours, pacing, forbidden words | On and off, one lead at a time |
| Dormant database | Worked on purpose, for months | Built for first-touch triage |
| Sierra package needed | Any, including Starter | Essential or Growth |
| Add-on price | $179 to $1,079 by database size | $199 flat, unlimited leads |
| Leaving | Cancel in the product, 30 days’ notice | Sold on a 12 month agreement |
| Past clients and your sphere | Encore™. Anniversaries, birthdays, your own market page | Not offered |
Lead Engage figures come from Sierra’s own pricing page, read 29 August 2026: $199 a month with unlimited leads on the Essential and Growth packages, not available on Starter, and all packages sold on a 12 month agreement. Substrait prices are the founding-member rate, 40 percent off list.
What each one actually is.
Lead Engage is Sierra’s own AI, built into the product you already use. It texts a lead from a template set, around the clock, and works through its question list until the lead stops writing back or an agent takes over. It answers replies. It is aimed at the first hours of a fresh inbound lead, and it does that job around the clock without anyone rostering it.
Substrait is an AI ISA that runs inside the same Sierra account. It reads the whole lead record, the texts, the notes, the logged calls and the site activity, then writes each message for that lead out of what is actually in there. It sends from your office’s own number in your agent’s name, writes notes back onto the Sierra timeline, and keeps going for months. Everything it touches in Sierra is listed here.
Where the money actually lands.
Both sit on top of your Sierra package, so this is add-on against add-on. Lead Engage is one flat rate. We price by database size, which means we are not cheaper everywhere.
| Active contacts | Substrait | Lead Engage |
|---|---|---|
| Up to 5,000 contacts | $179 a month | $199 a month |
| 5,000 to 15,000 | $329 a month | $199 a month |
| 15,000 to 40,000 | $539 a month | $199 a month |
| 40,000 to 100,000 | $1,079 a month | $199 a month |
Read that honestly: under 5,000 contacts we are $20 a month cheaper, and above it we are not. Lead Engage is a flat $199 however large your database gets. Two things do not show up in the column. Lead Engage needs at least the Essential package, so a team on Starter cannot buy it and can still use us. And Sierra’s packages carry a 12 month agreement, where our notice is 30 days from a button you press yourself.
Three questions worth answering first.
If the money is close, this is what you are actually choosing between.
Lead Engage is built for the first hours of a fresh inbound lead, and that is a real job worth doing well.
Most brokerages we meet have thousands of contacts nobody has spoken to in a year. Working that pile on purpose, for months, is what Substrait was built for. If your inbound is already handled, that pile is where the commission is.
A template set sends the same phrasing to everyone and relies on the name merge to carry it. The question list runs its course.
Substrait writes each message out of that lead’s own history. The budget they name, the objection they raise, the question they ask back: all of it changes what comes next, and none of it gets asked twice.
Lead Engage gives you on and off, one lead at a time. For a lot of teams that is genuinely enough.
With Substrait you set the voice, the stages it works, the hours, the pacing and the words it may never use. Every message clears twenty-five guardrails before it sends. The whole registry is published.
What Lead Engage gets right.
It is genuinely good at first-touch triage. A fresh inbound lead at two in the morning gets answered, every time, without anyone being on call. That is the part most teams were failing at before, and Lead Engage fixed it.
It is already in the product. No new vendor, no second bill to explain, no integration to trust. For a team that wants one throat to choke, that counts for a lot.
And it is one flat rate. $199 does not move when your database grows. Past about 5,000 contacts that is cheaper than we are, and we are not going to pretend otherwise.
We are additive to Sierra, not a replacement for it. Sierra is our deepest integration and the reason this product works at all. This page is about which AI works your database, not about whether to run Sierra.
I ran Lead Engage for years.
Substrait exists because of where this ran out. Here is what that actually looked like.
It texts a new lead fast. More aggressively than most agents would on their own, and that part genuinely works. We pointed it at new leads and at the cold pond. It got replies out of people we had written off.
Where it stops is the back and forth. It asks how many bedrooms you want. Answer with anything that is not a number and it asks about bathrooms anyway. It is not listening. You can feel the moment the lead notices. Someone had to take the thread over right then, before it annoyed a customer.
It was a wingman at a bar. It broke the ice, and then you needed it gone. The ice was broken. It was just being awkward by that point.
So that is how we used it, and it was a very good action plan. Lead Engage to open the conversation. A human by hand from the first reply on. The nurture it was never going to do, and I would not point it at that.
Substrait and Lead Engage, answered.
Still deciding? Compare every AI, or see how the Sierra integration works.
What is Lead Engage?
Do I need Sierra Interactive to use Substrait?
Is Substrait cheaper than Lead Engage?
Can I run Lead Engage and Substrait at the same time?
Which Sierra packages can use each one?
What happens if I want to leave?
Does Substrait replace what Sierra does?
Same account. A different engine working it.
One flat monthly rate by database size. No setup fee, no per-message billing, no per-seat billing.