The one difference that runs through all five
Every tool on this page automates LinkedIn outreach. Booost does three things none of the five does.
It runs on a machine you own. Booost is a desktop application: your LinkedIn session and the IP LinkedIn sees never leave your computer, and your password never reaches us. (We are precise about that: "the session stays local" and "the data stays local" are two different promises, and only the first one is ours — your connection graph is computed on our servers, and our documentation says so plainly.)
It publishes. It drafts posts from your own sources, publishes them under your name or as a Company Page, and engages with them — in the same workflow that sends the invitations. Checked on their own pages, 12 August 2026: lemlist, Expandi, Waalaxy, HeyReach and Dripify automate outreach. Not one of the five publishes content on LinkedIn.
It maps the network you already have. Every contact scored on six axes — thematic fit, seniority, activity, target fit, influence and proximity, each with the evidence behind it — a graph of your network by company, school and shared themes, and an affinity score (0–100) that warms with real interaction and cools with silence, with a suggested warm path through a mutual connection. All of it measured against goals you set yourself. The five work from lists you import, enrich or buy; lemlist sells access to 650 million contacts you do not know. Nobody here maps the people already one step away from you.
And on quotas: Booost sets no limit on what you may send. Waalaxy meters invitations by plan (300, then 800); Dripify sells "full daily quotas" as an upgrade over 20 connection requests a day; HeyReach and lemlist meter enrichment credits you top up. Booost's only ceilings are the anti-ban ones — identical on both editions, and there to keep the account alive rather than to move you up a tier.
"But the cloud runs 24/7" — so does Booost, on hardware you own
This is the objection every cloud tool leads with, and it is worth answering properly rather than conceding it.
Booost Business is a desktop application, so it runs while the machine it is installed on is running. That machine does not have to be your laptop. Every Booost release ships a Linux .deb and an AppImage alongside the Windows and macOS builds, and the licence says plainly that you may install it on "any device of your own" — a Debian box you rent for a few euros a month is a device of your own. Install it there, leave it on, and campaigns run around the clock.
The difference with a cloud platform was never uptime. It is whose machine holds your session:
- With Expandi, Waalaxy, HeyReach or Dripify, something on their infrastructure must be able to act as you while you sleep.
- With Booost, the machine that acts as you is one you own and control — laptop or server. We never receive your password, and there is nothing on our servers for anyone to take.
There is one honest gap, and it is documentation rather than architecture: we do not yet publish a step-by-step guide for running Booost on a headless server, where a desktop application needs a virtual display. Linked Helper — the one competitor built like us — does publish those guides. Ours are coming; the capability is already there and already licensed.
Where each tool actually runs
The single most useful fact about a LinkedIn tool, and the one hardest to find on its home page.
| tool | architecture | publishes content | whose machine acts as you |
|---|---|---|---|
| Booost Business | desktop app — your laptop, or your own always-on server (.deb / AppImage) | yes, incl. as a Company Page | yours |
| Booost Personal | browser extension; automates nothing — it drafts, you publish | drafts comments | nobody's: you publish |
| lemlist | Chrome extension links your session; execution not publicly documented | no | not documented |
| Expandi | cloud, with a dedicated country-based IP per account | no | theirs |
| Waalaxy | cloud since 1 July 2026 — the Chrome extension was removed | no | theirs |
| HeyReach | cloud, dedicated residential proxy per sender on Growth | no | theirs |
| Dripify | cloud — "nothing depends on … your machine being on" | no | theirs |
The claim nobody in this category can make — except one
Section 8.2 of LinkedIn's User Agreement prohibits third-party software that automates activity on LinkedIn, and names "bots, browser plug-ins, or browser extensions" explicitly. It does not matter where the software runs. Cloud platforms are covered, desktop applications are covered, browser extensions are covered, and Booost Business is covered — our Acceptable Use Policy says so in writing rather than in small print, which is more than most of this category will tell you.
So when a comparison page tells you one tool is safe with LinkedIn and another is not, it is selling you something. What actually differs is the mechanism: whose machine talks to LinkedIn, whose IP it uses, and whether a third party holds a session that can act as you while you sleep. Those are checkable. Restriction rates are not — nobody has published data comparing architectures, in any direction, and a tool that quotes you a percentage is quoting a feeling.
Booost Personal is the one exception in the whole category. It performs no action on LinkedIn at all: it reads a post, drafts a comment in your voice, and a human publishes it. There is no automated activity to prohibit. No cloud platform can say that, and no other browser extension can either — because both of them act. €19–29 per account per month.
The five comparisons
Booost vs Waalaxy — Waalaxy removed its Chrome extension in July 2026 and moved fully to the cloud, which turns this into the cleanest local-versus-cloud comparison on the site. It is also the cheapest tool here, from €19.
Booost vs Expandi — the closest competitor we have, because Expandi also sells account safety. It answers with a dedicated country-matched IP; Booost answers by not needing one, because the IP is already yours. Similar prices.
Booost vs HeyReach — built for agencies running many client accounts, and priced for it: at twenty-five senders it costs far less than Booost, which prices per account. If you are an agency, read that page before this one.
Booost vs Dripify — the cleanest trade here: Dripify promises that nothing depends on your machine, Booost promises that everything does. From $39 a month annually.
Booost vs lemlist — an email platform with LinkedIn attached, versus a LinkedIn platform. If email is your main channel, lemlist does that job better than Booost does — that page says exactly where and why.
Already using one of them?
If you are not choosing between two candidates but leaving a tool you already pay for, these pages start from that instead: why people leave, what the whole field costs, and which one fits the reason you are going.
Waalaxy alternatives · Expandi alternatives · HeyReach alternatives · Dripify alternatives · lemlist alternatives
How these pages are written
Comparison pages usually exist to make the other product look bad. These have rules, and the rules are public:
- Every claim about another product cites a public, dated source — usually the company's own pages. Where their documentation does not say, we write that it does not say instead of guessing. On lemlist there is a whole section about a question we could not answer.
- Every page states where the other tool is cheaper or better than Booost, with the real numbers, not a footnote.
- No adjectives about competitors. Facts you can check, and nothing else.
- Prices stay in the currency each company publishes. Converted tables go wrong on their own when exchange rates move.
We do this because it is our stated policy, and because you can verify every line — which is the only reason to believe the lines about us.
What we are not comparing yet
Linked Helper, PhantomBuster, We-Connect, Meet Alfred, Octopus CRM and Salesflow are not covered here yet. (Zopto used to be on this list and no longer is: it shut down in February 2026.) Two of them deserve naming right away, because they qualify the first claim on this page: We-Connect publishes through its Post Remix add-on, and Meet Alfred publishes on four social networks. "It publishes" is true against the five compared here, and it is not a category-wide exclusive. Linked Helper deserves a note in advance, because it is the one tool here built the way Booost is: a desktop application — "Desktop app, not a Chrome extension" — running from your own IP, installable on your own server, and considerably cheaper than us. Against it the architecture argument on this page does not separate anything, because we agree with them about architecture. What separates us is the rest of the first section: publishing, the AI that writes in your voice, and Personal.
Booost opens on 1 September 2026. Join the waitlist to keep the founding price.
Sources
- LinkedIn User Agreement — section 8.2
- LinkedIn: prohibited software and extensions
- Per-product sources are listed at the bottom of each comparison page