What does an AI employee cost in 2026? Price patterns and a worksheet

Published by 3Gen Internet Corporation, maker of OpenAssistant, Skej and AGNT. Comparisons use public documentation, without hands-on testing.

An AI employee costs its sticker price plus your own hours, credits, tools and mistakes. Sticker prices run from $24 a month (Marblism, billed yearly) to $0.99 an outcome (Fin) to $3,750 a month and up (11x). If you want to start free, OpenAssistant has a Starter plan with 1,000 credits at signup.

A headline price such as $24 a month or $0.99 an outcome is real, but it is not your cost. Your cost also includes credits you burn, your own hours spent on setup and on checking its work, the tools it needs, IT and legal review, the cost of mistakes, and the cost of leaving.

This guide does two things. It shows how vendors publish prices today, with real examples. And it gives you a worksheet to fill in with your own numbers and compare against the loaded cost of the human role you would otherwise hire. We give no salary figures or labour statistics, because your numbers are the ones that matter.

How vendors publish prices

There are five patterns, and most products mix two.

1. Per user per month with credit tiers (OpenAssistant, ours). OpenAssistant’s Pro plan is $72 per user per month billed monthly ($60 annual), and Team is $120 ($100 annual). These are the 5,000-credit tier, and the price rises with the credit tier you pick (OpenAssistant pricing; per-user pricing confirmed by 3Gen). Its help center says there is not always a fixed credit cost for a request, higher task effort can cost more, and unused plan credits do not roll over (OpenAssistant help: credits). Top-ups start at $15 on the pricing page and “as low as $10” in the help center, so check the figure (OpenAssistant pricing). Its credit top-ups that you buy separately roll over while your subscription is active (OpenAssistant help: credits). Its free Starter plan gives 1,000 credits at signup, plus 100 bonus credits a day once those are used up, up to 1,000 a month (OpenAssistant pricing).

2. Seat plus credits. You pay per person and get a pool of credits for the work. Lindy’s browser-shown Team tier is $49.99 a month for 5,000 credits; extracted content shows $29.99 for 3,000, whose checkout availability is unconfirmed . It bills every active user in the workspace, sells top-ups at $10 per 1,000 credits, and says monthly credits do not roll over (Lindy pricing). Motion gives each team seat a credit allotment (Motion pricing). Relevance AI charges a plan fee plus two meters: Actions, and Vendor Credits passed through at cost (Relevance AI plans). Marblism is a flat plan with all seven of its “employees” and 50 hours of AI work a month (Marblism pricing). Prices for all three are in the table below.

3. Per outcome or resolution. You pay when the agent finishes a job. Fin charges $0.99 per outcome and $9.99 for a qualification, and does not charge when a conversation is simply passed to your team (Fin pricing). Zendesk charges $1.50 per automated resolution if you commit and $2.00 pay as you go (Zendesk pricing). The catch is the definition. Fin counts a conversation as resolved when no further help is requested after its last answer (Fin pricing). A Procedure you configure to end in a handoff to a human is also a billable outcome on that page. Read the definition before you compare rates, and see our guide to per-resolution pricing.

4. Per lead or per credit. HubSpot says you pay $1 for each lead its prospecting agent recommends outreach for, and credits cost $0.010 each (HubSpot prospecting agent, HubSpot credits). Salesforce prices Agentforce at $500 per 100,000 Flex Credits, with a standard action at 20 credits, or $2 per conversation (Salesforce Agentforce pricing). That page says it is for information and subject to change.

5. Hidden or quote only. Artisan’s default pricing tab shows no prices and says to talk to sales, though its Startups tab lists Intern and Employee plans (Artisan pricing). 11x publishes its Alice outbound Growth plan “Starting at $3,750 / mo” billed annually ($45,000 a year), while the FAQ on the same page says $36,000 per year, which does not match (11x pricing). Ada’s pricing URL redirects to a demo form with no price (Ada demo). Sierra describes “outcome-based pricing” but publishes no rate on its product page (Sierra). The sources we read show no Decagon pricing page; a post dated December 10, 2024 describes per-conversation and per-resolution options without numbers (Decagon).

Some pricing pages, including OpenAssistant’s, headline a saving against a human with no basis shown. We do not repeat those figures, and you should not budget on them.

The worksheet

Fill one column per product. Use your busiest realistic month, not your average one.

Total monthly AI cost: A = S + C + G + R + T + V + M + X

Now the human side.

• H is the loaded monthly cost of the human role you would hire instead. Ask finance or payroll for the full figure: pay, employer taxes and benefits, equipment, software seats, management time and recruiting. We do not supply one.
• c is the share of that role’s work the AI completes with no redo. Take it from your own pilot, never from a vendor’s result number.

Net monthly saving = (c × H) − A. If it is negative, the AI costs more than the work it replaces.

Break-even coverage = A ÷ H. If A ÷ H is 0.8, the AI must cover 80% of the role before it pays for itself.

Cost per finished task = A ÷ tasks the AI finished. Compare it with H ÷ tasks the person finishes.

Note that you still pay H for the part of the role the AI does not cover. In our view, not a sourced finding, an AI employee often changes what a person does rather than removing the salary line.

A made-up example (illustrative, not vendor data)

Say S is $120, C is $60, G is $50, R is $200, T is $40, V is $30, M is $50 and X is $10. Then A = $560 a month. If the AI finishes 400 tasks, that is $1.40 per task. In this example human review is the biggest line, bigger than the subscription. Your own lines will differ, which is why the next two sections matter. Now put your own H and your own task counts through the same formulas.

What is not in the sticker price

• Sending infrastructure. Artisan says mailboxes and phone numbers are billed separately in dollars (Artisan pricing). 11x bundles domain setup and warm-up but says you bring your own CRM licence (11x pricing).
• Onboarding fees. HubSpot lists a one-time Professional onboarding fee of $1,500 (HubSpot Sales pricing).
• Minimums. Fin requires 50 outcomes a month when you use it on another helpdesk (Fin pricing). Regie.ai’s Team plan has a two-seat minimum (Regie.ai pricing).
• Expiring credits. Lindy, HubSpot and OpenAssistant all say unused monthly credits do not carry over (Lindy, HubSpot, OpenAssistant). Artisan says unused credits at the end of an annual term do not roll over, while on monthly plans they carry over one more period (Artisan pricing).
• Prepaid terms. 11x says annual contracts are the default for Inbound (11x Inbound pricing). Regie.ai says an annual plan is paid up front (Regie.ai pricing). Both raise your exit cost.
• Seats billed on invitation. OpenAssistant says a new team seat is billed from the moment the invitation is sent (OpenAssistant help: team billing).
• Lindy pricing update: Public views differ: the browser shows $49.99 for 5,000 credits; extracted content shows $29.99 for 3,000. Confirm the tier at checkout. Every active user is billed, and credits are pooled across the team.
• Your own time and mistakes. Lines 3, 4, 6 and 7 of the worksheet appear on no pricing page.

Six questions to ask every vendor

1. What exactly is one credit, outcome or resolution? Ask for the written definition, including what happens when the agent hands a task to a human halfway through.
2. What does my busiest month cost? Ask the vendor to price it from your volumes, in writing.
3. What happens when I run out of credits? Does work stop, does it bill overage automatically, or can I set a hard cap? Artisan says new enrollments pause when credits run out (Artisan pricing). Get every vendor’s answer in writing.
4. Do unused credits roll over, and do purchased top-ups expire?
5. What is the term, how does it renew, and by how much can the price rise at renewal? 11x says renewal increases are capped, so ask for the cap (11x Inbound pricing).
6. What do I get back if I leave mid-term? Ask about refunds of prepaid fees, data export and deletion, and how long my data stays after cancellation.

Published prices

All figures are the vendor’s own, in US dollars unless noted. “Annual” means the per-month price when billed yearly.

How to use this

Run the worksheet for two or three products, then run a four-week pilot to replace the guessed numbers on lines 4 and 7, and the value of c, with measured ones. Our 30-day onboarding plan shows how to measure a baseline, our guide to what to hand to each helps you choose tasks, and the payback playbook covers tracking the result afterwards. Before you sign, run the security checklist so line 6 is not a surprise.

Related reading

• AI support agent pricing in 2026: what a resolution really costs
• Is your AI employee paying for itself? How to measure AI employee ROI
• AI employee vs human hire: which tasks to hand to each
• Best AI employees for a small business in 2026: top 10 compared
• 13 mistakes companies make when hiring AI employees (and 10 demo questions)

Frequently asked questions

How much does an AI employee cost per month?

Published prices range widely: Marblism $24 a month billed yearly for a flat plan, Lindy Team $49.99 for 5,000 credits in the browser view (lower extracted tier unconfirmed), OpenAssistant Pro $72 per user per month billed monthly, Fin $0.99 per outcome, and 11x Growth from $3,750 a month billed annually. Your real cost adds setup, review time, tools and mistakes.

What costs are not in the sticker price?

Mailboxes and phone numbers (Artisan), onboarding fees (HubSpot lists $1,500 for Professional), minimums (Fin requires 50 outcomes a month on another helpdesk), credits that expire, prepaid annual terms, and seats billed from the moment of invitation (OpenAssistant).

Is there a free AI employee to try?

OpenAssistant’s Starter plan is free: 1,000 credits at signup, plus 100 bonus credits a day once those are used up, up to 1,000 a month. Artisan has a Free plan with 300 credits a month, and Lindy’s free plan gives $50 in credits for 7 days.

How do I compare an AI employee with a human hire?

Add up the eight worksheet lines for the AI (A), then compare with the loaded monthly cost of the human role (H). Net monthly saving is (c x H) minus A, where c is the share of the role’s work the AI completes with no redo. Break-even coverage is A divided by H.

Try OpenAssistant

For a per-user plan with a free way to start, Try OpenAssistant. It has a free Starter plan, and the paid plans are on the OpenAssistant pricing page.