Cost Calculator
What Will This Automation Cost?
Estimate what an AI workflow will cost each month, how much staff time it can save, and whether it is worth building. Pick a business scenario, adjust a few plain-English inputs, and get a budget you can use.
Choose your path
Use the guided walkthrough, or open the full planner if you already know the inputs.
How to use this calculator
Estimate the monthly budget for an AI workflow and compare it with the time your team spends doing the work today. You can use business inputs like tasks, words, pages, minutes, and hourly cost.
- Start from a scenario to prefill a common workflow, then adjust the numbers to match your business.
- Describe the work — how often it happens, how long it takes a person today, and the fully loaded hourly cost.
- Choose the AI setup — use the default model or pick another one, then estimate how much information goes in and how much the AI should produce.
- Use Advanced cost settings only when you need extra precision for batches, extra AI steps, safety buffers, or platform costs.
- Read the results on the right: monthly AI cost, staff time saved, monthly savings, annual savings, and planning notes.
- Export to CSV to keep a snapshot of the budget. On the public calculator, sign in to enable export.
How the math works
Pricing data — Rates are pulled from the current pricing catalog (sourced from the open-source model_prices_and_context_window.json maintained by BerriAI), plus any administrator overrides. All usage-based rates are stored as USD per 1M tokens and can be refreshed by an administrator at any time.
Token estimation — If you enter words, characters, or pages, the calculator converts them to tokens behind the scenes: 1 word ≈ 1.33 tokens (equivalently, 1 token ≈ 0.75 words); 1 character ≈ 0.25 tokens (4 characters per token); 1 page ≈ 800 tokens (roughly 600 words). Entering sizes directly in tokens skips any conversion. When company documents or knowledge-base lookup is enabled, the extra reference material is added on top of the base input size.
AI cost — Text cost per task = ((input tokens x input rate) + (output tokens x output rate)) divided by 1,000,000, then multiplied by any extra AI steps and items handled together. Monthly AI cost = per-task cost times monthly task volume, plus any safety buffer and other tool costs.
Labor value & net savings — Manual labor value per month = (minutes per task divided by 60) times monthly task volume times fully loaded hourly cost. Net savings = labor value minus total monthly AI cost. ROI compares net savings with AI cost. Annual net savings = net savings × 12.
Advanced settings — Extra AI steps multiply the per-task usage cost directly. A safety buffer adds a percentage on top of the base API cost to account for retries, edge cases, and traffic spikes. The buffer applies to usage-based API pricing only and has no effect on flat subscription pricing.
Estimates are planning guidance only — real costs vary with prompt size, caching, and provider rate changes.
Step 1 of 5
Workflow
Choose a pre-filled scenario or describe your own workflow.
Business outlook
AI cost / month
$1.28
Staff time saved
25 hrs/mo
Monthly savings
$1,013
Annual savings
$12,151
Cost breakdown
- Text / LLM$1.28/mo
- Per task$0.0042
- Tasks / month304
Annual planning number
$12,151
Got your numbers — now what?
Three ways to turn that estimate into a plan you can act on.
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