HOME / TOOLS / COST CALCULATOR
What does this task cost: an AI agent or a person?
Describe a piece of work. See what it costs per task, per month and per year with today's leading AI models, a person in the country you choose, and an AI agent with a person checking its work.
THE ANSWER
Cost per task
Log scale: each step to the right is 10 times more expensive. Hover or focus a bar for monthly and yearly totals.
Side by side
| Option | Per task | Per month | Per year | Time per task |
|---|
AI times are processing time for one task. Prices checked from each provider's published rates.
What the AI uses per task
Get this as a PDF
We'll email you a one-page report of this comparison, with the assumptions behind it.
HOW WE CALCULATE
The numbers, and what they leave out.
AI cost
Words become tokens at about 1.33 tokens per word. An agent works in steps: it reads the instructions and the document, calls a tool, reads what comes back, and repeats. Each step re-reads everything so far, so input tokens grow with the number of steps. Simple tasks take one step, standard tasks four, complex tasks ten.
Output includes the answer, the notes the agent writes between steps, and reasoning ("thinking") tokens, which models bill as output. Reasoning is set at half the answer for simple tasks, twice for standard and five times for complex.
With prompt caching on, anything the model has already read is billed at the provider's cached rate. Batch processing applies each provider's batch discount. We add 10% for retries.
cost = (new input × input price + cached input × cached price + output × output price) × 1.1
Human cost
Time per task is reading time (200 words a minute) plus writing time (20 words a minute), scaled up for complex work (×1.4 for standard, ×2 for complex), plus a few minutes of admin. The hourly cost is typical gross pay for the role and seniority in that country, plus 30% for employer costs such as benefits, payroll tax, office and management.
Pay figures are indicative mid-level rates in US dollars, compiled from national statistics offices, the International Labour Organization and published salary surveys at 2025–26 levels. They are for comparison, not quotes. If you know your actual rate, enter it.
AI + human review
The setup we recommend for most work that matters: an agent does the task and a person checks it before it goes out. The cost is the AI cost plus the reviewer's time.
What this leaves out
- Quality. These numbers assume the AI's output is good enough to use, which depends on how the workflow, data and checks are designed.
- Build and running costs: integration, monitoring, and the time to get an agent production-ready.
- Speed and scale. An agent works around the clock and handles peaks without hiring.
QUESTIONS
Frequently asked
How much does an AI model cost per task?
Usually between a fraction of a cent and a few dollars. A short support reply on a fast model costs well under a cent. A complex contract review on a flagship model, with ten agent steps and long reasoning, costs tens of cents. The calculator shows the figure for your task.
What is a token?
The unit AI models read and write in. In English, a token is roughly three-quarters of a word, so 1,000 words is about 1,330 tokens. Providers price input and output tokens separately, and output usually costs four to five times more.
Why is the AI so much cheaper than a person?
A model processes text in seconds and is billed per token, while a person is paid for every minute spent reading, thinking and writing. The gap is often a hundred to several thousand times. The real question is whether the output is reliable enough to use, which is why we show AI with human review.
Should I pick the cheapest model?
Not by default. Fast models handle simple, high-volume work well. Judgment-heavy tasks often need a larger model, and the extra cost is still small next to a person's time. Many agents route each step to the cheapest model that can do it.
Where do the salary figures come from?
They are indicative mid-level pay rates compiled from national statistics, International Labour Organization data and published salary surveys, then adjusted for role and seniority. You can replace them with your own rate.