AI agent pricing

AI agent pricing: how much an AI agent costs per month, and how AI agent pricing models work.

Sticker prices in this category are close to meaningless because almost everyone meters something. Here is what the main tools actually charge, what each one counts, and which pricing model leaves you with a bill you can predict.

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In short

Last updated July 2026

AI agents cost $9 to $37 a month for automation builders you configure yourself, $149 to $500 a month for agents that complete tasks end to end, and $180 to $3,750 a month or more for specialist AI SDR platforms. Four pricing models dominate: flat monthly, per seat, per credit and per action. The number that decides your real bill is not the plan price, it is the meter, because credit and action pricing charges you most in the months the tool is doing the most work. Prices below were checked on each vendor's own pricing page in July 2026.

Automation builders: $9 to $37 / month
Agents that do the work: $149 to $500 / month
AI SDR platforms: $180 to $3,750+ / month

What it handles

What AI agent pricing covers, job by job

AI agent pricing usually depends on which of these jobs you are buying.

Research

Priced per report on some tools, included on flat plans.

Lead generation

The job most likely to be metered per lead or per export.

Outreach

Often per seat, sometimes per email or per booked meeting.

Inbox triage

Usually per user per month, since it maps to a mailbox.

Data entry

The classic credit burner, because volume is unpredictable.

Reporting

Cheap on any model, since it runs on a fixed schedule.

Why it works

Why flat pricing beats a meter for most small teams

A bill you can forecast

One number, every month, whatever the workload. No counter to watch and no overage line to explain at the end of the quarter.

Nobody rations the tool

Metered pricing quietly trains a team to delegate less in busy months, which is exactly when you bought it to help.

Spiky work costs the same

A hiring push, a big campaign or a data cleanup does not change the invoice, so the busy month is not the expensive one.

Compare

What AI agents actually cost, July 2026

Every price below was read off the vendor's own pricing page or, where noted, off consistent third-party trackers because the vendor stopped publishing. US dollars, monthly unless stated.

Tool	US price	What it meters	What it is
WorkAgent	$149 a month	Nothing, flat	Agent that does the work end to end
Lindy	Plus $49.99, Pro $99.99, Max $199.99	A usage allowance the vendor does not publish as a unit	Agent builder with templates
Relevance AI	Free tier, Pro about $19 a month billed annually, Team about $234 a month billed annually	Two separate meters: Actions and Vendor Credits	Agent builder
Zapier Agents	Free for 400 activities a month, Pro $400 a year, which is $33.33 a month for 1,500 activities	Activities	Automation agent on top of Zapier
Make	Free for 1,000 credits, Core $9, Pro $16, Teams $29	Credits	Visual automation builder
Motion	Pro AI $19 a seat, Business AI $29 a seat	Credits, 7,500 and 15,000 a month	AI scheduler, not a task doer
11x (Alice)	$3,750 a month	Seats and scale	Dedicated AI SDR
A US executive assistant	$76,590 a year median (BLS, May 2025)	Salary, benefits and your management time	A person

Two things worth knowing before you compare these. Relevance AI moved to a dual meter in September 2025: Actions and Vendor Credits are billed separately, so a plan that looks like $19 has two counters running against it. And Motion repriced inside a single week in July 2026, which is a good reason to check any number in this table against the vendor before you sign.

The four AI agent pricing models, and what each one costs you

Flat monthly pricing charges one number regardless of how much you use. It is the easiest to forecast and the model that stops your team rationing the tool. Per seat pricing charges per person, which is fine for software a human operates and strange for an agent, because an agent is not a person and you should not have to buy it a chair. Per credit pricing gives you a monthly allowance that every action draws down, which sounds fair until you notice that the credit cost of a task is rarely something you can calculate in advance. Per action or per outcome pricing charges for the thing you wanted, like a booked meeting or a completed run, and is the most honest model on paper and the most volatile in practice.

The reason this matters more than the plan price is simple. A tool you are afraid to use is worth nothing. Metered pricing creates exactly that fear: the month you have a big campaign, a data cleanup or a hiring push is the month the counter runs hottest, so people quietly stop delegating to protect the budget. Ask any vendor two questions before you buy: what exactly counts as one billable unit, and what happens when I run out. If either answer is vague, price your worst month, not your average one.

How much does an AI agent cost per month in 2026?

Three bands cover almost the whole market. Automation builders run $9 to $37 a month: Make starts at $9, Zapier Agents Pro is $400 a year which works out to $33.33 a month for 1,500 activities, and Gumloop Pro is around $37. These are cheap because you supply the labor, scoping and building the workflow yourself. Agents that complete tasks from a brief run $149 to $500 a month, which is where WorkAgent sits at a flat $149. Specialist platforms are the top band: dedicated AI SDR tools start near $180 a user and run to $3,750 a month for 11x, and enterprise agent platforms are increasingly sales-led with no published price at all.

The trap is comparing across bands. A $9 builder and a $149 agent are not the same product at different prices, they are different products, and the gap is who does the work of making it work. If you buy the builder to save $140 a month and then spend six hours a month maintaining it, you paid more. Price the total cost, including the hours of whoever on your team ends up owning the thing.

Why credit and action pricing gets expensive faster than you expect

A credit is a vendor-defined unit, and vendors define it in ways that are difficult to forecast. One task might consume one credit or forty depending on how many steps it took, how many rows it touched and which model ran underneath. Relevance AI is the clearest illustration in the category: since September 2025 it runs two meters at once, Actions for task runs and Vendor Credits for the underlying compute, billed separately, with overage at $40 per 1,000 actions and $20 per 10,000 credits. Nothing about that is hidden or dishonest, but it means the plan price tells you very little about your bill.

Make moved to credits too, and Motion charges credit overage at 25 cents per 100 on its Pro plan. This is the direction the whole category is heading, because underlying model costs are variable and vendors do not want to absorb that risk. The practical advice: if you go metered, run a real month before you commit to an annual plan, and check whether unused allowance rolls over. If your usage is genuinely spiky, flat pricing is worth paying a premium for, which is the reason WorkAgent does not meter at all. Our own AI employee pricing page has the detail on what a flat plan includes.

How much does it cost to build an AI agent instead?

Building is the option people price wrong most often, because the visible cost is small and the invisible cost is not. On the visible side, a self-hosted n8n instance is free plus a server, and API calls to a frontier model for a modest internal workload usually land somewhere between $20 and $200 a month. That is genuinely cheap. On the invisible side sits the engineering: scoping the workflow, handling authentication, writing the error handling, and then maintaining it as APIs change and edge cases surface. A custom agent built by an agency or a contractor commonly runs $10,000 to $50,000, and the maintenance never stops.

The honest rule is that building wins when the workflow is specific to your business and central enough to justify owning, and buying wins when the job is common and the constraint is time. Most small teams that decide to build are really deciding to add a project to someone who is already behind. If you want the full version of that decision with the tradeoffs laid out, read build or buy an AI agent, and for how the categories differ see the AI agent software overview.

FAQ

Questions people ask about AI agent pricing

How much does an AI agent cost?

It falls into three bands. Automation builders you configure yourself cost $9 to $37 a month. AI agents that complete tasks end to end from a brief cost $149 to $500 a month. Specialist platforms such as dedicated AI SDRs run from about $180 a month to $3,750 or more. The band you need depends on whether you want software to do the work or a canvas to build on.

How much does an AI agent cost per month?

For a small business buying an agent that actually does tasks, expect $149 to $500 a month. WorkAgent is $149 flat. Lindy runs $49.99 to $199.99 a month against an unpublished usage allowance, Zapier Agents Pro is $33.33 a month for 1,500 activities, and Make starts at $9 a month for 10,000 credits. The cheaper tools are builders, so your own time is part of the price.

What are the main AI agent pricing models?

Four. Flat monthly, one predictable price regardless of usage. Per seat, priced per human user, which fits copilots better than agents. Per credit, a monthly allowance every action draws from. Per action or per outcome, where you pay for completed runs or booked meetings. Flat is the easiest to forecast, per credit is the most common in 2026, and per outcome is the most volatile.

Why is AI agent pricing usually credit based?

Because the vendor's own cost is variable. Each agent run consumes model tokens, and a complex task can cost the vendor many times what a simple one does. Credits pass that variability to you instead of the vendor absorbing it. It is a defensible business decision, but it means your bill scales with the months you rely on the tool most, which is the opposite of what most buyers want from software.

How much does it cost to build an AI agent?

Self-hosting an open source tool like n8n is free plus server costs, with model API usage for a modest internal workload typically running $20 to $200 a month. The real cost is engineering. A custom agent built by a contractor or agency commonly runs $10,000 to $50,000, and maintenance is ongoing as connectors break and edge cases appear. Building makes sense for workflows specific enough that no product fits.

Is flat pricing or per action pricing better?

Flat pricing is better when your usage is spiky or hard to predict, which describes most small businesses, because it removes any reason to ration the tool. Per action pricing is better when your volume is genuinely low and steady, since you pay only for what you use. The failure mode of metered pricing is behavioral: teams stop delegating in busy months to protect the budget, which defeats the purchase.

Are there free AI agents?

There are real free tiers, and they are useful for evaluation rather than production. Zapier Agents is free for 400 activities a month, Make is free for 1,000 credits, Relevance AI has a free tier, and n8n can be self-hosted at no license cost. Every one of them is either capped tightly enough to run out on a real workload or requires you to build and host the thing yourself.

Does an AI agent cost less than hiring someone?

For the repetitive portion of a role, yes, by a wide margin. A US executive assistant has a median salary of $76,590 a year according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, a junior hire runs $45,000 to $70,000, and an offshore VA is $800 to $2,000 a month. An agent at $149 to $500 a month covers the scripted work but not the judgment, so the accurate comparison is against part of a role, not all of it.

Put it to work

Compare the approaches: see AI virtual assistant, AI virtual agent, AI assistant for business, AI personal assistant for business, AI agent for small business, AI assistant for small business, AI SDR, AI executive assistant, AI agent software, AI for real estate agents, AI operations assistant, AI marketing assistant, AI lead generation software, AI agents for solopreneurs, AI sales assistant software, AI agents for agencies, AI agent for consultants, AI agent pricing and AI employee, compare us against Lindy AI and Relevance AI, Artisan AI, Zapier Agents, Make.com, Gumloop, Apollo.io and Clay, or read how the AI agent works and AI worker pricing.

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