Scope implementation effort and monthly run cost before an agent workflow reaches production traffic.
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When to use this
Before approving an AI workflow build
Use it for agents with integrations, tools, evals, approvals, and a recurring operating burden—not as a fixed vendor quote.
Default result
The support-triage starter estimates 182 hours, $22,750 build cost, and $950.24 monthly run cost.
Token usage
37.91M tokens
Input 29.16M tokens plus output 8.75M tokens after retry overhead.
API cost per request
$0.0068
Token-only cost before platform, hosting, review time, and maintenance.
Run-cost mix
API $61.24
Maintenance $750, platform $99, hosting $40.
Worked example: support triage agent
The default scope starts with 24 base hours, then adds 8 workflow steps x 4 hours, 4 integrations x 8 hours, 3 AI tools x 6 hours, 1 approval checkpoint x 6 hours, 30 eval cases x 0.4 hours, and 6 security review hours. Raw build effort is 24 + 32 + 32 + 18 + 6 + 12 + 6 = 130 hours.
QA and project overhead add 25% + 15%, so adjusted build effort is 130 x 1.40 = 182 hours. At $125/hour, build cost is 182 x $125 = $22,750.
Monthly volume is 300 requests/day x 30 days = 9,000 requests. With 8% retry overhead, input tokens are 9,000 x 3,000 x 1.08 = 29.16M and output tokens are 9,000 x 900 x 1.08 = 8.748M.
At $0.75 per 1M input tokens and $4.50 per 1M output tokens, API cost is 29.16 x $0.75 + 8.748 x $4.50 = $61.24/month. Add $99 platform, $40 hosting, and 6 x $125 = $750 maintenance for a monthly run cost of $950.24. First month is $22,750 + $950.24 = $23,700.24.
How the agent build estimate works
The build estimate starts with a base project setup, then adds effort for workflow steps, integrations, AI tools, approval gates, eval cases, and security review. QA and project overhead are applied after the raw build hours because testing, review, and coordination usually scale with the whole project.
How monthly AI agent cost is estimated
Monthly run cost combines token cost, platform cost, hosting, and maintenance. Token cost uses requests per month, input and output tokens per request, retry overhead, and editable provider prices per million tokens.
What this estimate excludes
The estimate excludes taxes, sales contracts, legal review, data cleanup, incident response, custom compliance work, procurement time, and staff time spent reviewing uncertain outputs. Add those lines separately when an agent affects customers, money, health, legal, or regulated data.
What to do next
Before building, write the target workflow, define pass and fail cases, run a small eval set, check API rate limits, estimate automation platform units, and make a human-review policy for risky outputs.
Reference data used by the defaults
Topic
Reference value
Source
Date
Note
Agent implementation scope
OpenAI Agents SDK guidance includes agent definitions, tools, orchestration and handoffs, guardrails, human review, integrations, observability, tracing, and workflow evaluation.
The $125/hour default is an editable project-rate assumption, not a wage statistic. It should cover contractor pricing, overhead, management, and local market differences.
QA and eval planning
OpenAI optimization guidance emphasizes evals, prompt engineering, and iterative improvement when model outputs are not deterministic.
Eval cases are included as an effort driver because agent behavior needs testing against real workflow cases.
All commercial values are screening defaults. Replace token prices, hourly rates, platform fees, hosting, and maintenance with current quotes before budget approval.
FAQ
Is this the same as the Automation ROI Calculator?
No. The ROI calculator estimates value and payback from hours saved. This estimator sizes the build effort and run cost of an AI agent before you compare it with the expected benefit.
Why does the calculator include eval cases?
Agent outputs can vary, and workflows often touch customer data, CRM fields, approval paths, or ticket states. Eval cases represent the test set needed to catch wrong routing, missing context, bad tool calls, and unsafe handoffs.
Why are token prices editable?
Model pricing, discounts, batch usage, cached inputs, regions, and enterprise contracts can change. The defaults are only a dated planning screen; replace them with the model and account terms you will actually use.
Does this include automation platform tasks?
It includes a monthly platform budget input, but it does not count n8n executions, Zapier tasks, or Make credits. Use the automation plan-tier calculator for platform billing-unit math.
How should I estimate integrations?
Count each system that needs authentication, schema mapping, retries, rate-limit handling, and error recovery. A CRM, help desk, spreadsheet, vector database, email tool, and Slack workspace are separate integration lines.
What is missing from the estimate?
It excludes taxes, procurement, legal review, SOC2 or HIPAA work, production incident response, custom data migration, vendor minimums, and the value of staff time spent reviewing agent outputs.
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