What does AI automation actually cost to run?

Adjust the sliders to match your business. See real operational costs versus the human time you'd save.

Onboarding Emails

Document Processing

Feedback Analysis

Content Repurposing

Your Numbers

Adjust to match your current situation

Monthly signups 2,800

How many new users sign up per month?

Emails per user (avg sequence) 4

Average number of onboarding emails per user

AI model

More capable models cost more but may produce better output

Current manual time per item 12 min

How long does a person currently spend on this task per user?

Hourly cost of that person $50

Loaded cost (salary + benefits + overhead)

Monthly AI Cost

$85 /mo

Cost per item: $0.0045

AI API calls

$55

n8n (cloud)

$20

Server (custom scripts)

$10

Monthly Savings vs Manual

$2,215 /mo

Current manual cost

$2,800

Remaining human time (review)

$500

AI automation cost

$85

Net monthly saving

$2,215

Hours freed per month

46 hrs

Return on Investment

26x

Every $1 spent on AI automation saves $26 in manual labour costs

Assumptions

API pricing based on current Anthropic rates (Sonnet: $3/M input, $15/M output tokens). Average prompt ~500 tokens in, ~200 tokens out per email. Includes 10% retry rate for failed validations. n8n Cloud pricing at standard tier. Human review time estimated at 90 seconds per reviewed item, with 15% of items going to review. Self-hosted n8n would reduce costs further.