Will a chatbot pay for itself?
Put in how many questions your team answers and what that time costs. See the hours an assistant could free, what the AI itself would cost, and the net result each month.
How it is worked out
Staff time freed, minus AI usage on every question, minus running costs. AI prices from the vendors' published pricing, checked 12 October 2026.
Estimates, not quotes. Runs in your browser.
Salary plus overheads, per working hour.
The biggest assumption here. Simple, repeated questions (opening hours, order status, how-to) are the realistic part; the rest still goes to a person.
Hosting, monitoring and upkeep.
Leave at 0 to see the monthly picture only.
Each month
Net saving
$1,099
- Questions the AI answers fully
- 800
- Staff hours freed
- 80 h
- Staff cost freed
- $1,200
- AI usage, every question (Claude Haiku 5.5, $0.0006 each)
- − $1.28
- Other running costs
- − $100
“Freed” hours are time your team gets back, not money in the bank until it is used elsewhere. AI usage assumes a typical support request; see the AI cost calculator for your own prompt sizes.
Want a real number instead of an assumption?
Send us these figures and a sample of real questions. We'll tell you what share an assistant could actually answer, and what it would cost to build and run.
Ask for an estimate →The AI bill is rarely what decides it.
For most support workloads the model costs cents per question. Whether a chatbot pays off depends on how many questions it can answer well, which is why the honest first step is testing it on your real questions.
- What share of questions can a chatbot really answer?
- It depends entirely on your questions. Repeated, factual ones (opening hours, order status, how to do X) are realistic; anything needing judgement, account changes or a refund decision usually is not. Measure it on a sample of real questions before you plan around a number.
- Why is AI usage charged on every question?
- The assistant reads every question, including the ones it then hands to a person, so every question costs a request. The calculator uses a typical support request: about 6,000 tokens in, 400 out, 30% cached.
- Are freed hours the same as money saved?
- No. Hours freed are time your team gets back. They become savings only when that time is used for other work, or when you avoid hiring.
- Is my data sent anywhere?
- No. The calculator runs entirely in your browser and nothing you type leaves this page.
- Already running a chatbot?
- If it gives wrong or made-up answers, read why most “hallucinations” are retrieval problems, or see the Chatbot Health Check.
Want it built and measured?
We build assistants that cite their sources and hand over to a person when they should, and we measure what share they actually answer.