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Compare per-seat, per-resolution, and usage-based pricing side by side over 12-36 months. See which model is cheapest at your scale — and by how much.
It depends on volume per seat. Per-seat wins when each user handles many tasks (knowledge-work agents — sales, exec assistant). Per-resolution wins when volume per seat is moderate (most customer support — 50-150 tickets/agent/month). Usage-based wins when volume per seat is very high or unpredictable (back-office automation, developer agents). Run the calculator with your actual numbers; the answer often surprises buyers.
Per-resolution pricing looks attractive — $0.99/conversation feels cheap. But at high volume the bill scales linearly. A team handling 50,000 monthly tickets at $0.99 pays $49,500/mo — usually more than a 10-seat per-seat contract. The crossover happens at roughly 500-1,000 tickets/agent/month. Below that, per-resolution is cheaper.
Yes — finance teams hate it for budgeting. A 3x volume spike in November turns into a 3x bill. Mitigation: negotiate volume tiers (e.g. first 100K tasks at full rate, then 50% off), or set hard usage caps with auto-shutoff. Usage-based pricing rewards teams with predictable workflows and punishes seasonal businesses.
Yes. Most teams under-budget AI agent costs because they model based on today's volume, but agents tend to expand to new use cases month over month. A 30% YoY growth assumption is realistic for production deployments. Model both: today's volume baseline and projected end-of-year volume to see the difference.
This calculator covers the vendor's contracted price. Add these to TCO for full accuracy: (1) integration / implementation services (often $25K-$100K one-time), (2) ongoing prompt engineering / eval labor (1-2 FTE for enterprise deployments), (3) data egress / export fees on contract end, (4) overage rates above committed volume (commonly 50% premium), (5) seat true-ups at renewal.
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