What Do AI Business Agents Cost a Small Business?
Most people who ask "what do you charge?" are really asking something more specific: "what does it cost to stop the thing that's eating my week?" This page answers that directly, problem by problem. One ground rule up front: every dollar figure below is a simulated estimate drawn from our published pricing model and labeled as such — none of them is a custom quote, because we don't do surprise quotes.
The short answer
- Trying it costs $500. A scoped two-week pilot runs one agent on one surface against defined success metrics. Fixed fee, no long-term commitment. If the metrics aren't met, you walk away.
- Keeping it costs a published monthly price plus usage, tiered by agent count and volume — see the pricing page for current tiers. There is no setup fee layer and no "contact sales for a number" step.
- The relevant comparison is not the software price. It's the cost of what you're doing today: hiring another person, paying answering-service per-minute rates, or absorbing missed jobs.
Figures in this section are published list prices and simulated estimates — shown for orientation, not as quotes.
What fixing a named problem typically runs
Here are three worked examples at typical small-business volumes. They are illustrative models built from our pricing sheet — simulated estimates, not quotes, and not client results.
Missed calls
A shop missing around 30 calls a week at an average $150 job value is exposed to roughly $4,500/week of uncaptured demand. If a voice agent recovers even 15% of those as bookings, that's about $675/week — near $2,900/month of pipeline — against a monthly plan that starts well below that figure. Simulated estimate — illustrative model, not a quote or client result.
An overloaded shared inbox
A team spending about one hour a day sorting email at a loaded $30/hour is spending roughly $650/month of staff time on triage alone. An email operations agent drafts the routine replies for approval and auto-sends only what you whitelist, cutting most of that triage time. Whether the math clears depends on your actual volumes — which is exactly what the ROI calculator lets you test. Simulated estimate — illustrative model, not a quote or client result.
Scheduling ping-pong
If appointment back-and-forth consumes ~30 minutes of staff time per booking day and each unconfirmed appointment costs you a slot, a scheduling agent working over phone, email, and SMS removes both costs mechanically: confirmations go out on schedule and double-booking is blocked in code, not in policy. Simulated estimate — illustrative model, not a quote or client result.
What changes the price
- Volume: messages answered, bookings made, invoices chased. Usage scales with activity, not headcount.
- Channels: voice, email, SMS — each surface is a separate agent with its own scope.
- Number of surfaces: most businesses start with one agent on their worst bottleneck and expand from evidence.
What we do NOT do on pricing
- We don't give bespoke discounts behind a sales call — the published tiers are the same for everyone.
- We don't bill per-minute on voice or surprise you per-message; the usage component is stated up front.
- We don't ask you to commit monthly before measuring anything. The $500 pilot exists so the numbers decide, not a demo.
- We don't publish performance numbers as if they were client results — every figure anywhere on this site is labeled a simulated estimate until real pilot data replaces it.
Frequently asked questions
Can you just tell me my number without a sales call?
Close to it: published tiers cover most cases, and the ROI calculator accepts your own call and message volumes to produce an estimate in minutes. The $500 pilot then replaces estimates with your real data. Only genuinely unusual volumes need a conversation.
Why is trying it cheaper than most vendors' "free trial"? Isn't $500 just a minimum spend?
It's the price of a real deployment: scoping, guardrail configuration, knowledge-base grounding, and daily success metrics for two weeks. Free trials hand you software; the pilot hands you a measured result and a report you can act on either way.
What happens to the price if I add a second agent later?
You move to whatever tier covers your agent count and volume — the incremental change is stated on the pricing page before you commit, never discovered afterward. Each added agent maps to one surface, so you always know what you're paying for.
Want your own numbers instead of models?
Run your volumes through the ROI calculator, watch the agents work in the live demo, or start the $500 pilot and let the report decide.
Open the ROI Calculator Get StartedRelated reading: the complete guide to AI agents for small business, our page on deciding between hiring and automating, and the full FAQ.