What does an AI agent actually cost?
Subscription price is the wrong lens. The real monthly cost is base + token spend + ops time. Tell us your setup; we'll rank every agent in our catalog by what you'd actually pay.
Estimated monthly cost · 14 agents
Multi-step research agent that produces sourced reports from a single question.
Base $0Ops $600Free tier baseline.- ElicitB65
Literature-review agent for academics — extracts and synthesizes from 200M+ papers.
Base $0Ops $600Basic tier baseline. - PhindB68
AI search engine for developers — answers technical questions with code-first results and citations.
Base $0Ops $600Free tier baseline. - NotebookLMA73
Google's AI research assistant that grounds answers in uploaded sources — PDFs, notes, audio.
Base $0Ops $600Sales-led pricing — estimate excludes a custom quote. - LegoraB58
Collaborative legal AI agents for due diligence, contract review, and drafting.
Base $0Ops $600Sales-led pricing — estimate excludes a custom quote. - Sakana AIB63
Multi-agent orchestration platform from Japan — TRINITY model + finance underwriting agents.
Base $0Ops $600Sales-led pricing — estimate excludes a custom quote. - GensparkB68
Multi-agent super-agent with built-in AI phone module — research, slides, sheets, real-world calls.
Base $0Ops $600Free tier baseline. - ParallelB58
Web search and research API for agents — used by Clay, Harvey, and Notion in production.
Base $0Ops $600Pay-as-you-go tier baseline. - ConsensusB58
AI search engine for scientific research — surfaces answers from 200M+ peer-reviewed papers.
Base $9Ops $600 - You.comB65
Agentic AI search engine — multi-step web research with citations, code, and image modes.
Base $15Ops $600 - ManusS87
General-purpose agent that turns a single prompt into a finished deliverable.
Base $19Ops $600Starter tier baseline. Long-running researcher inside Gemini that plans, browses and writes briefs.
Base $20Ops $600Gemini Advanced tier baseline.- SciteB60
Smart citations and AI research assistant — papers classified by supporting vs contrasting evidence.
Base $80Ops $600Per-seat × 4 seats. Multi-step research agent inside ChatGPT — autonomous browsing produces 5-30min citation-heavy reports.
Base $80Ops $600Per-seat × 4 seats.
How we estimate
Three components:
- Base — the cheapest qualifying tier from the agent's published pricing, scaled to your seat count. For open-source agents this is $0; for sales-led agents we exclude it and flag a note.
- Tokens — for open-source agents (or BYO-key plans), the estimated monthly token spend based on your volume and the workflow's typical per-action cost (e.g. ~$1.20 per coding PR, ~$0.10 per support ticket). Managed agents include tokens in their subscription, so this is zero for them.
- Ops — engineering / admin hours per month at a loaded rate matched to your team size, times the typical hours required (more for self-hosted).
The model trades precision for honesty. Your specific token mix, dev rate, and integration depth will shift the numbers — but the relative ranking holds across reasonable parameter changes. See our full methodology.