Free Tool

AI Agent Cost Estimator

Choose your agent type, data sources and integrations. Get a realistic build cost and monthly running cost — two numbers most vendors don't show you upfront.

5 agent
types

Build + monthly
runtime

Free no sign-up
required

Prefer to talk it through? AI & Automation →

Example outputs from this tool

🔍 RAG Chatbot

Medium

Build cost

£22,000 – £33,000

Monthly runtime

£140/mo

UK agency · 1,000
calls/mo · Standard

⚡ Autonomous Task Agent

Complex

Build cost

£55,000 – £82,000

Monthly runtime

£580/mo

UK agency · 2,000
tasks/mo · Standard

🔗 Multi-Agent Workflow

Complex

Build cost

£90,000 – £135,000

Monthly runtime

£520/mo

Offshore · 5,000
workflows/mo · Premium

🎙️ Voice Agent

Medium

Build cost

£28,000 – £42,000

Monthly runtime

£280/mo

In-house · 500
calls/mo · Standard

Planning a traditional web or mobile app? Use the MVP Cost Estimator →

Step 1 — Agent Type

What kind of AI agent are you building?

🔍

RAG Chatbot

Document Q&A, knowledge base assistant, internal support bot. Retrieves context from your data before answering.

⚙️

Autonomous Task Agent

Takes actions via tool-calling — reads email, updates CRM, books meetings, runs code. Loops until task is complete.

🕸️

Multi-Agent Workflow

Orchestrator delegates to specialist sub-agents in a pipeline. High complexity, high capability — e.g. research + writing + review loops.

🎙️

Voice Agent

Real-time speech-to-speech (STT → LLM → TTS). Customer service, phone automation, accessibility interfaces. Latency-sensitive.

📊

Data Analysis Agent

Natural language to SQL, chart generation, anomaly detection. Lets non-technical users query your data warehouse conversationally.

Agent complexity

Step 2 — Data Sources

What data will your agent retrieve or reason over? Each source adds ingestion and pipeline work.

PDF / Document Library +3 days

SQL / Database +4 days

REST APIs / External Services +3 days

Real-time Feeds / Webhooks +6 days

Web Scraping / Search +5 days

Step 3 — Integrations & Tools

What can your agent do? Each tool the agent can call requires implementation and testing.

Email (read / send) +3 days

Calendar / Scheduling +3 days

CRM (HubSpot, Salesforce) +5 days

Code Execution / Sandbox +4 days

Web Search +2 days

File Storage (upload / retrieve) +2 days

Step 4 — Delivery Configuration

Human-in-the-loop

Fully Autonomous

Agent acts without approval. Fastest path, requires strong guardrails.

Approval Gate +20% build

Human approves before the agent takes consequential actions.

Full Oversight +35% build

Every output reviewed before delivery. Adds review UI and audit trail.

Deployment target

Internal Tool

Staff-only. Simpler auth, lower compliance overhead.

Customer-Facing +30% build

Public product. Adds auth, rate limiting, safety filters, monitoring.

Model tier — affects monthly running cost

Budget GPT-4o-mini · Claude Haiku

Fast, cheap. Great for high-volume, simpler reasoning tasks.

Standard GPT-4o · Claude Sonnet

Balanced quality and cost. The right default for most production agents.

Premium Claude Opus · GPT-4

Highest reasoning quality. Use where accuracy matters more than cost.

Step 5 — Team & Volume

Who will build it?

UK / EU Agency

£700–£1,050/day · Senior-led, AI-specialised delivery

In-house Team (UK)

£350–£550/day · Salary equivalent, longer ramp time

Offshore / Remote

£150–£280/day · Lower cost, higher coordination overhead

Expected monthly conversations

Used to estimate your monthly model API cost.

1,000 /mo

1005001k2k5k10k25k50k

Step 6 — Development Approach

AI tooling (Copilot, Claude, Cursor) cuts scaffolding and boilerplate time across data pipelines, integrations and agent logic.

Standard Engineering

Traditional development workflow — baseline estimate

AI-Augmented Engineering TechTek's approach

Reduces boilerplate by 15–35% per component. Greatest impact on data pipelines and integrations.

Add 20% contingency buffer

AI projects often surface unknown complexity during integration. Recommended for first-time builds.

Currency:

approx. Jun 2026

Estimated build cost

Configure your agent

Est. monthly running cost

—

Select model tier & volume above

Assumptions

Estimates are indicative and based on industry averages. Actual costs depend on detailed requirements, integrations and your team's experience. Use this as a starting point, not a final budget.

unlock your full breakdown

Build estimates are indicative based on typical AI project complexity. Runtime costs are based on published model pricing; actual usage varies with conversation length and agent behaviour.