Is the AI quote you were given fair?
Describe what the system has to do and the calculator prints the hours that work takes, component by component, times an hourly rate you can change. Put the quote you were given beside it. The whole method is on this page, including where the quote comes in under the range.
Free and without sign-up. The arithmetic runs in your browser, so nothing you type is sent anywhere.
The calendar, the CRM, the order database, the helpdesk. Count each one once.
Policies, product pages, past replies. Loading them is quick; checking that the answers are right is not.
What the model is paid for every month, separately from the build.
Leave it empty to use $81.43, the BLS median wage for a US software developer loaded with employer costs. That is what an hour costs an employer, not what a shop bills for one.
Leave it empty to see the range on its own.
Whatever the quote calls recurring: hosting, support, a licence.
A conversation is priced at our support reply workload: 3,000 tokens in, 400 out, at the price Anthropic publishes, read on 22 September 2026.
- The hours, 2 channels and 2 systems
- 40 to 82 h
- At $81.43 an hour (BLS, loaded)
- $3,257 to $6,677
- The build you were quoted
- not entered
- Running it: the model on 1,000 conversations, plus maintenance at 15% of the build a year
- $72
- The monthly fee you were quoted
- not entered
Hours per component are our own estimate of the work and are printed in full below. The rate is a wage, not a bill rate. Design work, custom integrations with systems that have no API, data migration and security review are priced separately by any serious vendor. Our own fixed price for the nearest ready solution: Support Agent, from $1,490, live in 7 to 10 days.
$4,967. The midpoint of 40 to 82 hours at $81.43 an hour.
| What it is | How many | Hours | At $81.43 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Scoping, the rules it answers by, testing and go-live | Once, whatever the size | 16 to 28 | $1,303 to $2,280 |
| Each channel it answers on | 2 channels | 12 to 24 | $977 to $1,954 |
| Each system it reads from or writes to | 2 systems | 8 to 20 | $651 to $1,629 |
| Loading and checking the knowledge it answers from | 200 pages, 2 blocks of 100 | 4 to 10 | $326 to $814 |
| The whole build | 5 lines | 40 to 82 | $3,257 to $6,677 |
Two channels, two integrations and 200 pages of knowledge is 40 to 82 hours of build: $3,257 to $6,677 at $81.43 an hour, the loaded cost of a US software developer. Running it is about $72 a month at 1,000 conversations. A quote far outside that should name the extra hours.
How the number is worked out
Every figure the calculator assumes is on this page, so the result can be checked with a pencil.
- The hours
- A low and a high figure per component: 16 to 28 hours for scoping, rules, testing and go-live, 6 to 12 for each channel, 4 to 10 for each system it connects to, and 2 to 5 for every 100 pages of knowledge. These are our own estimates of the work, and they are the only figures here that are not a published wage or a published price.
- The rate
- The default is $81.43 an hour: the BLS national median wage for a software developer, $65.38, times the 1.2455 load ratio from the BLS Employer Costs survey, both in the data behind our cost pages. That is what an hour costs an employer, not what a shop bills for one, so enter the rate you were quoted at if you know it.
- The monthly cost
- Conversations a month times the support reply workload from our model pages, 3,000 tokens in and 400 out, at the list price of the model you pick. Maintenance is added at 15% of the build a year, an assumption, divided by twelve.
- A quote under the range
- It is reported as under it, in the same words as a quote above it. Fewer hours than the work takes usually means the knowledge is loaded without checking, the escalation rules are never written, or the difference arrives later as change requests.
- Our own price, beside it
- The fixed price of the nearest ready solution is printed next to the range, from the same published price list the site sells from. It is there to be compared, not to win: a build that needs work outside the listed scope is quoted in writing before anything starts.
- What it leaves out
- Design work, custom integrations with systems that have no API, data migration, security review and anything with regulatory scope. A serious vendor prices those separately, so a quote that includes them can sit above the range for a good reason.
Questions people ask about this number
Compare it with a fixed price
Every ready solution is a published price, a published scope and a delivery window in days. If your build needs something outside it, the quote comes in writing before anything starts.