Free tool · AI economics

AI Agent ROI Calculator

Custom AI agents are only worth building when the hours they remove outweigh the build and the monthly model spend. Three inputs tell you which side of that line you are on.

See How It Works

Free 15-minute fit check · no equity · no retainer

How many times does this task happen?

How many times does this task happen?

Across your whole team.

How long does one task take a person today?

How long does one task take a person today?

What does an hour of that person's time cost?

What does an hour of that person's time cost?

Fully loaded, not salary alone.

How specific is the task to your business?

How specific is the task to your business?

Tasks per year2,400
Hours removed per year~400
Labour value recovered$15,000
Annual running cost$696
One-off build$3,500

How this is calculated

No black box.

Saved hours, discounted

Volume times minutes saved, then reduced by 20–30% for review, exceptions and the tasks an agent hands back to a human.

Running cost included

Model usage scales with task volume and length, on top of hosting and monitoring. Ignoring it is the most common ROI error.

Build cost from our own pricing

A single-workflow agent is one fixed-price sprint. Deep system integration is priced as two, because it needs a second stage.

Every figure here is derived from Shiftmind Build's own fixed-price sprint model, not from third-party market surveys. It is an estimate for planning, not a quote. The written blueprint is where scope and price become fixed.

Next step

Find out if your idea fits in 14 days.

Tell us what you want to build. We reply within one business day with a straight yes, no, or here is what we would cut.

NDA available on request