What does a managed AI agent cost? The real numbers

August 11, 2026 · 6 min read

Pricing is usually the last thing an AI company wants to talk about and the first thing a business owner wants to know. So let's do it the other way around: numbers first, sales pitch never.

The short answer

Our Essential plan starts at $679 AUD a month billed annually, or $799 month to month. That covers one custom-built agent doing one job properly – say, chasing every quote that goes quiet, or keying every supplier bill into your accounting software.

There are no lock-in contracts. Monthly plans can be cancelled with 30 days' notice, and a standard build has no setup fee. If a workflow needs unusually deep integration work, we quote it up front – never as a surprise on an invoice.

What the fee actually covers

A managed agent isn't a software licence; it's an outcome with a team behind it. The monthly fee includes:

• The build. We design the agent around how your business already works – your tone, your rules, your tools.
• Hosting and monitoring. The agent runs on our infrastructure and is watched around the clock. When something looks off, we see it before you do.
• Integrations. Connections to your existing systems – Xero, Gmail, Shopify, your CRM – are part of the service, not add-ons.
• Updates. When your tools change, your process changes, or you simply want the agent to behave differently, we adjust it. "Follow up after three days, not seven" is a request, not a project.
• Support and reporting. Priority email support and a monthly summary of what your agent actually did with its time.

The comparison that matters isn't against other software subscriptions. It's against the other ways of getting the same work done.

The maths against hiring

The work our agents take over – follow-ups, data entry, reconciliation, reporting – is admin work. The traditional fix is an admin hire. Even a part-timer at two days a week costs well north of $20,000 a year once superannuation goes in, and they take leave, get sick, and reasonably expect not to work at 10pm on a Sunday.

An Essential agent runs about $8,100 a year on the annual plan. It works every day, never resigns, and does the 10pm shift without complaint. To be fair to humans: a good admin person also answers phones, calms down upset customers and uses judgment. An agent doesn't. That's why the right comparison isn't "replace a hire" – it's "avoid the hire you were only making because the busywork piled up".

The maths against doing it yourself

The DIY route looks cheaper on paper: automation tools commonly run somewhere between $30 and $150 a month depending on volume, and ChatGPT is $30-something per seat. The line item nobody budgets is time – yours.

Someone has to design the workflows, connect the tools, test the edge cases, and then own the maintenance: prompts drift, an app updates its interface, a connection silently stops, and the fixing lands on whoever built it. If you have a person who genuinely enjoys that work and has slack in their week, DIY can be a fine choice – we say so in ChatGPT, Zapier or a managed agent?. Most owners we meet don't have that person. They have themselves, at 9pm, googling error messages.

The rough sum we suggest running: take the hours the busywork eats each week, multiply by what an hour of your time is really worth, and compare that with the plan price. If a follow-up agent recovers even one decent job a month that would otherwise have gone quiet, it has usually covered itself – that's the arithmetic behind what happened at Sydney Metro Decking.

When an agent is not worth the money

We'd rather lose the sale than have a subscription resent:

• The task is genuinely rare. If the job takes an hour a month, automating it buys you an hour a month. Don't pay $679 for that.
• The process changes every single time. Agents excel at patterns. If every instance is a judgment call, there's no pattern to automate yet.
• The volume isn't there yet. A brand-new business sending three quotes a month can chase them by hand. Come back when it's thirty.

If any of that sounds like you, keep your money – and read five signs your business is ready for the moment it stops sounding like you.

Work out your own numbers

Fifteen minutes with a notepad beats any pricing page: list the repetitive jobs, tally the weekly hours, multiply by a year. Then look at the plans, and if the maths looks interesting, book a free discovery call. We'll tell you plainly what an agent would cost for your specific workflows – and just as plainly if we don't think it's worth it yet.

Related: ChatGPT, Zapier or a managed agent? and Where do the hours go?