One in five companies is already limiting its use of AI because it costs too much. Not too much in general. Too much because nobody calculated the cost per case.
I say this as someone who sells AI agents on a subscription and sees what customers ask about when signing the contract: the monthly price. Almost never the price of one conversation.
McKinsey reports that 20 in 100 companies have limited AI use because of operating costs, including token costs. That share is similar across company sizes and most industries. At the same time, 28 in 100 companies spend more than 10 percent of their total IT budget on AI, and 60 in 100 plan to spend more next year.
Where the surprise in the bill comes from. Model prices fell by about 80 percent within a year. But output tokens, what the model writes, cost 3 to 10 times more than input tokens. An agent that answers at length and elegantly costs several times more than an agent that answers briefly and to the point. At a thousand queries a day at 5 cents each, that is 18 thousand dollars a year. At 15 cents, three times as much, though the customer sees no difference.
Now the other side. A ticket handled by a human costs 2.70 to 5.60 dollars in e-commerce, 18 to 35 in a SaaS company, 30 to 60 in B2B. A case resolved by AI from start to finish: 0.50 to 2.37 dollars. Vendors bill it differently: per resolved case (about 1 dollar at one of the biggest, 1.50 to 2 at another), per conversation (about 2 dollars), per session (10 cents), per task.
The conclusion is simple to write down and hard to implement. Compare the cost per case, not subscription against subscription. A subscription of 1,500 zloty at 200 conversations a month is 7.50 zloty per conversation. The same subscription at 2,000 conversations is 75 groszy. The same tool, a tenfold different cost.
Three things to ask the vendor before you sign:
- How much does one conversation cost for me, at my volume, with the model you will actually use? Not "from".
- Do I see the cost of every conversation in the panel, or do I get one amount on the invoice?
- What happens when volume doubles: does the price per conversation fall, rise or stay?
And one question for yourself: how much does one case handled by a human cost you today? Without that number you can't calculate a return on anything. Take the time per ticket times the hourly rate of the person handling it. That is usually enough.
Caveat: the numbers on cost per case come from vendors and their customers, so treat them as an order of magnitude, not a price list. Your cost depends on conversation length, language and how often the agent has to reach into documents.
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Sources
- McKinsey, The State of AI in 2026: On the road to ROI: https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/quantumblack/our-insights/the-state-of-ai
- LiveChatAI 2025, Lorikeet, Aissist, eesel AI, price lists of Intercom, Zendesk, Salesforce, Freshworks (vendor data)
- Iternal Technologies, analysis of model API prices 2025 to 2026