What Does an AI Agent Cost Compared to a Human?

AI agents are fast, tireless, and scalable – but are they cost-effective? Here’s a crude look at what they really cost, compared to human employees.

Rob Hoeijmakers

22 Jun 2025 • 2 min read

This comparison is crude, entirely hypothetical, and viewed solely from the employer’s perspective. It does not account for ethical, societal, or organisational implications.

Everyone working with AI knows the feeling: suddenly there’s a digital colleague who never takes a break, rapidly reads, writes, analyses, listens and observes. But what does such an AI agent actually cost? Not in abstract terms, but really: per day, per month. Let’s break it down.

What Is an AI Agent?

An AI agent combines a language model (like GPT-4o) with tools (search, document storage, visual analysis) and task logic.

Think: "analyse this image, generate a description, and send an audio summary." These agents can handle repetitive tasks or support complex workflows.

Key Cost Drivers

Main elements contributing to the total cost:

LLM usage (token cost for text input/output)
Multimodal processing (image recognition, ASR - automatic speech recognition, TTS - text-to-speech)
Hosting & compute (cloud functions, GPU servers, SaaS platforms)
Storage & context retrieval (e.g. vector databases for RAG)
Monitoring & observability (logging, retry mechanisms)
Energy usage (especially for self-hosted setups)
Licensing & maintenance (security, updates, integrations)

Example: Multimodal Agent Doing 100 Tasks Per Day

Let’s say an agent handles 100 tasks daily, including summarising, transcribing speech, and analysing images:

Text processing (input/output): €3.60/day
Image analysis (e.g. 50 images): €1.50/day
Speech recognition (e.g. 30 minutes of audio): €2.00/day
Total per day: €7.10
Monthly (20 working days): ≈ €142

Infrastructure and tooling not included.

Realistic Total: €100–€300/Month

Including hosting, monitoring, storage, and integration, the cost per agent typically ranges between €100 and €300 per month. For that, you get a digital teammate handling hundreds of tasks.

Comparing to Human Labour

A full-time employee costs €3500–€6000 per month and offers 6–8 hours of focused work daily. The AI agent operates 24/7 (given stable input/output).

AI doesn’t fully replace, it redistributes tasks
Human oversight and quality control remain essential
New tasks emerge (evaluation, supervision, prompt design)

Considerations

Several factors can significantly affect real-world performance and cost-efficiency:

Complex multimodal tasks (video, speech, images) increase costs
Batch processing is more efficient
Self-hosted models require more maintenance but offer control
Improvement is fast – what costs €100 today might cost €30 next year

Conclusion

AI agents aren’t magic, but they are highly productive, cost-efficient additions to a modern team. The real challenge lies in integration, task design, and change management. But when done right, you gain a tireless coworker for just a few hundred euros a month.

Want to see what works for your context? Start with one agent, one task, one working day. You’ll know by tomorrow.