What a personal AI
actually costs to run.
The build price is a one-off. The running costs are forever. Here is what they actually look like for a small business, with rough numbers you can put in a spreadsheet.
Builders quote you the cost to build the thing. They are often quieter about the cost to run it. The running cost is usually small. It is sometimes surprising. Either way, you should know before you sign anything.
Rough figures below, in USD. Your mileage will vary. Ask your builder for their specific numbers before you commit, and compare them to the ranges here. If theirs are an order of magnitude higher, ask why.
The costs you will actually see.
For a typical small business helper — one person, a few hundred tasks a month — the ongoing costs usually fall into three buckets.
-
The AI itself.
You pay per use. A well-built helper handling a few hundred tasks a month usually costs between $5 and $40 per month. Heavier use (document processing, long-form writing) can push it to $50–$150. Rare for a solo business to go above that.
What to ask: what is the expected monthly cost at my volume, and what happens if I double the volume?
-
Where it runs.
If the helper lives on your own computer, $0 / month. If it runs on a small server somewhere (needed if it reacts to things while you are away), $5–$20 per month. If somebody tries to charge you hundreds per month for “hosting,” ask why.
What to ask: where does it run, who pays that bill, and can I see it?
-
Occasional tweaks.
Your business changes. The helper needs to change too. A small monthly retainer for adjustments runs $200–$600 per month if you choose to have one. Optional. Most clients start without one and add it later when they find they want small changes regularly.
What to ask: can I change things myself if I want to, or do I need to come back to you?
Total running cost for a typical solo-business helper: roughly $10 to $60 per month if you do your own tweaks, or $250 to $700 per month if you keep the builder on retainer. A long way short of a full-time employee.
The hidden costs nobody mentions.
Three real costs that do not show up on an invoice:
-
Your attention in the first month.
A new helper needs you to correct it, a lot, in the first few weeks. It learns your voice and your rules from you. Budget two or three hours a week for the first month. This cost is real, and you cannot skip it. You can refuse to do it, but then the helper will not be useful.
-
The occasional strange mistake.
AI helpers sometimes get things wrong in unusual ways. Not often, but enough that you will need a way to spot it. If your workflow has no “you read the output before it goes out” step, build one in. The cost of the strange mistake, one time, is larger than a year of running costs.
-
Unusual volume spikes.
Most of the time the helper costs a small amount. Then one week you get 500 client messages instead of your usual 50, because of some event, and the bill is ten times as high. A builder worth hiring will set an automatic cap so you cannot accidentally spend more than a certain amount in a month. Ask for this up front.
What you are actually saving.
The running cost is small. The time it buys back is often large. A helper that costs $40 a month and gives you back eight hours a week is paying you $2,400 a month in time, if your hour is worth $75. The maths usually works out well, as long as the helper is built and used properly.
Where it stops working out is when the running cost is much higher than this (somebody sold you a helper that uses expensive infrastructure for no reason), or when the helper does not actually save time in practice because it needs too much hand-holding. Both are fixable. Both are worth catching early.
The short version.
For a typical small business helper: expect $10–$60 per month in direct costs, a few hours of your time in the first month, and much bigger time savings across a year than either of those. Anything significantly outside these ranges, ask why.
Related: where your data should live · Back to the guide · hello@solocmo.ai