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Pick your use case, number of integrations, and daily volume. This calculator returns a real build cost range, monthly operating cost, and 3-year total cost of ownership, side-by-side with what one full-time employee costs over the same period. Built from real project logs, not vendor pricing page estimates.
3-year cost comparison
One-time build estimate
Launch$11,500 to $18,000
Monthly run cost
$102/mo
Engineering hours
96h
3-year agent TCO
$18,072
Payback vs 1 FTE
Month 3
+$217,728
vs fully-loaded FTE cost ($235,800)
The AI agent costs $18,072 over 3 years vs $235,800 for one fully-loaded employee doing the same work.
Engineering hours: Base hours by use case (from Scouq project logs) + (integrations x 8h each) + 20h escalation routing, scaled by complexity tier (chatbot 0.75x, multi-step 1x, autonomous 1.35x).
Build cost: Engineering hours x $150/hr (Scouq internal rate). Hosting multiplier: self-hosted +15%, managed +10%. Low = midpoint x 0.8, high = midpoint x 1.25, rounded to nearest $500.
LLM cost: Claude Haiku pricing ($0.25/$1.25 per 1M input/output tokens). Avg 600 input + 400 output tokens per interaction = ~$0.00065/interaction. Short = 0.5x, medium = 1x, long = 2x. Monthly = daily x 30 x per-interaction cost.
Monthly run: $40/mo Hetzner CPX31 base + LLM variable + 5%/yr maintenance divided monthly.
FTE comparison: $60k salary x 1.31 BLS employer cost multiplier (Q4 2025 ECEC) x 3 years.
We scope your specific workflow, integrations, and escalation rules, then give you a fixed-price proposal with a delivery window. No hourly billing surprises.
Related: AI Receptionist Break-Even Calculator . Lead Response ROI Calculator
Engineering hours
We start from a baseline hours estimate per use case, sourced from Scouq project logs across 12 builds. Each integration adds 8 hours of scoping, auth, and error-handling work. Complexity tier scales the total: a simple chatbot runs at 0.75x, an autonomous worker at 1.35x.
LLM cost model
We price interactions at Claude Haiku rates ($0.25/$1.25 per 1M input/output tokens), the lowest-cost production-grade model as of 2026. Short interactions use fewer tokens; long ones use 2x. Monthly LLM cost = daily volume x 30 x per-interaction token cost.
Infrastructure baseline
Hetzner CPX31 at EUR 12.99/mo is the production server standard for Scouq-managed builds. Pro-rated across services, the base hosting floor is $40/mo. Self-hosted builds add about 15% to engineering for infra setup; managed SaaS adds about 10% for third-party wiring.
3-year TCO vs FTE
The FTE comparison uses $60,000 base salary x 1.31 employer cost multiplier (BLS Q4 2025 ECEC data), annualized for 3 years. AI agent TCO = build cost + (monthly run cost x 36). Payback period = build cost divided by monthly savings vs the FTE.
