The Field Guide / Pricing and budgets
AI pricing and free tiers explained
Seats, credits, tasks, minutes and per-resolution pricing: how AI tools really charge, and a simple way to estimate your monthly bill before you sign up.
AI tools rarely charge one simple monthly price. Most mix a plan fee with some kind of usage meter, and the free tier is often a trial of that meter. Knowing which model a tool uses tells you whether your bill will stay flat or grow with your business.
The five common pricing models
- Per seat: a monthly price per user. Predictable. Common for writing and coding tools.
- Credits or tasks: each action uses units from a monthly allowance. Zapier, for example, counts a task for each successful action a Zap performs, and only successful actions count.
- Per minute: common for voice agents like Vapi, where you pay for call time, often plus model and phone costs.
- Per resolution or outcome: some support bots charge when the AI resolves a conversation. See Intercom Fin and Help Scout AI Answers for the vendor's current terms.
- Self-hosted / open source: the software is free, but you pay for the server and any AI model usage. n8n documents how to self-host its software.
What “free” usually means
On BotPickr we label tools as Free, Free to start (free plan or tier with paid upgrades) or Paid. Our AI bot prices by the numbers page counts how many listings fall in each group, recomputed every time the site is rebuilt. A free tier is great for testing, but check its limits: monthly units, branding, number of bots, and whether key features (like connecting your inbox) are paid only.
Estimate your monthly bill in 4 steps
- Count your real volume last month: emails, chats, calls, posts or leads.
- Find the unit the tool charges for and how many units one job uses (a 3-step automation can use 3 tasks per run).
- Multiply: volume x units per job x price per unit. Add the plan fee.
- Add 30% for retries, testing and growth, then compare with the time saved at your hourly rate.
Here is the pricing page text for an AI tool I am considering:
[PASTE PRICING PAGE TEXT]
My expected monthly volume: [E.G. 300 CUSTOMER CHATS].
1. Explain the pricing model in plain English.
2. Estimate my monthly cost at that volume, showing your math.
3. List what is NOT included on the cheapest plan that I might need.
4. List anything unclear that I should ask the vendor, marked [ASK VENDOR].
Only use numbers from the text I pasted. If a number is missing, say so.Tools mentioned
Listings link to each tool's official site. Prices change often; confirm on the vendor's page.
AI by Zapier
Add an AI step to a Zap: describe the task in plain English, pick the tools, and it acts across the 9,000+ apps Zapier connects to.
n8n
Visual workflow builder with AI agent nodes, so you can wire an LLM to email, sheets, CRMs and 1,500+ integrations without writing a backend.
Fin by Intercom
Customer-service agent that answers from your help center and hands tricky chats to humans.
Help Scout AI Answers
AI agent inside the Help Scout helpdesk that answers customers instantly from your Docs knowledge base and other sources you add, and hands off to your team when someone needs more help.
Vapi
Developer platform for phone and web voice agents with your choice of models and voices.
Tidio Lyro
Live chat widget with an AI agent that answers FAQs on small store and service sites.
Sources
Factual claims in this article come from these pages. We have not tested every tool mentioned.