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Estimates for planning only. Not financial, legal or staffing advice.
How this calculator works
Your monthly agent cost is the paid time your calls need multiplied by the cost of a paid hour. Paid time is handle time divided by the share of paid time agents spend on calls, because breaks, training, meetings and idle time are paid too.
Agent cost per month = calls × AHT (minutes) ÷ 60 ÷ utilization × cost per paid hour
Break-even AI price per minute = cost per paid hour ÷ (60 × utilization)
The break-even price is what one handled minute costs you today. Below it, each call the AI voice agent completes on its own costs less than the same call with an agent, before platform and setup fees.
Example: 20,000 calls of 5 minutes at 60% utilization need 2,778 paid hours a month, about 17.4 full-time agents at 160 paid hours each. At 30 per paid hour that is 83,333 a month, or 0.83 per handled minute.
What goes into the cost of an agent hour
Wages, payroll taxes and benefits, supervisors and quality staff, recruiting and training, seats, software and telephony. For reference, the median wage of customer service representatives in the United States was $21.53 an hour in 2025, before any of these other costs (O*NET, US Department of Labor, from Bureau of Labor Statistics data).
What the calculator leaves out
- Setup, integration and any monthly platform fee of the AI agent.
- Calls the AI agent passes to a person: count only the calls it completes on its own.
- Different call length: the calculator assumes an AI call lasts as long as a call with an agent.
- Queues: fewer calls do not cut agents in the same proportion, because a queue needs spare capacity, and the calls left for people may be the longer ones. The Erlang C calculator shows the effect on agents per interval, so treat the saving here as an estimate.
Frequently asked questions
How is an AI voice agent priced?
Ask each vendor for the price per minute of conversation and for any platform, setup or integration fees. Add the fixed fees to the monthly AI cost, then compare the result with your break-even price from this calculator.
What is a fully loaded cost per agent hour?
It is everything you pay for one hour of an agent’s paid time: wage, payroll taxes, benefits, the share of supervisors, trainers and quality staff, recruiting, office or remote equipment, software licenses and telephony. It is always higher than the wage alone.
Why does the calculator divide by utilization?
Agents are paid for every hour on shift, but they spend only part of it handling calls. If agents are on calls 60% of paid time, each handled hour costs 1 ÷ 0.6, or about 1.67 paid hours.
Is a cheaper AI minute always a saving?
Only on calls the AI agent completes. A call that starts with the AI agent and ends with a person costs both, so enter only the share of calls the AI agent finishes on its own.
How many agents does an AI voice agent replace?
The calculator turns the AI share of paid hours into full-time equivalents at 160 paid hours a month. Whether that means fewer hires, less overtime or a smaller outsourcing bill is a staffing decision; the Erlang C calculator shows the effect on agents per interval.