Are your AI seats paying for themselves?
Most organisations pay for AI twice: per seat for the assistants their people use, and per token for what their developers build. This compares the two fairly. Pick the vendor, put in your seat price and how your people use it, and see which groups are worth their seat.
per person per working day, before a $30.00 seat is cheaper than buying the same work by the token. One task costs 9.90¢ at list price.
80% of the seats carry less work than they cost. Moving those people to pay-per-use takes $3,000 a month in seats to $1,432.
Not priced here: what a seat buys besides the model. An interface people know, single sign-on, administration, data controls and support all have to be provided some other way on a pay-per-use route, and that costs money too. Read the verdict per group, not as an instruction to cancel.
We will send the figures above, priced on the same catalogue, so you have them to hand at the next renewal.
The same comparison the AI Spend Forecast makes, cut down to one task
Read: seats or tokens, are your AI licences paying for themselves?
What is a seat licence break-even point?
It is the amount of use at which buying the same work by the token, from the same vendor, would cost exactly what the seat costs. A person who uses AI less than that each month is costing more on a seat than their work would cost on pay-per-use pricing. A person who uses it more is better value on the seat.
How is the break-even worked out?
One typical task is priced at the vendor's own list rates: the tokens sent times the input price, plus the tokens returned times the output price. The seat price divided by that cost per task is the number of tasks a seat must carry each month to pay for itself. Divide by the working days in a month for a daily figure.
Why compare a seat with the same vendor's pricing?
Because that is the licensing decision. Comparing one company's seat with another company's cheapest model is a migration, with all the risk and work of one, and it flatters whichever side you wanted to win.
What does the calculator leave out?
What a seat buys besides the model: an interface people already know, single sign-on, administration, retention and data controls, and support. A pay-per-use route has to provide those some other way. It also leaves out caching and negotiated discounts, which the full AI Spend Forecast prices from your own bills.
When is a group shown as level?
When its pay-per-use cost is within 10% of the seat price either way. Inside that band the difference is smaller than the error in any usage estimate, so neither side is called cheaper.
Run it on your real usage, not a typical task
The AI Spend Forecast makes this comparison for every seat plan you hold, from your vendors' own usage exports, and turns it into a budget finance can sign off. Three weeks, fixed price.