How much does AI sales automation cost — and how to calculate the payback
What it costs to launch and what it costs to run: setup from €300, tokens €20–100/month, a payback formula and a worked example on realistic numbers.
“How much does it cost?” is the first question on every call. The honest answer has two parts: what it costs to launch and what it costs to keep running. Let's cover both — and then calculate when the money comes back.
Contents
What the price is made of
The price of an implementation almost always consists of three different lines, and confusing them is the cause of most unpleasant surprises.
1. One-off implementation
Work on your specific process: audit, logic configuration, CRM and telephony integration, testing on your data, launch. Paid once. This is where the price spread comes from: a simple product like lead filtering or competitor monitoring starts at €300, a full quality-control platform starts at €1,000 and up depending on the number of modules.
2. AI tokens and telephony
Pay-per-use: every processed call, every analysed dialogue. Usually €20–100 per month depending on volume. One important point: the OpenAI, Gemini or ElevenLabs accounts and the SIP telephony should be registered to you, not to the vendor — then you see every euro of spend and don't depend on a middleman.
3. Infrastructure
If the solution lives on your own server, this line almost disappears — you pay only for tokens. If we deploy on our platform, it is about $25 per month for the integration, plus the same tokens.
| Product | Price | Launch time |
|---|---|---|
| Inbound lead filter | €300 | under 2 weeks |
| Competitor monitoring | €500 | under 2 weeks |
| AI QC “Start” — the base module | €1,000 | 2 weeks |
| Manager call control | €1,500 | 2 weeks |
| Voice bot for outbound and inbound calls | €2,000 | 2 weeks |
| AI QC “Maximum” — all 7 modules | €5,800 | from 2 weeks |
After launch the recurring cost is only AI tokens and telephony minutes — usually €20–100 per month.
What it costs in practice
Simple products (from €300). Lead filtering and enrichment, competitor monitoring, call reports, lead summaries. Launched in under two weeks.
Quality control (from €1,000). The base module audits your pipeline and checks whether closed leads were closed for a real reason. Calls, chats and SLA monitoring are added module by module.
Voice bot. The price depends on the scenario: calling back missed calls is simpler than full qualification with CRM write-back. Telephony minutes are a visible share of the running cost here — see the detailed breakdown in the voice bot guide.
Company-wide implementation. Several business lines at once, rolled out over 2–3 months with staged payments.
The key point: starting with one product is cheaper and safer than buying a bundle. You test the hypothesis on a small amount and expand only if it worked.
We'll map where your leads leak, show live examples and calculate payback on your own numbers. We'll tell you straight if it won't pay off.
Get a quote in 30 sec →Your own server vs. turnkey
If you have your own server, the solution is deployed on it. The plus — no monthly platform fee; the running cost comes down to tokens, literally cents per dialogue. The minus — the server has to be maintained, and if it goes down on a weekend, that is your responsibility.
The turnkey option on our platform removes that worry for ~$25 a month. For a team without its own administrator this is usually the wiser choice: the infrastructure saving isn't worth the downtime risk.
The payback formula
Do the maths before you start, not after. The formula is simple: payback = one-off cost ÷ (money returned per month − running cost per month).
The hard part isn't the formula — it's honestly estimating the “money returned”. It usually has three sources:
Rescued leads. Enquiries that used to be closed as junk without processing, or lost to slow response. Count: number of such leads × your conversion × average deal size.
Saved time. Hours people spent on routine — listening to calls, cross-checking, manual reports. Multiply by the cost of an employee hour.
Unfrozen money. Relevant for warehouses: surplus and dead stock sitting on the shelf instead of turning over.
A worked example
A hypothetical but realistic example for a four-manager sales team. Numbers are rounded for clarity — run it on your own.
Inputs: 400 leads a month, of which 120 are closed as junk. A spot check shows about 15% of the junk closures happened without a single real call attempt — roughly 18 leads. Deal conversion is 15%, average deal €900.
Rescued leads: 18 × 15% ≈ 2.7 deals × €900 ≈ €2,430 a month. Even if only half is actually recoverable, that's €1,200.
Costs: €1,000 one-off implementation + €60 a month in tokens.
Payback: €1,000 ÷ (€1,200 − €60) ≈ under a month. With a margin for caution — 1–2 months, which matches typical practice.
When it will not pay off
An honest list of situations where automation should wait:
Too few leads. If you get 20–30 enquiries a month and physically manage to process each one, automating control adds nothing — there is nothing to rescue.
The problem is the product or the price, not the process. No bot will fix an offer the market doesn't want. Fix the offer first.
No data. If nothing is filled in the CRM and calls aren't recorded, there is nothing to analyse. Basic discipline first.
Nobody to react. A violations report without a person who acts on it is just another notification channel that gets muted within a month.
Want to run the numbers on your own data? Collect three figures: leads per month, junk share and average deal size. That is enough to estimate the payback order of magnitude before you ever talk to a vendor — and the lead-loss audit checklist shows exactly where to find them.
Frequently asked questions
What do I keep paying after the launch?
Only AI tokens and telephony minutes — usually €20–100 a month depending on volume. If the solution runs on our platform rather than your server, add about $25 a month for the integration.
Why should the AI accounts be registered to us and not to the vendor?
Because then you see every euro of actual usage, can change vendors without losing the setup, and hold the keys to your own data. A vendor who insists on keeping the accounts is building a dependency, not a service.
Is it cheaper to buy a bundle straight away?
A bundle has a lower price per product, but starting with a single product is safer: you validate the effect on a small budget and expand only if the numbers work. Most of our clients start with one module at €300–1,000.