AI Cost Calculator
Estimate one-time and recurring AI costs, including implementation, licensing, maintenance, and infrastructure spend.
This model isolates AI cost structure rather than ROI. It is for budget planning, procurement, and TCO review before benefit assumptions are finalized.
It helps finance and delivery leaders align on run-rate exposure and cash profile without mixing in optimistic value assumptions too early. Teams often use this as the cost baseline that downstream ROI models reference.
One-time cost
$75,000.00
Recurring cost / month
$4,600.00
Year-1 total cost
$130,200.00
3-year TCO
$240,600.00
How This Model Works
Separates one-time implementation and integration cost from recurring run-rate cost.
Includes licensing/API, maintenance, and infrastructure/inference cost in recurring spend.
Outputs year-one total spend and three-year TCO for finance-ready planning.
Field Definitions
Use these definitions to set assumptions consistently before comparing results across teams.
Implementation cost
Up-front build and configuration cost for the initial deployment scope.
Integration cost
One-time effort required to connect existing systems, data flows, and authentication.
Enablement/training cost
One-time cost for onboarding users, playbooks, and operational readiness.
License/API cost / month
Monthly subscription and API spend tied to expected usage volume.
Maintenance / month
Ongoing support, monitoring, retraining, and model governance cost.
Inference/infrastructure / month
Compute, hosting, storage, and network cost needed to run the workload reliably.
Frequently Asked Questions
+How is this different from AI ROI?
This model estimates spend only. ROI models compare spend against expected benefit.
+Why include recurring categories separately?
Recurring cost drivers scale differently and should be budgeted independently.
+What is 3-year TCO here?
One-time setup cost plus 36 months of recurring operating cost.
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