AI employee vs hiring a person: the arithmetic
A fair comparison is not "our price against a chatbot". It is our price against what a person actually costs you per month, with everything included.
What does a person really cost?
Salary is not the number. To the salary you add payroll taxes, benefits, equipment, software seats, and the management time somebody spends supervising. This is measured, not guessed: in March 2026 benefits accounted for 30.1% of total employer compensation costs in US private industry — $14.01 of every $46.60 per hour worked (BLS, Employer Costs for Employee Compensation). That is a loading factor of about 1.43 on base pay before you add equipment and software seats.
Two public reference points, both checkable:
- The US median for secretaries and administrative assistants is $47,460 a year (2024, US Bureau of Labor Statistics) — roughly $4,900–5,500 a month fully loaded. An experienced executive assistant costs considerably more.
- A managed human executive assistant is sold at a public list price of $3,000 a month (Athena) — that is the floor of the market for a dedicated person, offshore and managed.
What does an AI employee cost?
| Plan | Per month | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Standard | $350 | Runs on your own AI subscription, which you pay for separately, directly to the provider. |
| Assisted | $500 | Same, and we do the setup for you. |
| VIP | $1,000 | A dedicated human specialist looks after the agent; unlimited agents. |
Extra agents are $15 a month each, up to five on any plan. There is no recruiting cost, no notice period, no equipment, and no handover when someone leaves.
Where the AI employee wins beyond the price
- It does not leave. Everything it learned about your business stays, because the memory is yours.
- It works nights. There is no queue behind one person's working day.
- It scales sideways. A second and third employee cost $15 a month each, not another salary.
Where a person still wins
Anything physical. Anything requiring legal responsibility — signatures, formal decisions. Relationships where the other side needs to know they are dealing with a human being. And judgement in genuinely novel situations, where an agent should be asking you rather than deciding.
Work out your own number
What is honest to say about savings
The "90% cheaper than staff" line you see everywhere is marketing, not a measurement. The honest version is the arithmetic above with your own numbers in it — and the note that an AI employee does not replace a person one-for-one. It replaces the part of the job that is repetitive, and gives you back the part that is not.