Seven AI agents ran overnight on a project last month. They researched, summarised, drafted messages, and had it all organised into a report by morning. The bill came to somewhere between eight and twelve dollars.
A person doing the same work needs a full day. Maybe two, once you count the formatting and the tidying up. At any reasonable hourly rate, that’s hundreds.
The wrong question
Most people look at the subscription price and ask whether it’s worth it. Twenty dollars a month. Fifty. A hundred. Is that a lot?
It’s an unanswerable question, because the number has nothing to compare itself to.
The better one: what does this work cost you now (opens in a new tab)?
The arithmetic that matters
Take the most repetitive task you found when you counted your repetitions (opens in a new tab). Estimate the hours it eats per month. Multiply by the hourly cost of whoever does it.
That number is your ceiling. Any tool that costs less than it and saves even half the time is a clear win, and you’ll know by how much.
One caution
Don’t buy ten tools hoping one sticks. Start with one. Use it for a full month. Track the time it actually saves, and be honest about the number rather than the number you hoped for. If it saves real time, keep it. If it doesn’t, cancel it and try the next.
Most businesses can start for well under fifty dollars a month, and several of the best tools have free tiers that are more than enough to begin with.
Compare the cost of the work, not the cost of the tool. Do that arithmetic honestly and AI is usually the cheapest help you’ll ever add to your team.
The system described is ZAMARA, the multi-model agent system I run for myself.