How Much Does AI Automation Cost for a Small Business? (2026 Prices)

The short answer

Those ranges come from the prices platforms, AI providers, freelance marketplaces and agencies publish on their own websites, which we read on October 21, 2026. We sell automation too, so we've put our own prices in the same table and said so.

AI automation cost by way of doing it

An automation costs money in three places: the platform it runs on, the AI model it calls, and the person who builds it and fixes it when something changes. The last one is usually the biggest.

What the platforms charge

Monthly prices from each platform's own pricing page. Each plan includes an allowance, and the platforms measure it differently: Zapier counts every successful action step as a task, Make counts every module action as a credit, and n8n and Activepieces count each run of the whole workflow, however many steps it has.

Swipe the table sideways to see every column.

Running n8n yourself trades the subscription for a server: Hetzner's cheapest available server is €6.49 a month before VAT and DigitalOcean's 1 GB server $6, while managed n8n hosts such as Sliplane (from €9) and Elestio (from $11) run it for you. Pipedream has stopped taking new sign-ups for its Workflows product and is shutting it down on 31 March 2027.

What the AI model costs

The AI part of an automation (reading an invoice, sorting an email, drafting a reply) is paid per token, roughly three-quarters of a word. To make the prices concrete, take one month of a typical small-business workload: reading 200 invoices (about 2,000 tokens in and 300 out each) and drafting 500 email replies (about 1,500 in and 400 out). That's 1.15 million tokens in and 0.26 million out.

Swipe the table sideways to see every column.

So the model is rarely the expensive part: the same month costs $0.25 on the cheapest models and $24.50 on OpenAI's flagship. It grows with agents that call a model many times per task, with models that “think” before answering (those thinking tokens are billed as output), and with paid services the automation also calls, such as OCR, SMS or data enrichment. Token counts also differ between providers for the same text.

What building and looking after it costs

Marketplace figures are the typical rates the marketplace publishes; agency figures are the prices each agency publishes on its own site. Few providers publish prices at all; these are the ones we found that do.

Swipe the table sideways to see every column.

What moves the price

How many steps run, and how the platform counts them

Take a workflow with a trigger and nine actions that runs 300 times a month. On Zapier that's 2,700 tasks, which needs the 5,000-task Professional plan ($89 a month billed yearly, $133.50 monthly). On Make it's about 3,000 credits, inside Core's 10,000. On n8n it's 300 executions, inside Starter's 2,500. The same workflow can cost several times as much on one platform as on another.

How often it runs

A workflow that checks for new data on a schedule runs whether or not there is anything new. n8n counts every scheduled run, and estimates a 5-minute schedule at 8,600–8,900 executions a month, more than three times Starter's allowance. A workflow that waits for an event (a webhook) runs only when something happens.

AI steps

Platforms charge for their built-in AI on top of the step itself: on Zapier an AI step can cost more than one task, Make charges credits by the tokens used, and Activepieces charges 2–20 credits per AI step. Connecting your own AI provider's key (on Make's and Activepieces' paid plans) moves that cost to the provider's bill, at the API prices above.

Users and bots

Zapier, Make and n8n price by usage. Microsoft Power Automate prices by person ($15 per user a month, paid yearly) and by bot for unattended work ($150 a month), which adds up as a team grows.

Paying yearly or monthly

Yearly is cheaper everywhere: Zapier says 33% less, n8n 17%, and Make 15% in most countries (25% in the US). Activepieces' yearly plan saves two months.

Who builds it, and who fixes it

Apps change their logins, fields and limits, and an automation nobody watches breaks quietly. The build is a one-off; keeping it working is a monthly cost, whether it's your time, a freelancer's hours or a care plan.

Costs to ask about before you sign

• What happens at the limit. When a Zapier plan runs out of tasks, Zapier switches you to pay-per-task billing (1.25 times the base rate on a yearly plan, 2.5 times on a monthly one), up to three times your allowance. On Make, scenarios stop until you add credits.
• Who looks after it after launch, what that costs, and how fast they respond when it breaks.
• Minimum terms. Wrk's monthly fee is on a 12-month subscription; Brothers Automate starts with a 90-day engagement.
• Whose accounts it runs in. If the workflows live in the builder's account, you can lose them when you stop paying. Ask for them in yours.
• How AI usage is billed: passed through at cost, marked up, or bundled. And on free AI tiers, whether your data trains the model: Google lists Gemini's free tier as used to improve its products, and its paid tier as not.
• VAT and currency. Hetzner, Sliplane and Softomate quote prices before VAT, and n8n bills in euros.

Yourself, a freelancer, an agency or an employee?

• Yourself: $0–$30 a month to start on a no-code platform. The cheapest in cash, if you have the hours to build it and to fix it.
• Freelancer: $30–$150 an hour, or $300–$2,000 for a simple workflow. Agree up front who fixes it when it breaks.
• Agency or productized service: $1,000–$5,000 for one workflow, often with a monthly care plan. More process, and cover when someone is away.
• Employee: the US median wage was $100,390 a year for computer programmers and $135,980 for software developers in May 2025, before payroll taxes and benefits. Worth it once there's a full-time job's worth of automation.

In the UK

Zapier and Make bill in US dollars and n8n in euros, so a UK business pays in a foreign currency either way. Make shows UK visitors lower prices than US ones (Core at $9 a month billed yearly, against $12). Freelance rates are lower too: Upwork puts Zapier developers in the UK at $20–$54 an hour, against $70–$100 in the US. Softomate, in London, publishes setup from £1,500 and a monthly plan from £99, before VAT. An employed software developer earns £30,000 as a starter to £75,000 with experience, according to the National Careers Service.

Where NQD.ai fits

We sell automation, so read this part with that in mind. We build your first automation free: designed and built by our engineers, live in 30 days, with one measurable result attached. Running it costs $199 a month per automation, for hosting, monitoring, fixes and updates. What the automation itself uses is yours to pay, at cost with no markup: a Zapier or Make plan in your name if it runs on one, and AI and API usage. The workflows, accounts and data are in your name; leave with 30 days' notice and take the automation with you.

Our first 5 founding clients get 3 months of running free, then $149 a month for as long as they stay.

Or see the automation offer in full and every NQD.ai price on one page.

Every other price here comes from that provider's own website on October 21, 2026. If one has changed, email support@nqd.ai and we'll correct it.