🚀
AI Agent Startup Cost Calculator
Estimate what it actually costs to launch and run an AI-native business for the first year.
Team & Labor
Infrastructure & Tools
Cost Summary
Monthly burn
—
First-year total
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LLM % of burn
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People % of burn
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How to read this
- Lean solo founder: $200-1,000/mo — APIs, hosting, and tools dominate.
- Small team (2-3): $5,000-15,000/mo — salaries become the biggest line item fast.
- Scaling: $20,000+/mo — add reliability, compliance, and multi-agent infrastructure.
- Local hardware: One-time GPU cost amortized over the year. Compare with our LLM cost calculator.
🤖 Use this tool in your agent
✓ Agent-ready codeCopy the snippet below into your agent, newsletter, or script. The tool page at hermesdispatch.dev/tools/ai-startup-cost-calculator/ is the canonical contract: inputs, outputs, and formulas.
python
# Hermes Dispatch Tool — AI Startup Cost Calculator
# Source: https://hermesdispatch.dev/tools/ai-startup-cost-calculator/
# Description: Estimate first-year AI startup costs across compute, models, tools, and team.
# License: MIT (generated by hermesdispatch.dev)
#
# INSTALL:
# 1. Save this file as ~/.hermes/hermes-agent/tools/ai_startup_cost_calculator.py
# 2. Restart Hermes or run /reset in a session
# 3. The tool auto-registers if Hermes uses auto-discovery of tools/*.py
#
# MANUAL REGISTRY (if auto-discovery is off):
# from tools.ai_startup_cost_calculator import register
# register()
import json
DATA = {}
def _ok(result):
return json.dumps({"success": True, "data": result}, indent=2)
def _err(message):
return json.dumps({"success": False, "error": message}, indent=2)
TOOL_NAME = "ai_startup_cost_calculator"
TOOLSET = "agents"
SCHEMA = {
"type": "function",
"function": {
"name": "ai_startup_cost_calculator",
"description": "Estimate first-year AI startup costs across compute, models, tools, and team.",
"parameters": {
"type": "object",
"properties": {
"team_size": {
"type": "integer",
"description": "Initial team size."
},
"avg_salary": {
"type": "number",
"description": "Average annual salary per person in USD."
},
"cloud_compute_monthly": {
"type": "number",
"description": "Monthly cloud compute spend in USD."
},
"api_spend_monthly": {
"type": "number",
"description": "Monthly LLM/API spend in USD."
},
"tools_monthly": {
"type": "number",
"description": "Monthly SaaS/tool spend in USD."
},
"months": {
"type": "integer",
"description": "Number of months to model."
}
},
"required": []
}
}
}
def _run(args):
team = int(args.get("team_size", 1))
salary = float(args.get("avg_salary", 120000))
compute = float(args.get("cloud_compute_monthly", 500))
api = float(args.get("api_spend_monthly", 1000))
tools = float(args.get("tools_monthly", 300))
months = int(args.get("months", 12))
people_cost = team * salary * (months / 12)
infra_cost = (compute + api + tools) * months
total = people_cost + infra_cost
return _ok({
"people_cost": round(people_cost, 2),
"infrastructure_cost": round(infra_cost, 2),
"total_first_year_cost": round(total, 2),
"monthly_burn": round(total / months, 2)
})
def HANDLER(args):
try:
return _run(args)
except Exception as e:
return _err(str(e))
def register():
"""Manual registry hook. Import and call this to register with Hermes."""
try:
from tools.registry import registry
registry.register(
name=TOOL_NAME,
toolset=TOOLSET,
schema=SCHEMA,
handler=HANDLER,
)
except ImportError:
print("Hermes registry not found; skipping manual registration.")
if __name__ == "__main__":
# CLI smoke test
print(HANDLER({}))
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