A quick, honest estimate of what it costs to build and run an AI agent — the build (one-time) and the monthly LLM + infrastructure cost. The ranges come from four production agents I've shipped. For the full reasoning, read How Much Does It Cost to Build an AI Agent?
Build · one-time
€8,000–€11,000
Best fit: Sprint
Run · monthly
$371 /mo
≈ $0.02 / run
Honest ballpark from 4 production agents I've shipped — not a quote. LLM rates are provider USD list prices (June 2026).
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Foundation (€6,000: one agent, prompt design, deployment, basic eval) — tap what you need to add:
Real token math on current provider prices.
Agent type
Model
Agent runs / month
10,000
Running cost uses real token math — agent runs × tokens per run × current provider list prices, plus vector DB, hosting, and observability tiers. Token-per-run figures come from typical chat (~1.5k), RAG (~7k), and agentic (~30k) workloads. Build cost reflects real freelance engagement scope (foundation + the components you select). Prices verified June 2026: Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, Pinecone. API rates fluctuate — treat this as a planning estimate, not a quote.