Cost Per Task AI Agent Pricing: $0.10 to $2 (2026)

A vendor quote of ten cents, fifty cents, or two dollars is a unit, not a monthly price. I re-checked the public rate cards in October 2026 and wrote each unit next to the company that publishes it.

Short answer: Cost per task for an AI agent in 2026 is $0.10 for a Salesforce Agentforce standard action, $0.15 for a voice action, $0.50 for a HubSpot Breeze resolved conversation, $0.99 for an Intercom Fin outcome, or $2 for an Agentforce conversation or Help Agent resolution. Workflow Automation is $3,500 once for one named job, with no per-task fee to me. You still pay the model, phone, and messaging vendors directly.

Meter	Published price	What triggers the charge
Agentforce standard or custom action	$0.10	20 Flex Credits in production
Agentforce voice action	$0.15	30 Flex Credits in production
HubSpot Breeze resolved conversation	$0.50	50 HubSpot Credits when the conversation resolves
Intercom Fin outcome	$0.99	One outcome per conversation
Intercom Fin qualification	$9.99	A booked call or a started trial
Agentforce conversation or Help Agent resolution	$2	Existing conversation SKU, or 400 Flex Credits
Workflow Automation	$3,500 once	One named job. No per-task fee to me

What does cost per task AI actually charge in 2026?#

The public rates I re-checked in October 2026 are $0.10 per Agentforce action, $0.15 per voice action, $0.50 per HubSpot resolved conversation, $0.99 per Intercom outcome, and $2 per Agentforce conversation or Help Agent resolution. The definition of a task is what changes the invoice.

Salesforce Agentforce pricing lists Flex Credits at $500 per 100,000 credits and Conversations at $2. The Flex Credits rate card dated August 31, 2026 sets a standard or custom action at 20 credits in production and a voice action at 30. Twenty credits at that list price is $0.10. Thirty credits is $0.15. Help Agent resolutions are 400 credits on the same card, which is $2. Salesforce stated the same $0.10 action math in its May 2025 Flex Credits announcement. The $2 conversation price is still on the pricing page for customers on that SKU.

HubSpot’s April 13, 2026 announcement moved Breeze Customer Agent from $1.00 per conversation to $0.50 per resolved conversation, billed as 50 HubSpot Credits, starting April 14. It is for Pro and Enterprise customers. HubSpot says the agent resolves 65% of conversations across more than 8,000 customers who turned it on. Prospecting Agent is a different meter: $1 per lead recommended for outreach.

Intercom’s pricing page lists Fin at $0.99 per outcome, at most once per conversation, with a minimum monthly commitment. The page uses 50 outcomes as the example of that commitment, which is $49.50 at $0.99. Help-desk seats are a separate line. Intercom’s outcome article prices a booked call or a started trial at $9.99, and a self-serve route at $0.99. A Procedure you configured to hand off, and that finishes, can still be one outcome. A customer who asks for a person, or a Procedure that fails, is not billed.

What counts as one billable task?#

A task is the unit named on that vendor’s meter, and the names are not interchangeable. One customer conversation can be one $0.99 Intercom outcome, one $0.50 HubSpot resolution, one $2 Agentforce conversation, or ten $0.10 actions. Get the definition in writing before you forecast a month.

Salesforce counts an action when Agentforce runs a standard or custom action. A voice action is its own row at 30 credits. Intercom counts one outcome per conversation even when Fin answers several questions. HubSpot counts a resolved conversation. The announcement does not publish a tighter scoring rule than that, so confirm how your portal marks a resolution before you put $0.50 into a spreadsheet. I keep “task,” “action,” “outcome,” and “conversation” as four different words when I read a quote.

What does 1,000 conversations cost over 24 months?#

At 1,000 conversations a month, the published unit prices land between $325 and $2,000 a month before seats and the platform subscription. Workflow Automation stays $3,500 once for one named job. These rows are multiplication from the cards above, not a client’s invoice.

At 1,000 conversations a month	Monthly meter	24 months
HubSpot, using their 65% resolution figure: 650 × $0.50	$325	$7,800
Intercom, if 700 conversations each produce one $0.99 outcome	$693	$16,632
Agentforce, if a conversation averages 10 standard actions at $0.10	$1,000	$24,000
Agentforce Conversations at $2	$2,000	$48,000
Workflow Automation	$3,500 once	$3,500 to me

$3,500 divided by $325 is just under 11 months of that HubSpot resolution line. Divided by $693 it is about five months of that Intercom line. Divided by $1,000 it is three and a half months of that action line. Those crossovers leave out the HubSpot or Intercom subscription you may already pay, and they leave out model and telephony bills on an owned job. If the Intercom outcome is a booked call, the unit is $9.99, and 700 of those is $6,993 in one month. A shop at a few hundred conversations can stay on the meter and spend less than $3,500 over two years. Run your quote. Each unit needs its own break-even.

The wider owner comparison, retainers included, is AI agent pricing for a small business.

Where does the meter sit in a real workflow?#

On a metered plan the charge lands when the agent completes the unit the vendor named: an action, a resolution, or an outcome. The trigger is usually free. The write to your system of record, and the handoff, can be extra actions on a per-action plan.

• Trigger: a customer calls, texts, or sends a form. That arrival is not the bill.
• AI action: the agent answers, qualifies, and books or routes. On Intercom and HubSpot this is often the single outcome. On Agentforce each discrete action can be its own $0.10.
• System of record: the note lands in the CRM, the sheet, or the calendar you already use. On a per-action plan, that write can be another action.
• Human escalation: you take the exception. Intercom says a customer who asks for a person is not an outcome. A Procedure you configured to hand off, and that completes, can still be one.

Workflow Automation is the owned version of one of those lanes. The price on the Workflow Automation page is $3,500 once for one named job: trigger, action, system of record, and a person on the exception. I do not add a fee per task. A second job is a second quote. If the leak is the phone, the AI Receptionist is $8,000 once. Booking from ChatGPT, Claude, Grok, or another app that supports MCP connectors is a different offer: AI Front Door. MCP is the connector standard those apps use.

When is per-task pricing the right buy?#

Stay on the meter when volume is low or you are still testing the workflow. Buy the one-time job when the meter you were quoted crosses $3,500 inside the window you care about, and the work is one named lane you can describe in a sentence.

Stay on the published meter if:

• You are under a few hundred conversations a month and expect to stay there. At HubSpot’s $0.50 and a 65% resolution rate, 200 conversations is 130 resolutions, $65 a month, $1,560 over 24 months, under $3,500.
• You have not written the trigger, the action, the system of record, and the escalation yet.
• The tool you already pay for already includes the agent.

Buy the owned job when the lane is steady, the quote is one sentence, and the meter math above passes $3,500 before you are done with the workflow. Below that line, the meter is the cheaper experiment. Your own volume belongs in the subscription vs own calculator.

What to do next#

Send last month’s volume and the vendor’s unit price. I reply within 24 hours with which meter you are on, what one $3,500 Workflow Automation job would cover, and whether the meter is still the cheaper buy at your volume.

Send the vendor quote and last month’s volume through the audit. I reply within 24 hours with the replacement map: the unit they are billing, what one owned job would cover, and whether the meter is still the better buy. If you would rather talk it through, book a 20-minute call.