AI chatbot pricing calculator for agencies
Selling AI chatbots to clients? Enter your real costs — setup time, monthly maintenance, and your platform bill — plus the margin you want. You get a one-time setup fee and a monthly retainer per client. The numbers filled in are an illustrative example.
Recommended pricing
Setup fee per client (one-time)
$1,000.00
Monthly retainer per client
$233.00
- Monthly cost per client
- $139.80
- Monthly revenue, all clients
- $1,165.00
- Monthly cost, all clients
- $699.00
- Monthly profit
- $466.00
- Monthly margin
- 40%
- Profit on setup fees, all clients
- $2,000.00
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How to package chatbot services
Split the offer in two. A setup fee pays for the one-time work: collecting the client's website pages and documents, configuring and branding the bot, testing its answers, and installing it. A monthly retainer pays for what keeps going: your share of the platform bill and the hours spent updating content and reviewing conversations for questions the bot missed.
Price both from cost with the same formula: price = cost ÷ (1 − target margin). That way every new client adds profit instead of just adding work.
Worked example (the default numbers)
- Setup: 10 hours × $60.00 = $600.00 cost ÷ (1 − 40%) = $1,000.00 setup fee.
- Monthly cost per client: $99.00 platform ÷ 5 clients + 2 hours × $60.00 = $139.80.
- Retainer: $139.80 ÷ (1 − 40%) = $233.00 a month, leaving $466.00 monthly profit across 5 clients.
To show a client what the bot saves them, use the AI chatbot ROI calculator on the sales call.
Read more: How to sell AI chatbots to clients and White-label AI chatbot for agencies.
Frequently asked questions
How much should an agency charge for an AI chatbot?
Price from your costs, not from a number you saw online: the hours it takes to set up and maintain each bot, your share of the platform bill, and the margin you want. This calculator turns those into a one-time setup fee and a monthly retainer.
Should I charge a setup fee and a monthly retainer?
Most agencies do both. The setup fee covers the one-time work of gathering content, configuring and branding the bot. The retainer covers ongoing platform cost plus the time spent keeping answers accurate as the client's business changes.
How is the price calculated from a target margin?
Price = cost ÷ (1 − margin). At a 40% margin, a $600 cost becomes a $1,000 price, leaving $400 (40% of the price) as profit. Adding 40% on top of cost would only give a 28.6% margin.
Why does adding more clients lower the retainer?
If your platform is billed as one monthly amount, that bill is shared across more client bots, so each client carries less of it. Maintenance time per bot does not shrink, so it eventually dominates the retainer.
What should the monthly retainer include?
Spell it out: hosting of the bot, a set number of content updates, a monthly look at conversation history for questions the bot missed, and a response time for changes. Clear scope keeps maintenance hours close to what you priced.
White-label AI chatbots for your clients
Techvia AI Bot lets agencies build branded chatbots trained on each client's website and documents, answering with source citations, and manage every client bot from one agency dashboard. Book a demo to confirm pricing and onboarding.