{"course":{"slug":"ai-for-small-business","title":"AI for a Small Business","url":"https://addaly.com/learn/ai-for-small-business","level":"beginner","track":"work"},"lesson":{"slug":"what-it-costs","title":"What It Costs, and Keeping It Near Zero","url":"https://addaly.com/learn/ai-for-small-business/what-it-costs","position":77,"of":88,"minutes":8,"answer":"Price every tool against the hours or the cheaper tool it replaces, never against zero.","keyIdea":"Price every tool against the hours or the cheaper tool it replaces, never against zero."},"body":{"format":"markdown","text":"## Four shapes of price\n\n**Free tiers.** ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Copilot, DeepSeek, Mistral and others all have one. Real work fits inside them: capped daily messages, sometimes older models. Many small businesses never need to leave.\n\n**A flat subscription.** Roughly USD 20 a month per person for the consumer paid tiers, with regional pricing in some markets: around ₹1,700 to 2,000 in India, for example. Prices and limits change often enough that you should check rather than trust this paragraph.\n\n**Pay per use (the API).** You pay by the token, roughly a word-and-a-bit. A page-in, half-a-page-out exchange costs about one US cent on a mid-priced model and closer to a tenth of a cent on a cheap one. Five hundred customer replies a month lands somewhere between USD 0.50 and USD 6. The catch: an API key is not an app. Something has to call it.\n\n**Bundled into software you already buy.** Your accounting package, your CRM, your helpdesk. Often the cheapest real option, because the data is already there.\n\n## Compare against the thing it replaces\n\nThis is the whole discipline of this lesson.\n\nUSD 20 a month is expensive against a free tier that was doing the job. It is cheap against six hours of your own time. It is absurd next to a USD 4 scheduling tool that solved the same problem completely.\n\nSo the question is never \"is this cheap?\" It is \"cheaper than what, exactly?\" Name the alternative before you name the price.\n\n## Where the money actually leaks\n\nFour patterns, in order of how often they catch people:\n\n**Stacking.** A writing tool, a social tool, a meeting tool, a chatbot. Four at USD 20 is USD 960 a year, and one general assistant plus a facts sheet did most of it. Audit your list twice a year.\n\n**Per-seat creep.** Team plans multiply. Five people at USD 25 to 30 is USD 1,500 to 1,800 a year, and often two of those five open it monthly.\n\n**Annual plans bought on day two.** The discount is real. So is the fact that you bought twelve months before you knew whether it worked. Monthly until you have run the two weeks in lesson eight.\n\n**Credits that expire.** \"1,000 AI credits included\" in software you already pay for. Find out what a credit is, whether it rolls over, and what the overage rate is, before you build a habit on it.\n\n## Keeping it near zero, in order\n\n1. **Start free.** Genuinely. A month on a free tier tells you whether the habit sticks.\n2. **Check what you already pay for.** There is a decent chance two tools on your bank statement have AI features you have never opened.\n3. **One paid tool at a time.** Add the second only when the first has clearly earned its place.\n4. **Cap the API.** If you go the pay-per-use route, set a hard monthly spend limit on the key. The major providers all support this. A runaway script is otherwise a memorable bill.\n5. **Consider local models.** Llama, Mistral, Qwen, Gemma and others run on your own machine through tools like Ollama or LM Studio. If you already have a reasonably modern computer with enough memory, marginal cost is zero and nothing leaves the building, which also solves half of lesson seven. Quality is a step below the best hosted models, setup is an afternoon, and it is a good fit for repetitive sorting and drafting.\n\n## A realistic monthly figure\n\nFor most one-to-five person businesses doing the two tasks from lesson one, the honest number is USD 0 to 25 a month, all in.\n\nIf you are budgeting USD 200 a month for AI in a business of three people, something has gone wrong upstream: usually stacking, usually because each tool was bought without asking what it replaced.\n\nAnd be suspicious of any tool priced at a percentage of your revenue or per customer contact. That pricing scales with your success rather than with its cost, and small businesses are where that model does the most damage."},"check":{"question":"Amara runs a two-person design studio in Accra on a free tier and is considering paying. What is the honest way to decide?","options":[{"text":"Estimate the hours it saves each month, price those hours, and compare that to the subscription","correct":true},{"text":"Stay on the free tier: nothing beats zero for a small studio watching its cash","correct":false,"tempting":"Zero is only the best price when the alternative saves nothing; the comparison is against her hours, not against free."},{"text":"Move to the pay-per-use API, since per-message pricing is always cheaper than a subscription","correct":false,"tempting":"Per-token pricing is cheaper per message, but it prices only the tokens: someone still has to build and maintain the thing that calls it."},{"text":"Take the annual plan for the discount, since the studio will be using this for years","correct":false,"tempting":"The annual discount is real, but it is a bet placed before the two weeks that would tell her whether the tool works at all."}]},"prev":{"slug":"small-numbers-and-superstition","title":"When your data is too small, and what to do instead","url":"https://addaly.com/learn/ai-for-small-business/small-numbers-and-superstition"},"next":{"slug":"the-bill-that-creeps","title":"The bill that creeps, and the quarterly hour that stops it","url":"https://addaly.com/learn/ai-for-small-business/the-bill-that-creeps"},"authorship":"Founder and series editor: Dr Mustafa Mun. Written by AI models to a written standard. Exam keys checked blind by a second model: 3,665 of 3,666 agreed. Academic review invited.","review":{"status":"Draft, open for academic review"},"cite":"Addaly (2026) 'What It Costs, and Keeping It Near Zero', in AI for a Small Business. Edited by M. Mun. Addaly. Available at: https://addaly.com/learn/ai-for-small-business/what-it-costs (Accessed: 31 October 2026).","licence":{"name":"CC BY-NC-SA 4.0","url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/"},"reader":{"schema":1,"title":"What It Costs, and Keeping It Near Zero","courseTitle":"AI for a Small Business","module":{"index":9,"slug":"cost-risk-and-the-long-run","title":"What it costs, what it risks, and what happens in a year"},"answer":null,"keyIdea":"Price every tool against the hours or the cheaper tool it replaces, never against zero.","hero":{"kind":"plate","image":null,"alt":null,"caption":null},"blocks":[{"t":"h2","id":"four-shapes-of-price","runs":[{"text":"Four shapes of price"}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"Free tiers.","b":true},{"text":" ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Copilot, DeepSeek, Mistral and others all have one. Real work fits inside them: capped daily messages, sometimes older models. Many small businesses never need to leave."}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"A flat subscription.","b":true},{"text":" Roughly USD 20 a month per person for the consumer paid tiers, with regional pricing in some markets: around ₹1,700 to 2,000 in India, for example. Prices and limits change often enough that you should check rather than trust this paragraph."}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"Pay per use (the API).","b":true},{"text":" You pay by the token, roughly a word-and-a-bit. A page-in, half-a-page-out exchange costs about one US cent on a mid-priced model and closer to a tenth of a cent on a cheap one. Five hundred customer replies a month lands somewhere between USD 0.50 and USD 6. The catch: an API key is not an app. Something has to call it."}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"Bundled into software you already buy.","b":true},{"text":" Your accounting package, your CRM, your helpdesk. Often the cheapest real option, because the data is already there."}]},{"t":"h2","id":"compare-against-the-thing-it-replaces","runs":[{"text":"Compare against the thing it replaces"}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"This is the whole discipline of this lesson."}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"USD 20 a month is expensive against a free tier that was doing the job. It is cheap against six hours of your own time. It is absurd next to a USD 4 scheduling tool that solved the same problem completely."}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"So the question is never “is this cheap?” It is “cheaper than what, exactly?” Name the alternative before you name the price."}]},{"t":"h2","id":"where-the-money-actually-leaks","runs":[{"text":"Where the money actually leaks"}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"Four patterns, in order of how often they catch people:"}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"Stacking.","b":true},{"text":" A writing tool, a social tool, a meeting tool, a chatbot. Four at USD 20 is USD 960 a year, and one general assistant plus a facts sheet did most of it. Audit your list twice a year."}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"Per-seat creep.","b":true},{"text":" Team plans multiply. Five people at USD 25 to 30 is USD 1,500 to 1,800 a year, and often two of those five open it monthly."}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"Annual plans bought on day two.","b":true},{"text":" The discount is real. So is the fact that you bought twelve months before you knew whether it worked. Monthly until you have run the two weeks in lesson eight."}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"Credits that expire.","b":true},{"text":" “1,000 AI credits included” in software you already pay for. Find out what a credit is, whether it rolls over, and what the overage rate is, before you build a habit on it."}]},{"t":"h2","id":"keeping-it-near-zero-in-order","runs":[{"text":"Keeping it near zero, in order"}]},{"t":"ol","start":1,"items":[[{"text":"Start free.","b":true},{"text":" Genuinely. A month on a free tier tells you whether the habit sticks."}],[{"text":"Check what you already pay for.","b":true},{"text":" There is a decent chance two tools on your bank statement have AI features you have never opened."}],[{"text":"One paid tool at a time.","b":true},{"text":" Add the second only when the first has clearly earned its place."}],[{"text":"Cap the API.","b":true},{"text":" If you go the pay-per-use route, set a hard monthly spend limit on the key. The major providers all support this. A runaway script is otherwise a memorable bill."}],[{"text":"Consider local models.","b":true},{"text":" Llama, Mistral, Qwen, Gemma and others run on your own machine through tools like Ollama or LM Studio. If you already have a reasonably modern computer with enough memory, marginal cost is zero and nothing leaves the building, which also solves half of lesson seven. Quality is a step below the best hosted models, setup is an afternoon, and it is a good fit for repetitive sorting and drafting."}]]},{"t":"h2","id":"a-realistic-monthly-figure","runs":[{"text":"A realistic monthly figure"}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"For most one-to-five person businesses doing the two tasks from lesson one, the honest number is USD 0 to 25 a month, all in."}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"If you are budgeting USD 200 a month for AI in a business of three people, something has gone wrong upstream: usually stacking, usually because each tool was bought without asking what it replaced."}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"And be suspicious of any tool priced at a percentage of your revenue or per customer contact. That pricing scales with your success rather than with its cost, and small businesses are where that model does the most damage."}]}],"check":{"question":[{"text":"Amara runs a two-person design studio in Accra on a free tier and is considering paying. 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