AI ROI Calculator
Calculate your AI investment payback in 60 seconds — based on real numbers from 50+ shipped AI projects. Free, instant, no email required
hours/week
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YOUR AI ROI
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Annual ROI
BREAKDOWN
- AI Build Cost$
- Annual Token Cost$
- Annual Time Savings$
- Revenue Uplift$
- Net Annual Benefit$
- Payback Period
AI ROI FAQs
How do you calculate AI ROI?
AI ROI = (Annual Benefits − Annual AI Cost) / AI Build Cost × 100. Benefits = (hours saved per week × hourly rate × 52 + revenue uplift). Costs = build cost + LLM token costs + maintenance. Payback period = build cost / annual net benefit.
What's a good AI ROI?
AI projects with payback in 6-12 months and 2-5x annual ROI are typical when done right. Common high-ROI use cases: customer support deflection (60-80% ticket reduction), sales enablement (RAG over CRM data), AI-assisted operations (automating manual data work).
Why do most AI projects fail to deliver ROI?
Top failures: (1) wrong use-case selection — too ambitious, (2) skipping evaluation harness — quality drops in production, (3) underestimating maintenance cost — LLM tokens, drift, retraining, (4) focusing on tech vs business outcome.
What's the typical cost of an AI build?
AI POC: $15K-$45K. Production AI app: $50K-$200K. Enterprise AI platform: $200K-$1M+. Annual LLM token costs scale with usage — typically 5-15% of build cost in year-1, growing with adoption.