How much does a customer support agent cost per month?

On Claude Sonnet, about $5,105 a month at 3,000 requests a day with the assumptions below. The cheapest model compared here, Gemini 1.5 Flash, runs about $123 for the same workload. Your real figure moves with volume and tokens, so tune it in the calculator.

Which model is cheapest for a customer support agent?

Gemini 1.5 Flash, at about $123 a month for this workload. Cheaper is not automatically better: a model that needs retries or longer prompts can cost more in practice, so test the candidates on your own evaluation set before committing.

What does a customer support agent cost to run?

A support assistant that answers from your help-center docs and can look up an order or account before replying. Moderate volume, retrieval on every turn, and a tool call or two per conversation. On Claude Sonnet this works out to about $5,105 a month; here is the figure across every model and what drives it.

assumptions

A planning estimate for this shape of workload. Tune any of it in the calculator.

3,000 conversations a day
~1,200 prompt tokens (system + question) plus ~2,500 retrieved tokens of help-center context
~350 output tokens per reply
2 tool calls per request (order/account lookups)

monthly_cost · Claude Sonnet

$5,105/ month

Input tokens13.7k/req · agentic context: $3,686
Output tokens1.1k/req: $1,418
Embeddings (RAG)query embedding per request: $2.16

13.7k input · 1.1k output · 3 LLM turns / request

cost_by_model

A customer support agent across every model

Monthly cost of a Customer support agent across models
model	cost / month
Gemini 1.5 FlashGoogle (Vertex)	$123cheapest
GPT-4o miniOpenAI	$243
Claude HaikuAnthropic	$1,363
Gemini 1.5 ProGoogle (Vertex)	$2,010
GPT-4oOpenAI	$4,018
Claude SonnetAnthropic · shown above	$5,105
Claude OpusAnthropic	$25,517

cheapest · public list prices as of 2026-06 · planning estimate, not a quote

free_toolTune this scenario to your numbersOpens the AI Agent Cost Calculator prefilled with this workload. Change the volume, tokens, tool calls, and RAG to match your own and watch the cost move.

what_drives_it

Where the money goes

Retrieval adds a few thousand tokens to every turn, and each tool call re-sends that context, so input tokens dominate the bill.

The cheapest option here, Gemini 1.5 Flash, comes to about $123 a month against $5,105 on Claude Sonnet. Whether the cheaper model fits is a question for your evaluation set, not the price sheet. The bigger lever is usually the workload itself: caching re-sent context, trimming what each turn carries, and capping the tool loop move the bill more than swapping models does.

other_workloads

faq

Questions & answers

How much does a customer support agent cost per month?: On Claude Sonnet, about $5,105 a month at 3,000 requests a day with the assumptions below. The cheapest model compared here, Gemini 1.5 Flash, runs about $123 for the same workload. Your real figure moves with volume and tokens, so tune it in the calculator.
What makes a customer support agent expensive?: Retrieval adds a few thousand tokens to every turn, and each tool call re-sends that context, so input tokens dominate the bill.
Which model is cheapest for a customer support agent?: Gemini 1.5 Flash, at about $123 a month for this workload. Cheaper is not automatically better: a model that needs retries or longer prompts can cost more in practice, so test the candidates on your own evaluation set before committing.

A cost estimate is a start. Making an agent cheap in production is the work.

Prompt caching, context trimming, and the right model per step usually cut an agent's bill by more than half. Book a call, or leave your email and I'll reach out.

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