Free interactive calculator — no signup
What Is That Manual Task Actually Costing You?
Time saved × frequency × rate, minus cost — the same framework we publish for measuring automation ROI, turned into a calculator. Enter your numbers and see the yearly cost of doing it by hand, when automation pays for itself, and — just as honestly — when it wouldn't.
What this task costs you
$18,200 per year, done by hand
- Hours back per week
- 7.0h
- Value per month
- $1,037
- Pays for itself in
- 4 weeks
- 3-year net savings
- $35,383
Strong candidate — automate this
Payback inside two months is about as good as automation gets. The main risk now isn't the investment — it's another year of paying the manual cost.
Year one nets $10,503 — month one is excluded for the learning-curve dip, and this number is a floor, not a ceiling.
Scope this automation — freeNo inflated numbers
How this calculator stays honest
Three honesty rules are built into this calculator. Automation never removes 100% of a task, so the reduction factor tops out at 85%. The first month of savings is excluded, because new tools come with a 2–4 week learning-curve dip. And the result is a floor, not a ceiling — quality improvements, fewer errors and freed-up capacity aren't counted, because they don't have an honest dollar figure.
The framework comes from How to Measure AI Automation ROI — including how to verify the numbers after you automate, not just before.
FAQ
Automation ROI questions, answered
How do I calculate AI automation ROI?
Time saved × frequency × rate, minus cost. Measure how long the task takes now and how often it happens, estimate how much of it automation removes (50–85%, never 100%), convert the hours to dollars at a realistic hourly rate, then subtract the build and running costs. The calculator above runs exactly this framework.
What's a realistic time saving from automating a task?
50–85% depending on the task. Highly repetitive, rule-based work (data entry, standard replies, scheduling) can hit 85%. Tasks with judgment calls land nearer 50–70%. If a vendor promises 100%, that's a claim about their marketing, not your workflow.
How much does business automation cost?
Published lower-end figures: a website Q&A chatbot from $500, lead follow-up automation from $900, full chat + email + CRM automation from $1,500, and typical custom-scoped SMB engagements at $2,000–$8,000. Running costs are usually $10–40/month with hard usage caps.
How fast should automation pay for itself?
Under two months is a strong candidate; under six months is a solid business case worth scoping. If the payback stretches past a year, the honest answer is usually to automate a bigger time sink first — a small task's savings can't carry a build cost.
Why does the calculator exclude the first month of savings?
Because the first 2–4 weeks after adopting any new tool show a temporary productivity dip — people are learning the interface and second-guessing outputs. Measuring during that window makes genuinely useful automation look like a bad investment, so we leave month one out of the year-one number.
What does this calculator deliberately leave out?
Quality improvements, error reduction, and the higher-value work people do with freed-up time. Those are real but don't have an honest dollar figure, so the time-saved number is a floor on the value, not a ceiling. If the floor already pays back, the real return is better.
Numbers look good? See what the build itself feels like — the live AI chatbot demo is the $500–$1,500 tier working for real.
All free tools →Want the real number for your workflow?
Tell us the task, the hours, and the tools you use. A real person replies with an honest payback estimate — including 'don't automate this' when that's the answer. Free, no obligation.