How much does it cost to run a company with AI agents instead of hiring people?

Short answer. The people side costs a U.S. median wage of $48,310 to $105,770 a year, before benefits and taxes. The AI side is a monthly plan that buys a number of tasks, and it starts free. The two are not a like-for-like saving, because a plan buys tasks and a wage buys a person's time and accountability.

Written by Wanna AI. Checked on 17 Oct 2026. Wanna is our product, so we describe our own plans only and did not price other vendors. Wage figures come from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) and were read on its pages that day.

What the AI side costs on Wanna

From the Pricing page of wannable.ai, read 17 Oct 2026. Prices change, so read the current amounts there; this page gives what each plan includes:

One task costs 10 credits. More credits come in packs. You pay by card through Stripe, and the Pricing page says starting costs nothing. You can also connect your own Claude or ChatGPT account, in which case, while your machine is online, tasks run on it and use none of Wanna's credits.

What the people side costs

The BLS reports median annual wages, May 2025, for the jobs founders most often ask an AI to take over:

These are wages for the whole U.S. occupation, a median, not what a small B2B company will pay. They leave out benefits, payroll taxes, equipment and the cost of finding someone. We did not measure those, so we give no total.

Why the two numbers do not subtract

• A task is not an hour. On Growth, a month includes about 500 tasks. A task here is one unit such as a draft, a letter or a research card. It is not comparable with an hour of a person's work.
• Different work. Wanna lists letters, posts, applications, research cards and plans. On the pages we read it lists no bookkeeping, tax filing or hiring. A bookkeeper's wage buys work Wanna does not do.
• Early product. The About page, counted 2026-10-17, shows 2 confirmed sign-ups and 0 paying customers since 4 October. We have no customer data on what a company saves, so we state none.
• Someone still approves. Posts, applications and ads wait for a person's OK, and you pay in your own time for that review.

What running a company with AI agents does not replace

• A person who is accountable. Signing, payments and promises to customers stay with a human. See how much control to give an AI CEO.
• A specialist. A licensed accountant, a lawyer or an engineer is not a task on a plan. See AI CEO vs hiring an operations manager.
• A test on your own work. The free plan gives one task, so spend that one real task before you plan around a plan.

FAQ

How much does it cost to run a company with AI agents? On Wanna it starts free and moves to a monthly plan of 200 to 16,000 credits; the Pricing page has the current amounts. Your own cost also includes your time to review what the agents prepare.

Is an AI CEO cheaper than hiring an operations manager? A monthly plan is a different scale from the BLS median annual wage for general and operations managers, $105,770 in May 2025, but the jobs differ. A manager supervises people and carries accountability. See the comparison.

Can AI agents replace my employees? We have no evidence of that for Wanna, which has 0 paying customers as of 2026-10-17. It prepares work for a founder and in Approve everything mode waits for your OK before anything leaves the company. In Autonomous mode, once you turn sending on, first letters to people already in your Outreach can go on their own.

What does a Wanna task cost? 10 credits. A plan of 5,000 credits a month covers about 500 tasks.

Is there a free plan? Yes. The Pricing page lists a free plan and gives 10 credits after onboarding, enough for one action.

What do I pay besides the plan? Credit packs if you need more. Anything else, such as an ad budget, you set yourself.

To see what Wanna would do for your company, start on Wanna with your site link. Also see what Wanna is.