About
About the AI ROI Calculator
The AI ROI Calculator is a free online tool that helps Australian businesses estimate how much time and money AI automation could save, and what everyday AI tools are likely to cost, before they commit to a project.
What the calculator does
The calculator has two modes:
- Business Savings estimates the annual cost of a manual task today, how much of that cost and time AI automation could recover, and a practical type of AI solution to start with.
- AI Usage Cost estimates the monthly cost of using AI models through an API, based on how many prompts you run and how long they are, and compares that with common AI subscription plans.
It is free to use. You do not need to sign up or enter personal details to see your results.
Who it is for
The calculator is built for Australian small and medium businesses, team leads and operators who are evaluating AI automation and want a quick, realistic first estimate. It is useful when you are deciding which workflow to automate first, building an internal business case, or sense-checking a quote.
Business Savings covers six common areas of work:
- Inbound and outbound calls
- SMS and email outreach
- Content creation
- Review and reputation management
- Customer support and enquiries
- Process and data automation
How the estimates work
Every estimate is built from the numbers you enter. At a high level:
- Current cost of the task. Your volumes (for example calls per day or leads per month) and time per task are multiplied by your team’s hourly rate or annual salary. The calculator uses a standard Australian full-time week of 38 hours (about 1,976 hours a year) and around 250 working days a year.
- Revenue or rework at risk. Where it is relevant, the estimate also includes value that the manual process may be leaving on the table, such as missed calls, slow lead follow-up, unanswered reviews, or time spent fixing errors.
- Share that AI could handle. You choose what percentage of the work AI could realistically automate. Annual savings and hours saved each week are calculated from that percentage, not from the full cost.
- Investment and multi-year view. The results show an indicative investment range relative to the estimated savings, and a five-year view that allows for a ramp-up period in the first year and ongoing maintenance costs.
For AI Usage Cost, monthly token volumes are worked out from prompts per day, average input and output length and working days per month, then priced against published per-token rates for a range of OpenAI, Anthropic and Google models. Prices are shown in US dollars, with an approximate Australian dollar conversion.
Guides and resources
Alongside the calculator, the site includes short guides on making better AI decisions, grouped into four themes: People & Adoption, Governance, Risk & Trust, Strategy & ROI, and Implementation Foundations. Topics include AI literacy, human-in-the-loop review, AI governance and security, build vs buy, AI cost modelling, measuring AI ROI, prompt engineering, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), AI evaluations and hallucination mitigation.
Estimates, not financial advice
Results are general estimates based on your inputs and the calculator’s assumptions. They are not financial, legal or professional advice, and actual results will vary with your workflows, tools, data and implementation. AI model and subscription prices change often, so check current pricing with each provider before making a decision.