How do you work out what an AI stack costs?

We add up the researched annual price of each tool you pick. Every figure comes from our own price index — 65 researched prices across 108 tools — at 20 people, with the day it was read off the vendor's own pricing page printed beside it. At any other headcount a seat-licensed line is that figure multiplied by your headcount and divided by 20, which is our arithmetic and is labelled as ours. A tool whose vendor publishes no rate card is listed out of the total rather than counted as zero.

Is the AI stack cost calculator free?

Yes. No signup, no email, no card, and no sponsored or affiliate rows — the calculator and every price in it are free to read and free to quote. The subscription ($10/month or $96/year, 7-day free trial) buys the judgment: adopt / pilot / skip on five new tools every weekday morning, the SSO and data-handling line, and a pitch you can paste into #product.

Free calculator · 65 researched prices · no signup

What does your AI stack cost a year?

Tick the tools your product team pays for, set your headcount, and this page totals the year from our own price index — 65 researched annual figures across 108 tools. Every line carries the day the figure was read off the vendor’s own pricing page and a link to it. Nothing is estimated: a tool we hold no price for is listed out of the total, never counted as zero.

Your stack · 50 people · 1 tool counted

$24,000 a year

$480 per person per year · $2,000 a month · 1 of 1 picked tools priced.

Tool	At 20 people (as published)	At 50 people	Read date & source
Graphite AgentAI code review	$9,600our arithmetic	$24,000Our 20-person figure × 50 ÷ 20 — our scaling, not a vendor quote	Checked 22 October 2026Source: graphite.com ↗Ran in issue #027
Total, 1 tool	$9,600	$24,000/year	Read 22 October 2026

Every figure is researched at 20 people — the seat count the whole price index is priced for. At 50 people the 1 seat-licensed line is that figure × 50 ÷ 20 — Signal Brief arithmetic, not a price the vendor quotes.

This URL is your stack — paste it into the budget thread and it renders the same total for whoever opens it: https://signal-brief19.acoco.ai/stack-cost?seats=50&tool=graphite-agent

$24,000 of tooling. $96/year to know what to cut.

Signal Brief is five new AI tools every weekday morning, each with the price at 20 people, an adopt / pilot / skip verdict, the SSO, SOC 2 and data-handling line, and three lines you can paste into #product. $10/month or $96/year, with a 7-day free trial first — cancel inside the trial and you are not charged.

Seen enough · no email form · card checkout

Know which of these 1 to cut.

The verdict on every tool in the index, plus five new ones with the brief on each, every weekday at 7am. 7 days free, then $10/month or $96/year — cancel any time.

A one-word verdict on every tool — adopt, pilot or skip — with the reason in one sentence.
The real price a 20-person product org lands on, not the headline tier on the pricing page.
The integration and data-risk line: which plan SSO needs, the SOC 2 posture, where your roadmap and customer data ends up.
A paste-ready 3-line pitch for #product, so making the case costs you nothing.

$96/year

paid once · 12 months of briefs · or $10/month

Stripe takes the address your issues go to at the card step · $96/year is one charge for 12 months · $10/month starts with 7 free days · cancel any time by emailing [email protected]

For a head of product buying for the whole org

$490/year

unlimited readers · one organisation · one invoice · paid once for 12 months

Your PMs, your designer and your EM all read the same brief before standup. A Desk Licence covers every reader at one organisation on one invoice — no seat count to pick, no seat admin, nobody to remove when a PM leaves.

Against the $96/year plan it breaks even at five readers: $490/year for the licence against $480 for five annual subscriptions. From the sixth reader on it is the cheaper of the two, and the tenth and fortieth cost nothing more.

One charge, one receipt · no seat admin · reply to the first issue with the addresses to add and they are on tomorrow's send · questions first? [email protected]

7 weekday issues free · no card · nothing renews

Or read 7 issues free first.

The five tools are published free every weekday morning. Subscribers also get the Adoption Brief on each one: adopt / pilot / skip, the price a 20-person product org really lands on, the SSO and data-risk line, and a pitch you can paste into #product. Leave your email and the next 7 issues arrive with all five briefs attached — no card, nothing to cancel.

A one-word verdict on every tool — adopt, pilot or skip — with the reason in one sentence.
The real price a 20-person product org lands on, not the headline tier on the pricing page.
The integration and data-risk line: which plan SSO needs, the SOC 2 posture, where your roadmap and customer data ends up.
A paste-ready 3-line pitch for #product, so making the case costs you nothing.

Read a real Adoption Brief →

Pick your stack

1. How many people?

Every figure in the index is researched at 20 people. Put your own headcount in and each seat-licensed line is scaled from that figure — our arithmetic, marked as ours on every row it touches.

People on the team10 20 50 100 250

Clear every tick

43 more tools we cover but cannot price — show them

6 of these vendors publish no rate card at all and 37 are tools we have covered but not yet priced. You can tick them to keep them in your list — they are named under the total and left out of it, because a missing number summed as zero is how a calculator lies.

Where these numbers come from

Every figure is one we researched for an issue of Signal Brief and published at 20 seats — the number most of these vendors hide behind “Contact sales”. 65 of the 108 tools we have covered carry one, read off the vendor’s own pricing page where they publish one and marked buyer-reported or our own arithmetic where they do not. The day each one was last read is printed on its row above, and a vendor page that has since moved is logged.

All 108 rows, dearest first · the whole table as CSV · the price-change log · all 28 issues, free and in full

No sponsorships, no affiliate links and no vendor has ever paid to appear in this index — which is why a row can say “the vendor publishes nothing” and why a figure can say it is ours rather than theirs.