AI ROI Calculator
Hours saved × hourly rate vs tool cost. Payback in days, ROI in percent.
Estimate ROI on an AI tool
INTERACTIVE · LIVEHourly rate should be the loaded cost — wages plus benefits plus overhead. A $50/hr W-2 employee typically has a loaded cost closer to $75-90/hr. Hours saved is the realistic estimate per person, not aspirational.
Assumes 4.33 weeks per month. Excludes onboarding, training, and switching costs.
Most teams overestimate hours saved and underestimate hourly cost. A useful sanity check: divide annual fully-loaded employee cost by 2,000 hours. A $150K total-cost engineer is $75/hr; a $250K total-cost senior is $125/hr. Use those numbers, not the W-2 wage.
ROI > 200% suggests the tool's a no-brainer — buy it and stop second-guessing. ROI 50-200% means it pays back but you should validate the savings claim with one or two people actually using it for a month before rolling it out wider. ROI < 50% likely means the savings are theoretical — the tool either doesn't save as much time as you think or the people who'd benefit aren't going to adopt it consistently.