Free calculator
AI research agent ROI
A vendor's ROI calculator multiplies hours saved by your hourly rate and stops. This one keeps the two terms that were deleted: the checking you still have to do, and the price of what slips through anyway.
Reading the filing, pulling the numbers, checking the ownership. Be honest rather than aspirational.
Retrieval and comparison, mostly. The judgement at the end is not in this number and should not be.
The term every vendor calculator leaves out. Checking costs about a third of doing it yourself, and zero checking is a decision, not a saving.
Uncomfortable to estimate and the whole point. Set it to zero and the calculator will always say yes, which is exactly what a vendor's version does.
Positive, and it stays positive while a wrong answer costs you less than £824. Above that, the checking you are not doing is more expensive than the time you are saving.
Try this: set the verification share to zero. The saving jumps, and the cost of errors jumps further. That is the trade the whole category is built on, and the reason we would rather ship an agent that refuses than one that is faster.
Your inputs, the net, and the error cost at which it stops being worth it.
No spam, no selling your address, unsubscribe in one click. The tools stay free either way.
Straight answers
Why does this calculator include a cost for being wrong?
Because leaving it out is what makes every vendor ROI model return yes. If you do not check an automated output, you have not saved the time, you have transferred the risk, and a model that cannot price that risk cannot tell you when the answer is no.
How much time does checking an AI output actually take?
Around a third of doing the work yourself, on our own experience of reading a summary against its sources. It is much less than the original and it is emphatically not zero, which is the assumption that quietly makes most automation business cases work on paper.
What error rate should I assume?
It depends entirely on the task. Locating a stated figure in a filing is reliable; judging whether a business is durable is not. If a tool shows its sources you can use a low rate, because your failure mode is a blank. If it does not, assume a higher one, because you cannot tell the wrong answers from the right ones.
What if I set the error cost to zero?
The calculator will always say yes, which is exactly what a vendor's version does. If a wrong number genuinely costs you nothing, you are not making decisions with it, and the time saving is real. For most people reading company research, that is not the situation.
Does a better model fix a negative result here?
Usually not by much. The two terms doing the damage are the share you check and the cost of what slips through, and neither moves far with model quality. Pointing the tool at fewer companies and reading those properly moves both.
Educational information, not financial advice. Figures current as of July 2026 where dated; allowances and rates change, so check the source before acting.