An interactive worksheet for one-person businesses — US operators
Does the AI stack actually beat the hire? Enter the numbers on both sides of the ledger — the hire's loaded cost, the stack's true monthly bill including the supervision line vendors skip — and the calculator computes the monthly net saving and the payback period while you type. Nothing you enter leaves your browser. Where every reporting figure comes from: the line-item cost worksheet. Built by Pulse, a working 14-agent company that sells the operating manual for self-serve AI courses for solo operators.
The formula
The whole computation fits in two equations. Everything below is bookkeeping for the letters in them.
monthly net saving = L − S
L — the hire's loaded monthly cost for the hours the workflow absorbs · S — the stack's true monthly cost
payback period = one-time setup ÷ monthly net saving
how many months of saving it takes to earn back the wiring
Salary is line one, not the total: payroll taxes and insurance load on top, benefits and software seats ride along, and recruiting plus ramp amortize over the months you expect to keep the role. If the agent absorbs only part of the role, L is the loaded cost of the absorbed hours — not the whole role's price tag.
Usage, subscriptions, and amortized setup are what a pricing page shows. The fourth line — your supervision time, the hours spent reading every output before it ships — is what a pricing page omits, and it is the line that sometimes flips the answer. Price it at what your hour is worth; the calculator puts it on the stack's side where it belongs.
This page computes; it does not quote. Reporting-based anchors — what a working stack costs per month, what benefits load on top of wages — are sourced line by line in the line-item cost worksheet, and the defaults below are borrowed from that page's worked examples. Your numbers finish the math; no average can.
The calculator
The numbers below are the worksheet's worked example — a contractor's ten hours against a focused stack. Replace every one with yours; the stamp recomputes as you type.
The stack wins the month
Enter numbers on both sides; the stamp and these figures recompute as you type.
Nothing you type is stored or sent anywhere — the arithmetic runs in this page and dies when you close it. The only measurement this site keeps anywhere is a bare per-page visit count.
Read it honestly
Four rules for trusting the number you just computed — the same four the worksheet enforces.
Run the workflow supervised for a week and log every miss before its savings enter this calculator. The hours the workflow absorbed — not the hours you hope it will absorb — are the only ones that belong on Side A. Most first deployments die of unlogged misses, and the recovery checklist lives in the failure-mode field guide.
The per-year figure above multiplies one honest month by twelve — the honest month you actually ran, after the supervised week. Hours times 52 becomes the honest annual number only after the workflow has survived the log. A great month annualized is how agent budgets get approved and then evaporate.
Vendors reprice, tasks move, and a stack that cleared its payback at deployment can drift past it by renewal. Re-run both sides with current numbers each quarter — five minutes. The hours side has its own weekly discipline in the supervision-time ledger; the cost side's discipline is this quarterly re-run.
A stack can clear this calculator and still be the wrong call — which parts of the work are actually an agent's to take, and which stay human no matter what the stamp says, is a different question. The replace-or-not decision guide answers it. This page prices the move; that page judges it.
The catalog
This calculator computes the math; our $30 course catalog teaches you to run it on your own numbers and build the stacks that beat it, one course per layer. Self-serve only: buy it, and the files land in your inbox within 24 hours of payment. Start tonight.
Decide Course 1/3
8 modules · Self-paced
The cost model, installed: which task lists are agent-shaped, what each line of loaded and stack cost should contain, and the operating cadence that keeps this calculator honest — the literal manual of our 14-agent company, ready to paste into Claude Code.
Wire Course 2/3
6 modules · Self-paced
The wiring Side B assumed: map the task on paper, build the n8n or Zapier workflow with an LLM step that doesn't hallucinate, and keep the supervision log that makes the stack's side of the ledger real instead of hopeful.
Sell Course 3/3
6 modules · Self-paced
The return side the calculator cannot see: build a list you can reach, write outreach that clears the benchmarks instead of the average, and run the weekly numbers ritual that turns a cost decision into a revenue engine.
Want the full line-item sourcing behind every default? The cost worksheet carries the reporting anchors; the deployment guide carries the five-step first deployment.
Questions
Yes — the calculator runs entirely in your browser: no signup, no account, and nothing you type leaves the page. It is the same break-even math as the line-item cost worksheet, computed live.
Monthly net saving = L − S, where L is the hire's loaded monthly cost for the hours the workflow absorbs and S is the stack's true monthly cost. Payback period = one-time setup cost ÷ monthly net saving. Count only hours the workflow absorbed after a supervised week — never annualize a good month.
Salary or contractor pay, payroll taxes and insurance, benefits and software seats, and recruiting and ramp amortized over the months you expect to keep the role. The full line-item worksheet, with sourced anchors for every reporting figure, is the cost worksheet guide.
Your supervision time. Every agent output gets read before it ships; price those checking hours at what your hour is worth and put them on the stack's side of the ledger. The supervision-time ledger guide shows where those hours actually go.
They are illustrative, borrowed from the worksheet's worked examples — a contractor's ten hours at $25 an hour, the focused stack tier, $600 of wiring. Replace every one with your numbers; the defaults are orientation, not your number.
Start
One course per layer, or all three as the Operator Bundle — the cost model, the workflows, and the pipeline as one coherent system for $79. No calls, no cohorts: buy it, and the files land in your inbox within 24 hours of payment.