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Agent consumption pricing (credits per task)

coste

agent credits · per-task pricing

Agent consumption pricing is a billing model where the vendor charges for agent activity (queries, completed tasks, tokens or credits) rather than per user or a fixed license.

Implementa formulation. It ties cost to how much the agent works, not how many people use it, which makes budgeting hard. A documented 2026 example: Workday charges 1 credit per information query and 5 per completed autonomous task, without publishing a price per credit, and its console warns at 80, 90 and 100% of the threshold but does not switch agents off when exceeded (per a third-party recap). Other vendors use different schemes.

How it differs from

Per-seat license
A per-seat license is fixed; consumption varies with agent activity.
Inference cost per workflow
Inference is the internal compute cost; consumption pricing is what the customer pays the vendor.

Examples

  • An agent closing 2,000 tasks a month consumes 10,000 credits even if only one person uses it.
  • A contract with a hard spend cap that stops the agent at the threshold, versus one that only alerts.

FAQ

How do you control spend?
Ask for unit price, a hard cap that stops the agent, and alerts; a warning without a brake does not limit spend.
Is it the dominant model?
There is not enough public data to say so; it is a visible trend across several vendors.

Related terms

inference-cost-per-workflowagent-kill-switch

Sources & further reading