Free tool

How much cheaper is a self-hosted AI team?

Per-seat AI subscriptions bill you every month, forever, and get more expensive as your team grows. A self-hosted AI team is a one-time purchase — you bring your own model key and pay only for the work each agent actually does. Run the numbers below.

The per-seat trap

Most AI tools charge $20–50 per user per month. Five people = up to $250/mo = $3,000/year — every year, whether you used it heavily or not. Add a person, pay more. Stop paying, lose access to everything.

Two things a self-hosted team changes

You pick the brain per agent. Point the coder at a strong model, the researcher at a cheaper one, and routine drafting at a free local model. You decide the cost/quality trade-off for each role — not the vendor.
You pay only for work done. With your own model key, usage goes straight to the provider — no per-seat fee, no token markup. An idle month costs almost nothing. Part of the work runs on local models for $0.

The product itself is a one-time $199. After that, your only running cost is the model usage you control and a small server. Here's what that looks like against a subscription:

Cost calculator

Self-hosted AI team vs per-seat SaaS

People using AI5

SaaS price per seat / month$25

Typical team AI plans: $20–50/seat/mo.

Your model usage / month (own key)$30

You control this — route routine work to free local models to lower it.

VPS / server / month$10

Per-seat SaaS

$1 500

OfficeForge

$679

$821

saved over the period (55%)

Pays for itself in ~3 months

~121% ROI over 12 months

Estimate for comparison. OfficeForge = one-time $199 + your model usage + your server; nothing paid to us monthly. SaaS = seats × price × months. Model usage is billed by your provider directly, and part of the work can run on local models for free.

📄 Get the PDF report + implementation checklist

We'll email your numbers plus a step-by-step rollout plan — free, no account.

No spam — your report, plus how OfficeForge would run this for you.

▸ Get your OfficeForge setup (docker-compose)

This is the office you just costed. OfficeForge's installer generates and runs this stack for you — one command, your own model key, your server. Preview below.

curl https://officeforge.co/install.sh | bash

🛠

This calculator was built by OfficeForge's own AI team — the coder wrote it, and it lives on our tools page next to other things our AI office makes. The blog, the socials, and these tools are the product, doing real work.

On sale now

Stop renting. Own your AI team.

One-time purchase, your server, your model key. The license is emailed instantly.

Get OfficeForge — $199