The two shapes
Hosted AI is priced per person per month. An on-premise system is priced once, plus a yearly service fee. The first scales with headcount; the second scales with nothing.
What per-seat actually costs
At about $75 per person per month, five people is $4,500 a year. Over five years that is $22,500, and at the end you own nothing and can be repriced at renewal.
Then there is the quiet cost: teams ration seats. The receptionist who would benefit does not get one, because a seat is a line item somebody has to justify.
What ownership costs
An Office-tier system is $7,900 installed, $600 a year to service — $10,900 over five years, with unlimited staff accounts. The apprentice, the bookkeeper and the weekend casual all get the same system.
The parts nobody puts in the comparison
- Repricing risk. A subscription can change price at renewal. A machine cannot.
- Withdrawal risk. A model or feature you built a process on can be retired. Yours stays pinned until you choose to move.
- Tools you keep. A calculator built once in the Harness runs forever at no extra cost. On a metered service, every run is billed.
- The asset. The conversations, transcripts and documents accumulate as your own record, exportable, and usable to fine-tune a model that belongs to you.
Why the smallest monthly figure is incomplete
One or two people, occasional use, nothing sensitive. We will tell you that rather than quote you a machine. Everywhere else, the honest arithmetic favours owning it — see the numbers.
Book a 20-minute walkthrough and we will run your own document through it.