How is Airkit.ai licensed today, and what does it cost?

Most buyers who ask what Airkit.ai costs are really asking a different question: if I want the thing Airkit.ai did, which is an AI agent that handles customer service conversations across chat, messaging and voice, what do I sign and how is it metered? That question has a clear answer, and it is more useful than a hunt for a SKU that no longer exists under that name.

#What you are actually buying

Salesforce's own announcement describes the company this way: "Airkit.ai enables Fortune 500 and fast growing businesses to build flexible, omni-channel customer engagement applications, and AI-based customer service agents." Salesforce completed the purchase on 16 October 2023 and said Airkit.ai would become part of Service Cloud. Two years on, the pricing pages you can read today do not carry an Airkit.ai line. We checked the Service Cloud, Agentforce, Data 360 and Commerce pricing pages on 13 October 2026 and none of them names it. That is not a hiding place for a charge; it means the product was absorbed and the commercial unit changed.

The unit you meet now is Agentforce. Salesforce sells customer-facing agents through two consumption models on its Agentforce pricing page. Conversations are priced at US$2 per conversation. Flex Credits are priced at US$500 per 100,000 credits, and a standard agent action draws 20 credits, which is US$0.10. Salesforce also sells Agentforce add-ons for employee-facing use at US$125 per user per month, and Max editions from US$550 per user per month that include 2.75 million Flex Credits per org per year. We will not pretend these are Airkit.ai prices. They are the current price of the job Airkit.ai was bought to do, and that is the number a finance team needs.

Beneath the agent sits the service platform. The Service Cloud pricing page lists its editions in US dollars per user per month, billed annually: Core at 195, Advanced at 395 and Max at 550, with Starter Suite at 25 and Pro Suite at 100 as the smaller suites. Salesforce describes the Advanced edition as "The CRM for service with AI-powered channels, protected data, and smarter customer insights." Those seats are for your people. The agent itself is not a seat, and that distinction is where licence plans most often go wrong.

#Two meters, one break-even

The two customer-facing models measure different things, and the gap between them is simple to compute from the published numbers. One conversation costs US$2. One standard action costs 20 credits, and 20 credits at US$500 per 100,000 is US$0.10. So a conversation equals twenty actions.

The practical reading is this. If your agent typically resolves a conversation in a handful of actions, such as looking up an order, checking a policy and updating a case, Flex Credits cost less than the flat conversation rate. If a conversation is long and tool-heavy, with many lookups, summaries and record updates, the flat rate caps your exposure. Salesforce's own guidance on the page says Conversations "offer flat-pricing" and are aimed at external-facing customer agents, while Flex Credits scale across any Agentforce use case.

Take 5,000 conversations a month. At ten actions each the Flex bill is US$5,000 against US$10,000 on the flat rate. At thirty actions each it is US$15,000 against US$10,000. The same contract question yields a difference of tens of thousands of dollars a year, and the only input that matters is a number you can measure in a pilot: actions per resolved conversation. Everything else is the rate card.

#The rules that bite after signing

Four contract mechanics from the Agentforce pricing page deserve to be in the order form discussion before anyone argues about a discount.

First, you cannot mix the models. The page says Flex Credits and Conversations will not be supported in the same org. If you start on Conversations and later want Flex Credits, you swap all of your existing Conversation SKUs. Decide which meter fits your dominant use case, and expect the second use case to follow it.

Second, unused credits expire. Salesforce states: "Unused Flex Credits do not roll over into subsequent subscription terms." A year-one commitment sized on optimism therefore turns into a write-off, not a credit against year two. Buy for the volume you can evidence.

Third, going over is not punished, but it is not free. In Salesforce's words, "If you exceed your entitlement, your rate is your contracted rate billed monthly in arrears." That is a fair mechanism, and it is also the reason to watch consumption in Digital Wallet, which the page says is provided free for products that use it, with threshold alerts.

Fourth, the buying model changes the risk. The page lists Pre-Purchase, where you pay upfront and draw down; Pre-Commit, where you commit to a baseline with no upfront payment and a true-up at the end of term if usage is below commitment; and PayGo, billed monthly in arrears. Flex Credits are available on PayGo and Pre-Commit, while Conversation pricing, Agentforce add-ons and the Max editions are not. Pre-Commit was labelled as widely available later this year when we read the page, so confirm availability with your account executive.

#Sizing the licence from your own data

A licence is a forecast, and a forecast needs three inputs that only your business holds. The first is conversation volume by channel, split into the share you want an agent to take and the share that must go to a person. The second is actions per resolved conversation, which you get by running the agent on a slice of real traffic for a few weeks. The third is the number of humans who will still work cases, because they remain on Service Cloud seats.

Start with the human side because it is the easier number. Twenty service users on Advanced cost 20 x 395 x 12, which is US$94,800 a year at list. The same twenty on Core cost US$46,800. If an agent takes a meaningful share of volume, you may need fewer seats next year, but do not assume it. Complex, regulated or emotionally charged cases tend to stay with people, and the agent often creates new work in the form of handoffs, review queues and knowledge fixes.

Then the agent side. Suppose a pilot of 500 conversations shows nine actions on average. Scale that to 4,000 a month and you have 36,000 actions, 720,000 credits, or US$3,600 a month on Flex Credits. The flat equivalent is US$8,000. Now stress it: if the hardest tenth of your conversations need forty actions, rerun the number with a mix, not an average. The right contract is the one that still looks sensible on your worst plausible month.

One more input is easy to forget. Flex Credits also meter prompts, translations and voice actions on the same pool, and Salesforce notes that its examples do not include other costs like Data 360 credits. If your agent grounds answers in a knowledge library through Data 360, that consumption is separate and belongs in the same model.

#A worked year, three ways

Numbers settle arguments faster than adjectives, so here is one year for a mid-sized service team, using only the list prices above. Assume 20 people working cases, 4,000 agent conversations a month, and nine actions per conversation from a pilot. The table shows what each seat edition and meter combination costs at list, before any negotiated discount.

The agent line deserves a second look. At nine actions per conversation, 4,000 conversations use 36,000 actions a month, which is 720,000 credits and US$3,600 a month, or US$43,200 over the year. On the flat rate the same traffic is US$8,000 a month, or US$96,000. The seat edition is a separate decision driven by what your people need, such as the inclusions Salesforce lists for each tier, and it should not be chosen to fit the agent.

Two cautions come with any table like this. List prices are the start of a negotiation, not the end, and the support plan, sandboxes and any consumption outside the agent sit on top. And the pilot average is a sample. A longer tail of difficult conversations moves the Flex line quickly, which is exactly why the flat rate exists.

#What changes when an agent lands in an existing org

Most buyers who read this page already run Service Cloud. For them the licence conversation is an extension of a contract, not a fresh one, and three habits help. Ask for your current entitlements in writing before you add anything, because editions have been repackaged more than once and a line you assume you own may sit in a different tier. Ask what a mid-term change costs, since adding a consumption product part way through a subscription often means co-terming it to your existing end date, and that shortens the period over which a prepaid commitment can be used. And decide who owns the consumption number internally. A service leader will watch resolution rate; a finance partner should watch credits or conversations drawn each month against the plan, using the alerts Salesforce provides.

It also helps to keep the commercial record tidy. Name the use case on the order form, such as order-status conversations on web chat, so that a later reviewer can tell what the spend bought. A meter with no named purpose is the first thing cut at renewal and the last thing anyone can defend.

#Comparing offers fairly

Treat any quote that mentions Airkit.ai, or its successor features, as a bundle to be unpicked. A fair comparison separates five lines: Service Cloud seats by edition and count, the Agentforce meter you chose, any Data 360 or knowledge consumption that feeds the agent, the buying model with its commitment and true-up terms, and the support plan. On the last point, the commerce pricing page states that the Premier Success Plan is priced at 30 dollars in every 100 of net licence fees, so a larger licence also lifts your support cost; it is worth asking whether the plan is already included in your edition. The Service Cloud Advanced edition lists Premier Success Plan among its inclusions, so check before you pay twice.

Ask for the rate card, not only the discounted total, and ask what happens to your rate on renewal if consumption doubles. A good discount on a bad meter is still a bad deal.

#Questions for the account team

• Which meter, Conversations or Flex Credits, do you recommend for my channels and why, and what does each cost at my pilot numbers?
• Does my current Service Cloud edition already include any agent entitlement, and what is it capped at?
• What is my contracted Flex Credit rate if I exceed my balance, and is it the same as the rate in my commitment?
• Which buying model do you offer for my term, and how is any shortfall treated at the end?
• What else does the agent consume, such as Data 360 credits, voice or messaging, and where is that priced?

If you want a view on the work around the licence, the channels, cases, knowledge articles and exception queues, read Airkit.ai and Service Cloud. The acquisition record is on what happened to Airkit.ai, the connector detail is on integrating Airkit.ai with Salesforce, and the decision to move is on should I migrate from Airkit.ai. Salesforce's completion notice, which this guide quotes once, reads: "Salesforce completed its acquisition of Airkit.ai on October 16, 2023." Everything beyond that sentence in this guide comes from the pricing pages linked above, read on 13 October 2026, which Salesforce says are subject to change.