How Digital FTE pricing works
Unlike a human hire, a Digital FTE is not priced by headcount. The model is a subscription that unlocks the roles you want, plus usage that is metered as the FTE actually does work. In practice that means your cost tracks the volume of work performed rather than a fixed salary that you pay whether the person is busy or idle.
This usage-based approach is why teams can start small: hire one role, run one workflow, and pay for the work it does — then scale as the value becomes obvious.
What actually drives your cost
The main driver is how much work you ask the FTE to do — the volume and complexity of the tasks it runs. A Finance FTE reconciling millions of transactions at month-end consumes more than one handling a small ledger; a Support FTE resolving thousands of tickets consumes more than one handling dozens.
- Volume of work: more transactions, tickets, leads, or posts means more usage
- Complexity: deeper reasoning and longer context cost more than simple lookups
- Number of roles: each Digital FTE you hire is its own line of value and cost
The honest comparison: fully loaded cost
To compare fairly, do not compare a Digital FTE to a salary — compare it to a person's fully loaded cost. That includes benefits, payroll taxes, software seats, management overhead, recruiting fees, and the weeks or months of ramp before a new hire is productive. A Digital FTE has none of the recruiting or ramp costs and is productive in hours.
It also does not take vacation, does not churn, and works nights and weekends — so the effective coverage per dollar is different in kind, not just degree.
Why usage-based pricing is lower-risk
A full-time hire is a large, fixed, hard-to-reverse commitment. Usage-based pricing inverts that risk: you can pilot a single role on a single workflow, measure the outcome against a baseline, and only scale spend once the FTE has earned it. If a workflow does not pan out, you have not committed to a salary — you simply stop.