dusk botwhat does it cost to keep an ai agent running?
type in your electricity price, your server's price and how much your time is worth, and the table shows what a month of keeping bots running costs in each place. a laptop is free but sleeps. a spare computer costs electricity and care. a rented server costs its bill and care. dusk cloud is a flat $20 or $50 a month, and we look after it.
how it works out the numbers
a spare computer's electricity is its idle draw in watts, divided by 1,000 for kilowatts, times the hours a day you keep it on, times 30.4 days in an average month, times your price per kwh. at the starting values, 20 watts for 24 hours at $0.20 per kwh, that's 0.02 × 24 × 30.4 × 0.20 = about $2.92 a month.
your time is the hours a month you'd spend on updates, restarts and backups, times what an hour of it is worth to you. it starts at zero because only you know it, but it's usually the biggest number on the page.
a rented server is the monthly price your hosting company charges, plus your time. dusk bot charges nothing to run on your own server; it needs ubuntu 22.04 or 24.04 and 2 gb of memory or more.
dusk cloud prices are from our pricing page: plus is $20 a month or $200 a year, pro is $50 a month or $500 a year, and we keep the computer running and back it up daily.
what this leaves out: the price of buying a spare computer in the first place, your internet connection, and your ai plan. every option uses the ai you sign in to, billed by your provider.
reading the result
if your laptop is only open while you work and you only use bots then, the free row is the honest answer: stay where you are.
the other rows matter once you want routines to run before you wake, or to text a bot from your phone at night. then compare the spare computer and server rows with your time included. a server that costs a few dollars but takes an evening a month to look after is rarely the cheapest option once that evening has a price.
the page where do ai agents run when your laptop is closed walks through what each option is like to live with, beyond the cost.
questions
where do the starting numbers come from?
they are examples, not measurements. the right watts are on your computer's spec sheet or a plug-in power meter, and the right electricity price is on your bill.
does the calculator send my numbers anywhere?
no. it runs in this page in your browser and sends nothing.
sources
read next
where do ai agents run when your laptop is closed?four places a bot can live, and what each costs.
how to run claude code 24/7choose a home for overnight work.
how much does an ai agent cost each month?three costs to put in your budget.
always-on ai agentwhat it means, with an example.
ai employees you can give a clear jobgive a bot a job you can check.
openclaw hosting or a different cloud bot app?the host is only part of the bill.
drafted with ai help from the dusk bot docs and the sources listed on this page, then checked against them. if something here is wrong or out of date, write to [email protected].