Salesforce sells Agentforce by the conversation, the credit, the seat, and the platform license — sometimes all at once. We did the math, read the rate cards, and checked the source URLs. So you don't have to.
Plain English. No marketing. Source-verified May 2026.
$500 buys 100,000 credits = $0.005 each. One standard agent action = 20 credits = $0.10. One voice action = 30 credits = $0.15. Same $/credit applies to Data 360 too. Pools across the org.
$2 Conversations beats Flex Credits when you average more than 20 actions per conversation. Most service deployments run 5–8 actions. Flex wins almost every customer-facing chat scenario.
The $125 Add-On is unmetered for internal employee usage. Every customer-facing chat, voice, or SMS interaction still bills via Flex Credits. This is the #1 mis-sell in the field.
Each action covers up to 10K tokens. A 200-page case history at 30K tokens = 3 actions billed for what looks like one query. Architect with token budgets, not just action counts.
Streaming Calculated Insights = 53× batch. Streaming Activate DMO = 160× batch. External pipeline streaming = 2.5× batch. Default to batch. Switch to streaming only where milliseconds matter.
$0 add-on for Enterprise+ orgs. Includes 200K Flex Credits + 250K Data Cloud credits + Agent Builder + Prompt Builder + Vibes. Older docs say 100K — the live page now says 200K. Verify on order form.
With PII masking on, every model is capped at 65,536 tokens of context. Turn masking off to use the model's full window — but you lose the demask round-trip. Plan RAG chunks accordingly.
Salesforce default = 8–10%/yr at renewal. Negotiate to 3–5% one-time. On a $5M ACV 3-year deal, the difference is ~$1.16M. This single clause beats every other concession.
Adjust your workload. We'll compute Flex Credits, Conversations, the Add-On, and Agentforce 1 Edition side-by-side. Pick a winner. See the math. All formulas from the FACTS doc, Section D — no LLM, no fudging.
| Vendor | $/yr | Note |
|---|
Calculator covers the Agentforce + Data 360 layer. Add CRM base licenses ($165 Service Cloud Ent / $330 Unlimited), Service Cloud Voice telephony ($50–$200/u/mo), and third-party connectors ($15K–$50K/yr each) separately. All numbers from FACTS.md Section D, verified May 2026.
Sticky nav on the left. Long scroll on the right. Drink water.
Salesforce replaced "Einstein Requests" with a single universal AI consumption unit. One credit = $0.005. Every action, voice minute, prompt, translation, and Data 360 ingest pulls from the same pool.
The Flex Credits Rate Card (04.21.2026 PDF on salesforce.com) is the closest thing Salesforce has to a public AI rate sheet. Here's the meat:
| Usage type | Credits | $ / unit |
|---|---|---|
| Standard Action (text, prod) | 20 | $0.10 |
| Voice Action (prod) | 30 | $0.15 |
| Standard Action (sandbox) | 16 | $0.08 |
| Voice Action (sandbox) | 24 | $0.12 |
| Voice Minutes (prod, per minute) | 60 | $0.30 |
| Speech-to-Text (per hour) | 150 | $0.75 |
| Translation (per 1M chars) | 4,000 | $20.00 |
| Text-to-Speech (per 1M chars) | 6,000 | $30.00 |
| BYO LLM Standard Prompt | 4 / prompt | $0.02 |
| BYO LLM Advanced Prompt | 16 / prompt | $0.08 |
The 10K-token cliff. Each action covers up to 10,000 tokens of context. Above that, billed as ceil(tokens/10000) actions. 20,001 tokens = 3 actions = $0.30 for what looks like one query. The threshold is per action, not pooled across actions in a conversation.
No rollover. No overage penalty. Unused credits expire at order end date. If you blow through your pre-purchase, overage bills at your contracted rate (not at list — verbatim from the salesforce.com FAQ). Use Digital Wallet alerts to see consumption near-realtime.
Flex and Conversations cannot coexist in one org. If you switch from Conversations to Flex Credits, every Agentforce SKU has to be swapped. AE handles it; same-revenue swap is allowed.
ER is not deprecated. Salesforce is absorbing it product-by-product into Flex Credits. Knowing which surface still bills ER vs Flex is half the battle.
The ER formula: ER = ceil((input_tokens + output_tokens) / 2000) × multiplier. Multipliers per the Einstein Request Rate Card (10.24.25 PDF):
441038Salesforce never publishes a $/ER list price. Industry rule of thumb is $0.001–$0.002 per ER. Treat as AE confirmation required.
Surfaces that still bill ER as of May 2026: Service Replies, Einstein Work Summaries, Knowledge creation, AI-generated search answers, Prompt Builder invoked from Flow/Apex/LWC/API outside Agentforce, and Models API direct calls. Watch the Spring '27 release notes — that's likely when the ER → Flex collapse accelerates.
Rebranded "Data 360" in October 2025. Same $0.005/credit as Flex. But each operation has its own multiplier — and streaming variants can be 53× to 160× more expensive than batch.
| Usage type | Legacy (cr/M) | Flex base (cr/M) | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| External pipeline batch | 2,000 | 2,000 | — |
| External pipeline streaming | 5,000 | 3,500 | 2.5× batch (legacy) |
| Profile Unification | 100,000 | 75,000 | per M source rows |
| Calculated Insights — batch | 15 | — | — |
| Calculated Insights — streaming | 800 | — | 53× batch |
| Activate DMO — batch | 10 | — | — |
| Activate DMO — streaming | 1,600 | — | 160× batch |
| Data Queries | 2 | 3 | per M rows |
| Unstructured Data Processed (RAG) | 60 / MB | 150 / MB | $0.30/MB legacy |
| Intelligent Processing (OCR/audio/LLM-chunk) | — | 600 / MB | 4× unstructured |
| Real-Time Pipeline | — | 250,000 | per M events; biggest meter |
Profile-based SKUs: Data 360 Profiles = $240/1K profiles/yr; Enterprise Profiles = $420/1K (Data Masking + Ad Audience add-ons). Predictable budget for steady-state customer bases.
Three pricing models coexist as of May 2026: legacy Data Services Credits (existing contracts), new Flex/Data 360 tiered (Mar 2026 default for new deals), and Profile-based SKUs. Most customers will mix two of three.
Tier breaks on the new Flex card per usage type per month: Base ≤300K credits, Tier 2 300K–1.5M, Tier 3 1.5M–12.5M, Tier 4 >12.5M. Tier 4 multipliers are typically 5× cheaper than base. Sandbox is flat (no tiering).
REST + Apex layer that wraps any supported LLM through the Trust Layer. Bills Einstein Requests today (not Flex Credits) when called direct. BYO-LLM pulls a 2.5× discount on the prompt multiplier.
https://api.salesforce.com/einstein/platform/v1/models/{model}/{generations|chat-generations|embeddings}. Apex namespace: aiplatform.ModelsAPI. Required headers: x-sfdc-app-context: EinsteinGPT, x-client-feature-id: ai-platform-models-connected-app.Supported managed models (May 2026): Anthropic Claude (Haiku 4.5, Sonnet 4/4.5/4.6, Opus 4.5/4.6β/4.7β); OpenAI (GPT-4o/4.1/5/5.1/5.2/5.4, O3, O4 Mini); Google Gemini 2.5 + 3 Flash/Pro; Amazon Nova Lite/Pro; NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Nano 30B Beta. All inside the Trust Boundary with zero-retention agreements.
BYO-LLM providers: Amazon Bedrock, Azure OpenAI, OpenAI direct, Google Vertex. Plus the LLM Open Connector for any OpenAI-compatible endpoint (self-hosted Llama, etc.). You pay your vendor for inference + Salesforce for the gateway/Trust Layer.
Rate limits (production): 500 RPM/org for LLM generations, 1,000 RPM/org for embeddings, 1,000 RPM/org for feedback. Sandbox: 200 Apex requests/hour/method. HTTP 429 on overage.
The economics trap: Models API + BYO-LLM is the cheapest "platform" path (~25% premium over direct Bedrock for the Trust Layer). Models API + Salesforce-managed jumps to ~137% premium (zero key management bundled). Flex Credits inside Agentforce jumps to ~316% premium — but you also get the full agent framework, planner, and CRM grounding. The right tier depends on how much of the agent stack you want to own.
There are five per-user prices to know. Pick wrong and you can 5× your bill.
| SKU | $/u/mo | Metered? | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Salesforce Foundations | $0 | n/a | Every Enterprise+ org. Free baseline. |
| Agentforce User License | $5 | Yes (Flex) | Light internal users without a CRM license. Wrapper. |
| Add-On (Sales/Service/Field) | $125 | Internal only — unmetered | Heavy-usage employees with existing CRM license. Break-even at 1,250 actions/u/mo. |
| Add-On (Industries) | $150 | Internal only — unmetered | Industries Cloud customers (FSC, Health, Mfg, etc.). |
| Public Sector Service Agentforce 1 | $650 | Bundled (2.5M Flex/org/yr) | Public sector premium tier. |
| Agentforce 1 Edition | $550+ | Bundled (2.5M Flex/org/yr) | All-in platform deal. Add-On per user + bundled credits. |
The Aug 2025 +6% list-price increase was real and Salesforce-published. Sales/Service Cloud Enterprise = $165/u/mo (was ~$155). Unlimited = $330/u/mo (was ~$310). Foundations/Starter/Pro unchanged. Affects Add-On math: a "$125 add-on user" really costs $290–$455/mo all-in once you stack the base CRM license.
Agentforce 1 Edition bundled credits: 2.5M Flex Credits per org per year per the live salesforce.com page. Older docs cite "1M Flex + 2.5M Data 360 Credits" — Salesforce consolidated to a single 2.5M Flex line on the public page in late 2025. Whether the Data 360 component still ships separately is AE-confirmation-required.
There is no separate "Vector DB" SKU. Vector and Hybrid search indexes live inside Data 360, billed via Data Cloud / Flex Credits.
Two index types: Vector Search (semantic only) and Hybrid Search (vector + BM25 keyword fusion). Same ingest cost. Hybrid query bills ~2× vector — keyword records add to scanned-rows count.
Ingest cost. Unstructured Data Processed = 60 credits/MB legacy = $0.30/MB = $300/GB. New Flex tiered: 150 cr/MB base, dropping to 30 cr/MB at Tier 4. Intelligent Processing (OCR, audio transcription, LLM-driven semantic chunking) = 600 cr/MB base, 120 cr/MB Tier 4 — 4× premium over standard Unstructured.
Query cost. Uses the Data Queries meter: 2 cr/M rows legacy, 3 cr/M rows base Flex. Vector queries bill for vectors scanned; hybrid bills for vectors + keyword records (~2×).
The silent killer: customer-uploaded photos and videos compound monthly. 1 TB of video/yr = 1M MB × 150 = 150M credits = $750K/yr unbudgeted on Intelligent Processing. Cap monthly ingest at the workload level.
The $125/$150 Add-On is unmetered for internal employee usage only. Every customer-facing chat, voice, or SMS bills via Flex Credits or Conversations on top.
Practical example: 5,000 field technicians at $125/u/mo = $7.5M/yr unmetered for tech-facing flows (parts lookup, work order automation, scheduling). But if those same techs also trigger customer-facing SMS confirmations or IVR calls, every one of those interactions still hits Flex Credits. At 3M residual customer-facing actions/yr × 20 credits = 60M credits = $300K/yr you didn't budget for.
Negotiation move: push for the Add-On to include customer-facing actions when initiated by a licensed user's workflow. AE will resist; some have agreed in mid-market deals. Anchor on the "internal only" being unhelpful when the workflow naturally crosses the boundary.
PII/PCI masking, zero-retention LLM agreements, toxicity scoring, audit trail in Data 360. Caps prompt context at 65,536 tokens when masking is on.
What Trust Layer does: PII/PCI masked with placeholder substitution before the prompt leaves Salesforce → demask on response → toxicity scored → logged to Data 360 audit table. Zero-retention agreements with foundational LLM vendors mean your tokens don't train their models.
The architectural impact of the 65K cap: most modern models support 200K–1M token windows. With masking on, you lose 70–93% of the available context. For RAG with long documents, this means more chunking, more queries, more credits. Or: turn masking off (lose the demask round-trip but get the full window). It's a real tradeoff.
Same workload, different budgets. The shape of the deal matters more than the rate card.
| Scenario | Volume | Recommended path | Net annual |
|---|---|---|---|
| A · Small Biz FAQ (50 emp, retail) | 125K conv/yr | Flex Credits, 1-yr pre-purchase | ~$21K |
| B · Mid-Market Service (200 agents, voice) | 730K conv/yr | Flex + Voice Minutes, 3-yr ELA, 30% disc | ~$1.05M |
| C · Enterprise Field Service (5K techs) | 5M work orders/yr | Field Service + $125 Add-On + Flex residual, 45% disc | ~$14M |
| D · B2C Marketing (10M profiles) | ~7B agent decisions/yr | MCE + Flex, batch-first agent design, 40% disc | ~$5.2M |
| E · Internal Employee Asst (10K seats) | 5M interactions/yr | $5 user license + Flex Credits, 35% disc | ~$2.06M ($17/u/mo) |
The pattern: Flex Credits wins almost every scenario under 20 actions/conv. Conversations only beats Flex for SDR multi-step (40+ actions) or batch-style agent runs. Add-On wins above ~1,250 actions/user/month. Agentforce 1 Edition only makes sense for genuinely all-in platform deals at <500 users.
Run the calculator above with your actual volumes — the decoder picks the winner and shows the breakdown.
Salesforce isn't the cheapest on raw $/conversation. It's bundled — CRM + cases + voice + KB + governance + sandboxes. The honest comparison strips those out.
Same workload as Scenario B (200 agents, 730K conv/yr, 8 actions/conv ≈ 5.84M agent steps):
| Vendor | List $/yr | CRM included? | Voice/IVR? | Per-step | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Salesforce Agentforce (Flex) | ~$1.05M (post 30% disc) | ✓ Service Cloud | Add'l SCV $50–200/u | $0.10/action | CRM-grounded service ops |
| Microsoft Copilot Studio | ~$1.24M | — (need Dynamics) | — (need Teams Phone) | ~$0.20–0.25/step | M365-heavy enterprises |
| ServiceNow Now Assist | ~$1.52M | — (it IS the ITSM) | — | $0.30/assist | ServiceNow-anchored support |
| Google Agentspace E+ | ~$108K | — | — | flat $45/u/mo | Enterprise search + light agents |
| AWS Bedrock Agents | ~$300–500K all-in | — (build it) | — (build it) | <$0.02/action raw | AI-first build-it-yourself teams |
The honest take: Salesforce isn't expensive — it's bundled. The $1M Flex Credits price includes Service Cloud, case mgmt, omnichannel routing, KB, mobile, sandboxes, governance. Strip those out of Bedrock and the math is closer than vendors will admit. The real competitive moment for Salesforce is when a Microsoft shop or AWS-native team has already built Service Cloud equivalents elsewhere — that's when AE pricing folds 40–50%.
The discount tier is half the deal. The Order Form clauses are the other half — and most architects ignore them until renewal.
| Commit tier | Standard | Stretch | Approval |
|---|---|---|---|
| <$100K ACV | 10–15% | 20% | AE direct |
| $100K–$250K | 15–25% | 30% | AE direct |
| $250K–$1M | 20–30% | 35% | RVP approval |
| $1M–$5M | 30–40% | 45% | AVP / Deal Desk |
| $5M+ multi-year | 40–50% | 50%+ | AVP/CRO |
| + documented competitive RFP | +10–15pp | up to 55% | CRO |
Salesforce FY ends January 31. Q4 (Nov–Jan) is peak discount window. Last week of January historically the highest-discount period.
For architects, AEs, SEs, and customers. Type to filter.
Seventeen items where Salesforce hasn't published a public number, or the public number contradicts itself, or it's commercial-confidential. Push your AE for clarity on these in writing.
A pricing decoder built by Bugs (a robot dog with a Claude Opus 4.7 brain) and his human Amin — a Principal Data & AI Architect at Salesforce. Compiled from 12+ public Salesforce sources, the live agentforce/pricing page, and the Flex Credits Rate Card 04.21.2026. Verified May 2026. Not affiliated with or endorsed by Salesforce.
Every number in the calculator traces back to FACTS.md Section D, which cites the source URL and retrieval date for every claim. Confidence ratings (HIGH/MEDIUM/LOW) for every fact.
No LLM in the cost calculations. Click "View source" — you can read every formula. The chat bubble uses Claude only to explain concepts; it refuses to make up numbers.
Reflects the August 2025 +6% list-price increase, the October 2025 Data Cloud rebrand to Data 360, the new Flex Credits Rate Card 04.21.2026, and the Trust Layer 65K masking ceiling correction.