Agentforce and Generative AI Usage and Billing

Pricing Models

Salesforce offers three pricing models for AI usage.

• Consumption-Based Pricing: You pay for what you use based on foundational AI metrics, such as the number of prompts or actions.
• Hybrid Pricing (Per User/Per Month Licensing + Consumption): This model combines fixed user licensing with usage-based consumption to offer price certainty per user for many AI scenarios.
  • Per-user licensing: Provides unmetered usage for specific features within a defined scope.
  • License-Specific Metering: Grants unmetered access to features only available through specialized licensing.
  • Metering Conditions: Triggers Flex Credit consumption only when license-specific conditions aren’t met. See Metering for Agentforce and Generative AI Usage.
• Business-Metrics-Based Pricing: Under this model, you pay based on high-level business outcomes rather than direct technical consumption. Examples include Agentforce Voice Minutes and characters translated.

How AI Usage Is Metered and Credits Consumed

AI usage falls into two main categories that dictate the specific unit of consumption.

• Agentic usage: Agentic usage involves autonomous agents that can reason, perform multi-step tasks, and act independently. The unit of consumption for this type is based on the number of actions triggered.
• Prompt-Based (Embedded) AI Usage: These features assist users with specific tasks—such as summary generation or email drafting—without acting autonomously. Consumption is based on the number of prompts, which include direct requests to Large Language Models (LLMs).

The system records AI usage in its native units, such as actions or prompts, before converting them into Flex Credits. This process follows three steps:

• Usage Type Categorization: These units are mapped to specific usage types based on the specific feature or agent used.
• Measurement: The system counts the raw units of consumption based on the usage type (for example, a single action or a single prompt).
• Credit calculation: The usage types are converted into Flex Credits by using a unit price or multiplier defined in the Agentforce Rate Card. This multiplier allows different AI services to bill at varying rates against a unified credit pool.

See these topics to learn more about the usage types, and their unit of measurement.

• Flex Credits
• Conversations
• Einstein Requests

Note To monitor your metered usage access your org’s Digital Wallet.

Metering in the AI Lifecycle

The billability of an AI interaction also depends on the stage of the development lifecycle.

• Design and Development: Agentforce Builder features for creating and building your agents aren't metered and don't consume credits. However, Salesforce meters usage when you preview an agent in chat or voice.
• Testing and Validation: Testing through Agentforce Builder, Agentforce Grid, Testing Center, and Sandbox are metered to account for required compute resources. The type of testing includes the preview options for voice and Chat or running batch tests.
• Production: All live interactions in a production environment based on the consumption model: autonomous agent workflows and user-triggered prompts.

Note Agentforce Grid is commonly used for testing, but its applicability extends across all three phases of the AI lifecycle. Importantly, Agentforce Grid usage is metered regardless of the AI lifecycle phase in which it’s used.