AI Coding Assistant ROI Calculator
Per-seat payback on Copilot, Cursor and Claude Code from developer time saved
Your team
One developer hour costs $101.74 with benefits.
Payback per seat
| Seat | Price / month | Break-even time saved | Net per seat | Net for team |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| GitHub Copilot Pro | $10 | 6 min | $397 | $3,970 |
| GitHub Copilot Pro+ | $39 | 23 min | $368 | $3,680 |
| GitHub Copilot Max | $100 | 59 min | $307 | $3,070 |
| Cursor Teams Listed as $30+ per user a month. | $30 | 18 min | $377 | $3,770 |
| Cursor Ultra | $200 | 2.0 h | $207 | $2,070 |
| Claude Team, Standard seat $20 billed annually. Includes Claude Code. | $25 | 15 min | $382 | $3,820 |
| Claude Team, Premium seat $100 billed annually. Includes Claude Code. | $125 | 1.2 h | $282 | $2,820 |
Break-even time saved is how much developer time a seat has to save each month to pay for itself. It does not depend on your hours-saved guess.
The formulas
Loaded hourly cost = wage x (1 + benefits %) Value per seat = hours saved per month x loaded hourly cost Net per seat = value per seat - seat price Break-even time saved = seat price / loaded hourly cost Net for team = net per seat x developers
How this works
A coding assistant seat pays for itself when the developer time it saves is worth more than its price. The cost of a developer hour starts from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics mean wage for software developers, $71.20 (OEWS, May 2025), plus benefits. In the BLS Employer Costs for Employee Compensation for June 2026, private employers paid $14.07 in benefits for every $32.82 in wages, which is 42.9%. That makes $101.74 an hour.
Seat prices are the per-user monthly prices on GitHub, Cursor and Anthropic's pricing pages, read on November 12, 2026. The hours saved are yours to enter; the calculator does not assume a productivity gain.
Worked example with the defaults (10 developers, 4 hours saved each a month): 4 x $101.74 = $406.98 of time per seat. On Copilot Pro+ at $39, that is $367.98 net per seat and $3,679.79 for the team, and the seat breaks even at $39 / $101.74 = 0.38 hours, about 23 minutes, a month.
Sources (read November 12, 2026)
Rolling out Claude Code so the time saved shows up as shipped work? See Claude Code development.
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