The short answer: chatbots ~$20–30/mo · business assistants that run your inbox/calendar/deadlines ~$99–599/mo · specialist legal/timekeeping AI $20–500/user/mo · enterprise platforms quote-only (Harvey reported ~$1,200/seat with minimums). Human equivalent: $1,200–7,000/mo. The $99–599 tier is where a 1–10 person firm usually gets the most leverage per dollar.
The four pricing tiers
ChatGPT-class subscriptions. Answers questions; does not operate your inbox, calendar or documents for you.
Works inside your real accounts: triages email, watches deadlines, drafts replies, runs daily automations. BeforeNine sits here: $99 (Solo) to $599 (Front Office), free trial.
Vertical depth: Spellbook ~$20–40+ (contracts), CoCounsel $75–500 (legal research), Paxton ~$499 (all-in-one legal), Billables AI $39–99 (timekeeping).
Harvey (~$1,200/user/mo reported, seat minimums), Laurel (custom quote only). Effective floors in the six figures; not sold to small firms.
The human baseline
Commonly reported 2026 ranges; vary by region, skill and engagement model. AI pricing per vendors’ public pages and reporting — confirm before buying.
Questions, answered plainly.
Four tiers in 2026: consumer chatbots ~$20–30/month; business back-office assistants that operate your actual accounts ~$99–599/month flat (BeforeNine starts at $99 with a free trial); specialist professional AI $20–500 per user/month depending on depth; and enterprise platforms like Harvey or Laurel, which are quote-only with reported six-figure effective floors.
A chatbot answers questions you bring to it. A back-office assistant connects to your Gmail, Calendar and documents through official APIs, works on them continuously (triage, deadline-watching, drafting, scheduled automations), and gates every outbound action behind your approval. You’re paying for it to do work, not chat.
By roughly an order of magnitude for the overlap. Commonly reported 2026 rates: full-time offshore VA $1,200–2,500/month, US admin $3,000–7,000/month, paralegal $25–35/hour. An AI back-office layer runs $99–599/month and works around the clock — but it cannot make judgment calls, phone calls or handle physical tasks, so it displaces hours, not humans. See our AI vs virtual assistant comparison.
Read pricing pages for meters and seat minimums. BeforeNine’s answer: flat monthly plans sized as a generous comfort zone of actions for a productive month, no contracts, cancel anytime; on an unusually heavy month you choose whether to move up — nothing cuts off mid-task. Enterprise tools typically add implementation fees and annual terms.
Trial week free (no card), then Solo $99, Busy $219, Loaded $349, Front Office $599 per month. Every plan includes the full product — Ask, Automate, and App. Full details on the pricing page.
One good month costs $99. See what it handles.
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