The real cost of AI in your company
Over the last two years, a new category of software has exploded: enterprise AI assistants. Glean indexes your Drive so you can search in natural language. Microsoft 365 Copilot drafts emails right from Outlook. Helvia builds conversational agents for customer service. They all promise productivity. They all charge the same way: per employee, per month.
That per-seat model hides a trap. When your headcount goes from 10 to 50 people, your invoice multiplies by five. When it grows to 250, it multiplies by twenty-five. The vendor charges more simply because you grew, even though actual tool usage is exactly what it was before.
BiVelio breaks that model. You pay a flat platform fee, with packs of 5 operators at a fixed price of €35/month. You scale your team without your cost exploding. Here we prove it with a calculator that uses the real prices of all four tools.
Four tools, two philosophies
Three per-seat assistants and one platform. These are the four products we are going to compare.
How much you really pay each month
Slide the number of employees who would use the tool. Prices taken from each vendor public website.
| Platform | Monthly | Yearly | BiVelio saves |
|---|---|---|---|
| Glean | €1.250 | €15.000 | +€10.620 |
| Microsoft Copilot | €750 | €9.000 | +€4.620 |
| Helvia | €875 | €10.500 | +€6.120 |
| BiVelio | €365 | €4.380 | — |
* Copilot charges €30 per employee + a separate Microsoft 365 license (≈€10 extra per employee). Only Copilot is shown here.
* Helvia does not publish pricing. Conservative estimate of €35 per employee based on the enterprise AI agents market.
BiVelio Pro: €225/month base with 5 operators included + €35/month per pack of 5 additional operators. Published on bivelio.com/pricing.
Per-seat vs platform
Beyond the price tag, these are the structural differences between an AI assistant and an enterprise operating system.
| Capability | Glean | Copilot | Helvia | BiVelio |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Billing model | Per-seat | Per-seat + M365 | Per-seat | Platform + packs |
| Cost grows with headcount | Yes, linear | Yes, linear | Yes, linear | Minimal (packs of 5) |
| Automates end-to-end processes | No, search only | Assists, not executes | Conversation | Full workflows |
| Visual no-code BPM | No | No | No | Yes |
| ERP, invoicing and cases | No | No | No | Built-in |
| Customizable AI agents | Assistants | Copilot Studio | Yes, core product | Yes, governed |
| WhatsApp and unified channels | No | Teams | Yes | WhatsApp + email + web |
| EU data sovereignty | Multi-region | Multi-region | EU | Hetzner Finland |
The silent trap of the per-seat model
When you sign Glean or Copilot at €50 per employee per month, the number feels small. Ten employees, €500. Manageable. But the per-seat model punishes exactly what your company should celebrate: growing.
Every new hire automatically inflates your invoice. You do not renegotiate. You do not optimize. You pay more because you are more, even though actual tool usage is unchanged. And next year, after you close that big client and add 30 headcount, you discover your tooling costs five figures per month.
- Linear scaling: every extra employee adds the full license price, with no volume discount.
- Budget freezes: the CFO starts rationing licenses, and only a subset of the team ends up using AI.
- Vendor lock-in: once your team has the habit, renegotiating or migrating freezes entire departments.
- No real ROI: you pay for access, not for outcomes. The tool does not execute work, only assists.