Engine-computed reference · 6×6 grid · 36 cells
Agent Cost Envelope Reference Grid
The projected monthly cost of a market-analysis agent for every combination of loop depth and daily market coverage across this grid, priced on Claude Sonnet 4.6. Each cell is a live run of the Agent Cost Envelope Calculator engine; no value on this page was entered by hand.
Monthly cost is the product of cost per loop, markets per day, and business days, so it scales with both the number of reasoning steps per loop and the number of markets covered. Across this grid it runs from $8/month (shallowest loop at 2 steps, 5 markets/day) up to $2,178/month (deepest at 16 steps, 200 markets/day). Against a fixed $1,000/month budget, 4 of the 36 configurations break the envelope — the corner where deep loops meet broad coverage. For a worked 150-market envelope, see the agent cost envelope at 150 markets. Education only — not investment advice.
Monthly agent cost by loop steps × markets per day
Rows = steps per agent loop. Columns = markets analyzed per day. Each
value is the engine's
costPerMonth output in USD;
cells above the $1,000/month budget are highlighted.
| steps \ markets | 5 | 10 | 25 | 50 | 100 | 200 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2 | $8 | $17 | $41 | $83 | $165 | $330 |
| 4 | $15 | $30 | $74 | $149 | $297 | $594 |
| 6 | $21 | $43 | $107 | $215 | $429 | $858 |
| 8 | $28 | $56 | $140 | $281 | $561 | $1,122 |
| 12 | $41 | $83 | $206 | $413 | $825 | $1,650 |
| 16 | $54 | $109 | $272 | $545 | $1,089 | $2,178 |
Headline metric: projected monthly cost (USD). The CSV download below also carries the daily cost, per-loop cost, and within-budget flag per cell.
Provenance
- Engine
- Agent Cost Envelope Calculator
(
agent-cost-envelope-calculator) — computed live from/engines/agent-cost-envelope-calculator.js - Grid
- steps/loop ∈ {2, 4, 6, 8, 12, 16} × markets/day ∈ {5, 10, 25, 50, 100, 200} = 36 cells
- Fixed inputs
- model=claude-sonnet-4-6, input_tokens_per_step=5000, output_tokens_per_step=1000, convergence_check_pct=50, target_monthly_usd=1000, calendar_mode=business
- Computed
- 2026-05-23, recomputed in CI on every build
The engine is deterministic: per-loop token accounting and the business-day calendar are closed-form, so the same input always returns the same output. The full method — the per-step cost, the convergence check, and the calendar scaling — is documented at the Agent Cost Envelope Calculator methodology page. For keeping an agentic research loop inside a hard budget, see bounded-cost agentic research.
Reference grids are planning aids, not financial, tax, or investment advice. Prices reflect the engine's published rate card and may differ from your billing.