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Is your AI feature paying for itself?

Every B2B SaaS in 2026 ships 3-8 distinct AI features. Each has wildly different unit economics — yet most founders can't answer the simplest question their CFO will ask in the next board meeting: "Is our summarise feature paying for itself?"

Edit the table below → see the per-feature P&L. The math is shown — nothing hidden.

Your annual revenue
Used to attribute revenue to each feature based on the share you set per row.
$

≈ $300.0K / month

Your AI features
Add one row per distinct feature. Math updates live.
FeatureModelCalls/mo$/call% of ARR

Total monthly AI cost

$28.5K

Net monthly margin

$108.0K

Features tracked

3

Costs more than earns

1

Heads up — your summarise feature is costing about $8.5K/month more than it earns.

That works out to about $102.2K a year. Common quick wins: cache aggressive responses, switch to a cheaper model for low-stakes calls, gate it behind a paid tier, or raise its usage-share-of-ARR if customers genuinely value it.

Per-feature P&L · sorted by margin
Worst margin at the top — that's where the leverage is.

Auto-summarise

Costs more than it earns

summarise · gpt-5.2 · 6,200 calls/mo

Cost

$13.0K

Revenue

$4.5K

Margin

-$8.5K

Chat assistant

Pays for itself

chat · claude-sonnet-4.5 · 412,000 calls/mo

Cost

$14.0K

Revenue

$54.0K

Margin

$40.0K

Semantic search

Pays for itself

search · embedding + pinecone · 1,840,000 calls/mo

Cost

$1.5K

Revenue

$78.0K

Margin

$76.5K

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The math (transparent on purpose)

Cost = avg_cost_per_call × monthly_calls. Editable per row; nothing hidden.

Revenue share = (ARR / 12) × usage_share_of_arr_pct. Your honest estimate of how much subscription revenue this feature drives. Use heuristics (engagement %, time-spent, perceived value); refine as you learn.

Verdict: ROI ≥ 200% pays for itself, ≥ 25% profitable, ±25% break-even, otherwise costs more than it earns.

Why we built this: every AI SaaS founder we talk to has the same blind spot — they ship 4-8 AI features and have zero per-feature unit economics. Datadog has APM-level traces for this but it's an enterprise sale. We give you 80% of the answer in 5 minutes, free.

AI Profitability FAQ

Still have questions? Email hello@cartieai.com — replies within 4 business hours.

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