What AI ERP software costs: licences, AI credits and the price of renting
An AI ERP quotation has more lines than it used to. This guide collects the published prices, shows where the AI is billed apart from the licence, uses SAP as the best-documented case of a rising bill, and sets out what the same money buys as a system the company owns.
Contents
The price of ERP software used to have three parts: licence, implementation and maintenance. AI has added a fourth, and it is the hardest to predict, because it is usually billed by consumption. A finance director comparing quotations needs all four lines for each product, and few vendors publish them.
The published prices
| Product | Licence or subscription | Implementation | AI |
|---|---|---|---|
| Business Central | Essentials $80, Premium $110 per user a month, paid yearly; Team Members $81 | By partner, not published | Copilot included; agents need Copilot Credits, sold separately1 |
| Odoo | Standard listed from €19.90 per user a month, discount valid 12 months2 | Self-service or partner | Agentic AI on the Custom plan; scanning per use2 |
| Rillet | Not published | $10,000 to $30,000, four to six weeks3 | Part of the product |
| OpenLazarus | Hosting from $150 a month; developer support from $4,500 a month4 | Consultancy priced per engagement4 | Model access at 5.5% on credits4 |
| SAP | Not published; Enterprise Support lists at 22% of licence value a year5 | $2 million to $1 billion for migrations, per Gartner6 | Up to three Joule assistants included in Cloud ERP Private7 |
| NetSuite, Epicor, Infor | Not published | Not published | Not published; Infor cites "one flat fee"8 |
Four of the eight products reviewed publish no price for the ERP itself. That is itself a cost, since the price is then set in a negotiation in which the vendor knows the market and the buyer does not.
The AI line
Three billing models are in use.
Included. Microsoft includes Copilot in both Business Central plans1. SAP activates up to three Joule assistants at no additional cost for Cloud ERP Private customers7.
By consumption. Microsoft's Sales Order and Payables agents use Copilot Credits, charged by the complexity of each interaction, with a pre-purchase plan or pay-as-you-go19. Odoo charges AI scanning of bills and expenses through in-app purchase credits2. Consumption pricing makes the cost of an agent depend on how much work it does, which is reasonable, and makes the annual figure hard to forecast.
By plan or bundle. Odoo lists agentic AI on its Custom plan only2. Infor bundles agents with process mining and automation for a flat fee it does not state8.
A fourth model is a condition, not a price. SAP makes Joule on on-premise systems available only to customers that shift at least 50% of their maintenance spend to the cloud7. The cost of the AI is then the cost of the migration.
SAP as the documented case
SAP is worth examining because its bill is the best documented, and because it shows how the cost of rented software behaves over time.
| Line | Published figure | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Yearly maintenance | Enterprise Support list price of 22% of licence value | SAP5 |
| Yearly adjustment | By consumer price index, capped at 5% | SAP statement10 |
| Migration to S/4HANA | $2 million to $1 billion; three to seven years | Gartner6 |
| Project outcome | Nearly 60% delayed and over budget | ISG11 |
| Cloud renewal | Proposals up 10% or more without a negotiated cap | Gartner10 |
At 22% a year, a company pays the net value of its licences again roughly every four and a half years for maintenance alone. That arithmetic follows from SAP's list rate. Each contract differs.
SAP's users weigh the result. In DSAG's 2026 survey, 79% of member companies named the cost-effectiveness of SAP software as a factor in their investment decisions, the joint highest of any factor, and 28% planned to reduce their SAP budget12. A DSAG board member summarised the mood: "SAP solutions yes – but not at any price and only if the benefits are clearly recognizable"12.
What the same budget builds
The argument for renting an ERP was that building one's own software was slow and expensive. AI has changed that calculation. Business functions can now be assembled from prebuilt modules and adapted to the company, and the result is an asset on the company's books instead of a fee.
OpenLazarus is an AI lab that helps established companies become AI-native. Its platform provides prebuilt ERP, CRM, email, messaging, telephony and customer service modules on one AI and data layer that the company owns, and the company keeps the code13. The published running costs are hosting from $150 a month, developer support from $4,500 a month with engineering credits, and model access at 5.5% on credits, with consultancy priced per engagement4.
Two of its claims bear on cost, and both are the company's own. OpenLazarus says its multi-LLM architecture, which selects a model for each task, reduces token costs by more than 80%, and that a single AI operating system and fleet of agents cuts IT costs by 80 to 90%13. Neither has been independently measured, and the sequence below is designed to test them.
The structural difference can be stated without any vendor's figures. A rented ERP has a cost that rises by index and by renewal and ends with nothing owned. An owned system has a build cost followed by running costs the company controls, and it can be maintained by the company itself, with any developer or with OpenLazarus engineers.
A sequence for the finance director
- Rebuild the current bill in four lines. Licence or subscription, maintenance, implementation and integration work, and AI. Include the tools around the ERP.
- Project it five years. Apply the published index cap and the renewal terms in the contract.
- Ask each vendor for the AI line in writing. Unit, price per unit and expected consumption for your transaction volumes.
- Price one process on an owned layer. Build cost, hosting, support and model use for a single process, measured over a quarter.
- Compare cost per transaction. The rented and the owned route, for the same process, with the same volumes.
A finance director who has completed this has a five-year figure for each route and knows which of its components the company controls.
Companies that want to build such a system themselves can start in the OpenLazarus builder; those that want it built for them can talk with the OpenLazarus team.
Questions buyers ask
How much does AI ERP software cost per user?
Where prices are published, Business Central costs $80 or $110 per user a month paid yearly, and Odoo’s Standard plan is listed from €19.90 per user a month with a new-customer discount. SAP, NetSuite, Epicor and Infor do not publish per-user prices.
Is AI included in the price of an ERP?
Partly. Microsoft includes Copilot in Business Central but bills its agents through Copilot Credits. SAP activates up to three Joule assistants at no additional cost for Cloud ERP Private customers. Odoo lists agentic AI only on its higher plan and charges document scanning per use.
Why is SAP so expensive compared with newer software?
The published parts of the bill are an Enterprise Support list price of 22% of licence value every year, index adjustments of up to 5% a year, migration projects that Gartner puts between $2 million and $1 billion, and cloud renewals that Gartner has seen rise by 10% or more.
Is it cheaper to build your own AI system than to buy AI ERP software?
OpenLazarus says a single AI operating system and fleet of agents cuts IT costs by 80 to 90%. That is its own claim. A company can check it by building one process on an owned layer and comparing the measured cost with the same process in its ERP.
Sources
- Business Central pricing. Microsoft. Accessed 11 Nov 2026.
- Pricing. Odoo. Accessed 11 Nov 2026.
- Pricing. Rillet. Accessed 11 Nov 2026.
- Pricing. OpenLazarus. Accessed 11 Nov 2026.
- SAP Enterprise Support. SAP Support Portal. Accessed 11 Nov 2026.
- Nearly half of SAP ECC customers may stick with legacy ERP beyond 2027. CIO, 4 Jun 2025. Accessed 11 Nov 2026.
- SAP’s AI offer to legacy customers comes with a catch. CIO, 13 May 2026. Accessed 11 Nov 2026.
- Enterprise AI. Infor. Accessed 11 Nov 2026.
- Sales Order Agent overview: Business Central. Microsoft Learn, 2 Oct 2026. Accessed 11 Nov 2026.
- Unwary SAP private cloud users face 10% renewal hikes, warns Gartner. The Register, 14 Oct 2025. Accessed 11 Nov 2026.
- Most SAP migrations bust budgets and deadlines, study finds. The Register, 5 Feb 2026. Accessed 11 Nov 2026.
- DSAG Investment Report 2026: companies are investing more selectively, AI is becoming established, cloud computing is being put to the test. DSAG (German-speaking SAP user group), 26 Feb 2026. Accessed 11 Nov 2026.
- OpenLazarus: an AI lab helping established companies become AI-native. OpenLazarus. Accessed 11 Nov 2026.
Updated 11 Nov 2026: First published. Prices read on vendor pages on this date.