94 / 108 · 03 Agentic Testing Architectures · Cost Analysis: Agent Testing Economics← prev⊞ allnext →☰ Read as one page
13.2Token Budget Planning
| Operation | Approximate Tokens | Cost (Claude Sonnet) |
|---|---|---|
| Observe page state (2000 chars) | ~600 input | $0.002 |
| Think/decide next action | ~200 output | $0.003 |
| Full ReAct step (observe+think+act) | ~1000 total | $0.005 |
| 30-step test execution | ~30K total | $0.15 |
| 100 tests per CI run | ~3M total | $15.00 |
| Daily CI (3 runs) | ~9M total | $45.00 |
| Monthly CI cost | ~270M total | $1,350.00 |
Comparison to traditional testing infrastructure:
| Cost Category | Traditional (Selenium Grid) | Agentic Testing |
|---|---|---|
| Infrastructure (servers/VMs) | $500-2000/month | $0 (API-based) |
| LLM API costs | $0 | $500-2000/month |
| Test maintenance labor | $3000-8000/month | $1000-3000/month |
| Total monthly cost | $3500-10000 | $1500-5000 |
The cost advantage of agentic testing comes primarily from reduced maintenance labor, not from cheaper infrastructure.