Connecting AI to your ERP or CRM: what the vendor may charge you and how to avoid surprises

Connecting artificial intelligence to the software your company already uses — the ERP, the CRM, the invoicing program — is almost always a better idea than replacing it. The AI reads the documents, prepares the work and leaves it in your system for a person to review.

But there is a cost that hardly anyone asks about at the start, and it can turn up on the first invoice: what the vendor of your software charges for letting another system into it.

What is happening

For years, connecting two programs through their API — the door a program offers so others can read and write its data — was cheap or included in the licence. With the arrival of AI agents, many business software vendors have started to meter that access and charge for it separately.

An analysis published in September 2026 by SaaStr, one of the reference outlets in the software industry, puts figures on it with a specific case: on the API of a large CRM, extra capacity for integrations is sold today at about 83 dollars per million calls, while the rate proposed for AI agents would be between 5,000 and 100,000 dollars per million. The same operation on the same record, 60 to 1,200 times more expensive depending on whether a classic integration or an agent makes the call.

The same analysis describes other formulas already in use: credits consumed with each agent response, call allowances included in the plan with a surcharge above them, or more expensive API tiers replacing the cheap ones. Not every vendor does this, nor in the same way. But the trend is clear, and the sensible thing is to ask before signing anything.

Where the cost shows up

There are four usual places, and it is worth checking them all:

• API access. In some programs it is included; in others it is a separate module or only exists in the higher editions.
• The call limit. Almost every API has a daily or monthly cap. What matters is what happens when you exceed it: whether it blocks or charges.
• A licence for the integration. Some programs require the connection to use its own user, and that user is paid for like any other.
• A specific price for AI agents. This is the new part: charging differently depending on who makes the call. If it exists, ask for the price to be published and capped.

And a fifth that tends to be forgotten: renewal. Many of these conditions change when the contract is renewed, not halfway through.

Seven questions for your software vendor

Before commissioning the project, ask for written answers:

1. Is API access included in our licence or is it a separate module?
2. What call limit do we have, and what happens if we exceed it: does it block or charge?
3. Is there a different charge if the caller is an AI agent? If so, what is the published price and is there a monthly cap?
4. Does the integration need its own user licence?
5. Does the contract allow us to synchronise data to another system, for example to a read-only copy?
6. If the software is installed on our servers, is there an official connector or is the connection made through the database? Do we lose support if it is done the second way?
7. What changes in these conditions at the next renewal?

If the answer to any of them is "it depends" or "we will see", that is information too.

How to design it so you do not overpay

A good part of the cost does not depend on the AI but on how the connection is designed. These are the decisions that reduce it most:

• Read once and work on a copy. Data that changes little — catalogue, customers, history — is synchronised periodically to a read-only copy, and the AI works on that. Your software remains the system of record; the copy just avoids asking it the same thing a thousand times.
• Query live only what changes. Price, stock or balance are queried at the moment they are needed, not at every step of the conversation.
• Write only the confirmed result. The AI may go back and forth over an invoice or an order; only the final entry or order reaches your software, once a person has reviewed it.
• Do outside what does not need to be inside. Reading a PDF, comparing an invoice with an order or drafting a document does not require touching the ERP until the end.
• Measure it in the pilot. During the trial, the number of calls the system makes with your company's real documents is counted, and the monthly cost is calculated from that before going into production.

A note on the copy: it is not a migration. You do not change software or duplicate your management; it is a read-only copy that updates itself. But it is still your company's data in another place, so it must be hosted in the European Union, protected, and within what your vendor's contract allows: hence question 5.

Who pays for what

You pay the vendor for access to your software, within your licence. The developer of the AI application does not charge for it, which is why it is easy for nobody to mention it in the proposal.

A serious proposal should state how many calls the system will make to your software, how often, and what part of your licence it needs. If it does not, ask before signing.

If you want to see how we approach it on the software you already use, without migrating data: Automating invoicing and accounting with AI without changing software · Does AI integrate with my ERP? (in Spanish)

This article is informational. Tecnea develops AI applications that connect to third-party business software, so we have a commercial interest in the topic. We do not name vendors because conditions vary from one contract to another and what is useful is knowing what to ask. The seven questions work for evaluating any proposal, including ours.

Sources

• SaaStr, "Almost Every Pre-AI Vendor We Use Is Raising Prices for Agent Access. They May Be Building an Agentic Death Spiral" (28 September 2026): saastr.com