Sierra AI does not publish a price list: it sells on outcome-based pricing, where you pay when its agent achieves an agreed outcome such as a resolved conversation or a saved cancellation, and the rate is set in a custom enterprise contract. If you need a number before a sales call, six alternatives publish more of their pricing model, and three of them, Lorikeet, Fin (now part of Salesforce) and Zendesk, publish an actual per-resolution or per-outcome rate. This guide, checked against each vendor's own pages in November 2026, explains what drives Sierra's cost and compares the alternatives.

Key takeaways

• Sierra prices by outcome and does not list rates; Sierra has no pricing page (sierra.ai/pricing returns a 404), so every quote comes through sales.

• Published per-resolution rates exist elsewhere: Lorikeet $0.99 (Start) or $0.90 (Scale) per chat, email or SMS resolution on top of a $2,100 or $5,100 monthly plan fee (billed annually), Fin $0.99 per outcome, Zendesk US$2.00 per pay-as-you-go automated resolution.

• Per-resolution prices are only comparable once you add plan, seat or minimum fees and check what counts as a resolution, including whether handoffs to a person are billed.

• Choose by fit first: Sierra targets large enterprises, Agentforce suits Salesforce-standardised teams, Fin and Zendesk suit their own helpdesks, and Lorikeet focuses on complex and regulated support.

What does Sierra AI cost?

Sierra's cost is a negotiated outcome-based rate, not a public price. Sierra says it pioneered outcome-based pricing, a model where you pay only when the software achieves specific, valuable outcomes (Sierra product page). Its pricing explainer lists the outcomes it can charge for: a resolved support conversation, a saved cancellation, an upsell or a cross-sell. The same post acknowledges the usual buyer worries, including large invoices, unclear outcome criteria and paying for escalations, which are the terms to pin down in your contract.

Sierra was co-founded by Bret Taylor, previously Co-CEO of Salesforce, and Clay Bavor, who led Google Labs (Sierra about page). It says 40% of the Fortune 50 partner with it, that its agents work across voice, chat, email and WhatsApp in 59 languages, and that teams can deploy in weeks with an expert agent development team (Sierra product page). That enterprise, partner-led model is part of what you are pricing: a deployment team as well as software. Sierra also offers both a developer Agent SDK and a no-code Agent Studio. Sierra also lists a broad compliance set on its trust page, including SOC 2, HIPAA, PCI DSS Level 1 Service Provider, FedRAMP High, ISO 27001 and ISO 42001, and offers Simulations and Voice Sims for testing agents before launch.

What to ask Sierra for in a quote

• The exact definition of each billable outcome, and whether escalations, reopened conversations and abandoned chats are billed.

• Any minimum commitment, platform fee or professional services fee on top of the outcome rate.

• The projected outcome rate per month at your volume, so you can compare it with published per-resolution prices.

How we chose and checked these tools

We included vendors that buyers commonly evaluate alongside Sierra for AI agents that resolve customer conversations, and that publish enough about their pricing model to compare. Every vendor fact below was checked on the vendor's own public pages and is linked at the point of use. Lorikeet publishes this guide and is one of the platforms compared. We checked competitor details on their own websites in November 2026; if something has changed, tell us and we will update the page. We have tried to describe every product, including our own, using only what each vendor publishes, and we link to the source for each claim.

Sierra AI alternatives compared

1. Lorikeet: published per-resolution pricing for complex and regulated support

Lorikeet is an AI customer support platform for complex and regulated businesses, with every rate published on its pricing page. Its agent resolves issues end to end across chat, email, voice, SMS and WhatsApp, working inside the helpdesk you already run (Zendesk, Intercom, Salesforce, HubSpot, Front and others) and taking action through your APIs, webhooks and MCP servers. Sensitive steps such as payments and identity checks run as deterministic code the agent can invoke but never alter.

Pricing: Lorikeet publishes its pricing: the Start plan is $2,100 a month and Scale is $5,100 a month (both billed annually), with resolved chat, email and SMS conversations at $0.99 (Start) or $0.90 (Scale) and voice at $1.50 or $1.20. Unresolved tickets and handoffs to a person are not charged. Signature is custom, with a $75K platform fee. Full details are on the pricing page. Both plans include a forward-deployed support package, and under the Quality Guarantee a resolution you rate bad is not charged. There is a 30-day free trial, and time to first live ticket is as little as hours, with an average under 29 days.

Best for: fintech, healthtech and other regulated teams that want to model cost before talking to sales. UK car finance lender Carmoola, for example, resolves 60% of inbound conversations end to end.

Limits: the plans carry an annual fee, so at low volumes the all-in cost per resolution sits above the headline rate, and voice is available in the US, UK and Australia. Lorikeet is not a helpdesk, so you keep and pay for your own ticketing system. Setup also takes more work than switching on an FAQ bot, because workflows, guardrails and simulations are configured per use case.

2. Fin (now part of Salesforce): a flat published per-outcome rate

Fin publishes a flat $0.99 per outcome and lets you start without a sales call. Salesforce completed its acquisition of Fin, formerly Intercom, on 10 September 2026, and says Fin serves more than 30,000 companies across live chat, email, WhatsApp, SMS, voice and Slack.

Pricing on the Fin pricing page: $0.99 per outcome, a 50-outcome monthly minimum on an existing helpdesk, no seat costs and no setup or integration fees. You are charged at most once per conversation, and if the conversation is reopened the outcome is refunded. An outcome includes Fin completing a workflow (a Procedure), including handoffs. Fin Voice is available through sales, with custom pricing for select customers. There is a 14-day free trial with no credit card.

Best for: teams on Intercom, or on Zendesk, Salesforce and other helpdesks Fin supports, that want a fast start and a simple unit price.

Limits: Fin works best on the Intercom helpdesk, by its own description, and handoffs that run through a Procedure count as billable outcomes, so model your expected handoff volume.

3. Decagon: per-conversation or per-resolution, by contract

Decagon offers both per-conversation and per-resolution pricing but does not publish rates. In its pricing post, Decagon describes per-conversation pricing as a fixed rate for every incoming conversation, and per-resolution pricing as a higher fixed rate for each fully resolved conversation with no charge for escalations. It says the majority of its customers choose per-conversation pricing because it is predictable.

Product: Decagon unifies chat, voice and email in one layer (Decagon product overview). Non-technical teams build agent logic in natural language with Agent Operating Procedures (AOPs), and its Duet assistant analyses conversations to generate, test and refine them. It offers simulated conversations, unit testing, versioning and A/B tests, plus always-on monitoring and QA against custom criteria.

Best for: large consumer brands that want a choice of pricing model and strong iteration tooling.

Limits: no public rates or self-serve trial, so like Sierra every number comes through sales. Ask how a "resolution" is defined if you choose that model.

4. Salesforce Agentforce: consumption pricing inside Salesforce

Agentforce is priced on consumption, either Flex Credits or per conversation, or by per-user licence, according to the Agentforce pricing page. Salesforce says conversation pricing is optimised for external customer-facing agents, while Flex Credits scale across any Agentforce use case, and its worked examples show agents authenticating customers by email, retrieving orders and updating reservations, including by voice. One of its own worked examples prices 300 Agentforce Voice calls a month, at 120 Flex Credits per call, at $180 a month.

Best for: organisations already standardised on Salesforce, where the agent can act on CRM data and existing workflows, and where procurement already runs through a Salesforce contract. With Fin now inside Salesforce, Salesforce offers both a fast-to-deploy agent and a deeply customisable platform.

Limits: the value depends on how much of your customer data and process already sits in Salesforce. Model credits or conversations against your expected volume, and add the edition licences you need.

5. Zendesk AI agents: per automated resolution on top of seats

Zendesk includes AI agents in every Suite and Support plan and bills per automated resolution, with pay-as-you-go resolutions at US$2.00, according to the Zendesk pricing page. An automated resolution is a customer request resolved by the AI agent without any escalation to a human agent. Plans include an allowance of 5 to 10 automated resolutions per agent each month, depending on the plan, and committed volumes are priced lower than pay-as-you-go. Intelligent triage, which classifies every ticket for routing and reporting, is listed as an add-on.

The base subscription is seat-based, per agent per month, and Zendesk also offers Forethought AI agents, which it describes as handling more complex workflows across channels and environments.

Best for: teams already running Zendesk who want AI agents on the same contract and in the same workspace.

Limits: you pay for seats as well as resolutions, and the AI agent is tied to Zendesk's platform, so compare the all-in cost with a layer that works on your current helpdesk.

6. Kustomer: CRM-based service platform with published AI rates

Kustomer sells its seat plans through sales; it asks buyers to complete a two-minute assessment that estimates ROI and payback period, then builds exact pricing on a call (Kustomer pricing page). Kustomer notes those estimates are directional and not a binding agreement. The assessment asks for your industry, company size and monthly conversation volume, from under 1,000 to more than 250,000 a month. Its packages cover omnichannel messaging across chat, email, text, voice, Slack and online forms, business rules and workflows, reporting, and AI evaluations and conversation safeguards. It lists SOC 2, ISO 27001, ISO 27701, ISO/IEC 42001 and GDPR, and says Kustomer Voice and WhatsApp are priced pay as you go. Its pricing details page publishes the AI and usage rates: Concierge (AI agent) at $0.75 per engaged conversation, Envoy (AI for reps) at $50 per user a month, AI QA at $0.05 per execution, Kustomer Voice from $0.02 a minute and HIPAA compliance as a $25 per user a month add-on.

Best for: brands that want a CRM-style customer timeline and a helpdesk replacement with AI built in.

Limits: no published seat prices, and Kustomer notes that some configuration may require a statement of work and an implementation fee. Unlike an AI layer, it usually means moving off your current helpdesk.

Is Lorikeet the right fit?

Lorikeet is built for complex, regulated support: fintech, healthtech, insurance and telehealth teams where the AI has to take actions in backend systems safely and leave an audit trail. It is not the right choice for everyone:

• If you are a very large consumer brand that wants a heavily resourced vendor partnership with FedRAMP High on the compliance list, and budget and timeline favour a bespoke enterprise build, Sierra is the better fit.

• If you only need an FAQ widget for simple questions, a lighter tool will be cheaper and faster to switch on.

• If you handle a few hundred tickets a month, the Start plan (from $2,100 a month) will be more than you need.

• If you want AI that lives only inside Zendesk and is bought with your seats, Zendesk's own AI agents fit that.

How to choose a Sierra alternative

Start from your ticket mix and your constraints, then compare the all-in cost of the vendors that fit.

1. List your top 20 ticket types by volume and define what a successful resolution looks like for each.

2. Filter by constraints: helpdesk you must keep, channels (especially voice regions), and compliance such as HIPAA or audit trails.

3. Get the unit price and the definition of a billable resolution or outcome in writing, including how escalations and reopened conversations are treated.

4. Add plan, seat, minimum and implementation fees, and divide by projected resolutions to compare all-in cost per resolved ticket.

5. Test on your own historical tickets before go-live; for a deeper head-to-head, see our Lorikeet vs Sierra comparison for fintech and Sierra alternatives for fintech.

Want to model the cost on your own volume? Start a 30-day free trial or book a demo.