Pricing

The platform you adopt — pay for the builders, pay for the compute.

It's not SaaS. It's operational infrastructure.

A 10-person ops team costs you £400–£600K/year. Hotchilli automates 30–60% of that work for ~£15K/year.

Compute is metered like AWS. Seats are flat per builder. Nothing hidden, no bundles, no toggle gymnastics.

What the invoice looks like

Six lines. No mystery.

HOTCHILLI INVOICE — May 2026
Customer: Acme Engineering Ltd
─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────

SEATS                              4 builders × £99      £396.00

COMPUTE
  Standard runners                 86.4 hours × £0.40     £34.56
  Always-on small server           720 hours × £0.15     £108.00
                                                         ────────
                                                         £142.56

STORAGE AND DATABASE
  Application database (4.2 GB)    £0.30/GB               £1.26
  Object storage — active (18 GB)  £0.05/GB               £0.90
  Object storage — archive (12 GB) £0.01/GB               £0.12
  Egress (43 GB, free tier covers)                        £0.00
                                                         ────────
                                                           £2.28

AI INFERENCE
  Standard AI minutes              412 mins × £0.15      £61.80

TELEPHONY
  Inbound calls                    1,800 mins × £0.02    £36.00
  Outbound calls (UK)              540 mins × £0.03      £16.20
                                                         ────────
                                                         £52.20

PHONE NUMBERS
  UK geographic (3)                3 × £1                 £3.00

                                              ──────────────────
                                              TOTAL    £657.84
─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────

Compare to one credit controller fully loaded: ~£3,083/month.

Hotchilli is 21% of the cost — and runs 24/7.

Hosted
Run by us
£99
/builder / month
+ metered compute, AI, storage, telephony, numbers
  • All six builders
  • Unlimited users
  • AWS-rate compute (pass-through)
  • Email support
  • Cancel anytime
Start with the platform
Enterprise
Run by you
From £5,000
/month
+ setup from £15,000 (one-time)
  • Everything in Hosted
  • Your infrastructure
  • No Hotchilli compute charges
  • Air-gapped option
  • SLA-backed
Coffee?
Pro Support
Run with us
From £2,500
/month
Adds to either Hosted or Enterprise
  • Architect retainer
  • Quarterly reviews
  • 4-hour response SLA
  • Named contact
Coffee?
Why your AI bill stays small

Most AI platforms route every job through expensive LLM inference. Hotchilli doesn't.

The Parser walks each flow deterministically on CPU. AI agents are called only when a flow actually needs judgement — typically a small fraction of the work.

That's why a 200-staff business often pays under £100/month for AI inference, not the thousands competing platforms would bill for the same workload.

Usage rates

The metered lines, in full.

Compute (runners + servers, AWS pass-through)
Standard runner£0.40 / hour
High-memory runner£0.80 / hour
GPU runner£2.00 / hour
Always-on small£108 / month
Always-on medium£216 / month
AI inference (per minute, pass-through)
Standard AI minute15p
Premium AI minute30p
Storage & database
Application database (Postgres)£0.30 / GB / month
Object storage — active£0.05 / GB / month
Object storage — archive (90d cold)£0.01 / GB / month
Egress bandwidthFirst 100GB free, then £0.08 / GB
Telephony (Twilio + carriers, pass-through)
Inbound call2p / min
Outbound call (UK)3p / min
SMS (UK)4p
Phone numbers
UK geographic (01/02)£1 / month
UK non-geographic (03xx / 08xx)£3 / month
Worked examples

What customers actually spend.

Small operations team
10 staff · 4 builders
£486 / month
£5,832 / year
4 builder seats × £99£396
Compute (light)£40
AI inference (light)£30
Telephony (light)£20

One credit controller fully loaded ≈ £37K/year. Hotchilli at £5,832/year is 16% of that — and the team gets chasing, routing, dispatch and reminders all automated.

Mid-market business
200 staff · 8 builders
£1,392 / month
£16,704 / year
8 builder seats × £99£792
Compute (multiple always-on)£280
AI inference (moderate)£180
Telephony (modest)£140

A 10-person ops team costs £400K–£600K/year. Hotchilli at £16,704/year automates 30–60% of that work for 3–4% of the staff cost.

Enterprise (on-prem)
25 builders · your infra
£90,000 / year
from £15,000 setup
On-prem licence (annual)£60,000
Pro Support£30,000
Setup (one-time)£15,000

An FDE engagement is £500K–£4M. An in-house AI team is £1.5M+/year. Hotchilli at £90K/year delivers the same operational outcome.

Scope

Why is Hotchilli compute only for process automation?

Hotchilli is a platform for automating the work that office staff do — call routing, follow-up chases, document processing, agent responses, batch jobs. The compute is engineered for that specific shape of workload.

We don't sell general web hosting, container orchestration, or arbitrary VMs. If you need those, your AWS account is the right place. Hotchilli is the right place when the work you're automating is process work.

This focus is why the platform pricing is the way it is — predictable, transparent, and aligned with the value of the work being automated.

First-build session

Every new Hosted customer gets a free 60-minute first-build session.

One of our architects sits with you. We build your first automation together. Live in your business, end of the call.

Need help getting started? We do consulting too — hotchilli.ai →

FAQ

The questions people actually ask.