On May 15th, 2025, Salesforce announced a new flexible pricing model for Agentforce – designed to accelerate the adoption of AI agents across businesses. How? By directly aligning cost with business value delivered. But what does this change really mean in practice? After reviewing the key updates, here’s what you need to know.
What’s New in Agentforce’s Licensing?
Since Dreamforce 2024, one of the most frequently cited sticking points for adopting Agentforce has been its starting price of $2 per conversation. Moreover, at TDX 2025, Salesforce acknowledged businesses need greater flexibility in how they deploy their licensing spend – especially in this ever changing AI-powered CRM landscape. This has been viewed as a blocker, slowing the adoption of Salesforce’s latest features (e.g. see Agentforce in Summer ’25). This week’s announcements seek to tackle these concerns.
Flex Credits: A new unit of payment
Arguably the most significant change is the introduction of Flex Credits, which are available now. Like conversation-based billing, this is a consumption-based pricing model. However, unlike the flat-rate conversation model ($2 / €2 / £1.60 per conversation), Flex Credits are packaged in bundles of 100,000 credits. Each standard or custom action performed by an agent consumes credits from your allocation – 20 per action in Production, 16 in Sandboxes. For example, if you use an Agentforce agent to resolve a support case, it may involve multiple actions, each consuming credits.
Table 1: List prices for Flex Credits (per 100k credits). For more information, refer to Agentforce Pricing. Pricing subject to change. 100,000 credits are provided for customers with Enterprise Edition or above with Salesforce Foundations.
| Flex Credits Included | No. Flex Credits consumed per action | Price (USD) per 100k credits | Price (GBP) per 100k credits | Price (EUR) per 100k credits |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 100,000 | 20 | $500 | £400 | €500 |
The Flex Credit model is also supported by enhancements to Digital Wallet; providing greater insights into how and where credits are used. These changes not only lower the financial hurdle for exploring Agentic AI solutions, but directly align cost with outcomes. Depending on the use case, this makes it easier for businesses to trial Agentforce with a smaller investment, before scaling with confidence.
When to use Conversations vs Flex Credits
You may be wondering when to use the Conversation model vs Flex Credits. According to Salesforce’s guidance:
Flex Credits offer the most flexibility and scalability. Conversations offer flat-pricing, while Flex Credits align cost to value. Conversations are optimized mainly for external facing customer agents, while Flex Credits scale across any Agentforce use case. While Conversation consumption will be viewable in Digital Wallet, Flex Credits in Digital Wallet will offer more granular usage data for the greatest insight and transparency. Speak with your Account Executive to learn more about what model might work best for your business and use case.
In short:
- Conversation pricing is optimised for customer-facing agents as this helps to ensure predictability in usage.
- Flex credits are better suited for a wider range of use cases and potentially where more granular reporting is beneficial.
When deciding between the two, consider:
- How complex is the Agent’s proposed workflow? If a conversation involves many actions (as may be the case in customer facing scenarios), the flat-rate conversation may be more pragmatic.
- How many tokens are being processed per action? Be mindful that, with Flex Credits, both Standard and Custom Actions consume 20 Flex Credits in Production (16 in sandboxes). If the token count of the action exceeds 10,000, more credits are consumed (e.g. if an action includes 20,001 tokens it consumes three Flex Credits).
Ultimately, the choice of Conversation vs Flex Credits depends on your use case, expected volumes, complexity and how you intend to deploy agents across your build.
Other Considerations to Keep in Mind:
Here are some additional points to note:
- You can only use one pricing model per org. Currently, you cannot use both Conversations and Flex Credit models simultaneously. You can switch between them by updating your Agentforce SKU (speak with your Salesforce Account Team).
- Consider ancillary costs. Depending on your use case, consider additional charges such as Einstein Requests, Data Cloud credits, etc.
- Flex Credits and Conversations expire. Both Flex Credits and Conversations cannot be carried forward into future contractual terms.
If you’re looking to estimate your usage and ROI, consider using the Agentforce AI Agents ROI calculator. This tool allows you to model estimated consumption across a range of agent types (e.g. Service, Sales Coach, Sales Development Representatives and Scheduling). However, keep in mind this does not consider additional costs, such as Data Cloud.
Flex Agreement: Adjust your licensing with confidence
Salesforce recognises that in today’s dynamic AI environment, businesses need the ability to pivot quickly and reallocate expenditure. Enter Flex Agreements – a new licensing approach that allows organisations to convert user licenses into Flex Credits and vice versa. This enables teams to shift investment between employee licensing and digital agents, without being locked into a single model.
Agentforce User licenses and Add-ons: Semi-variable pricing?
This announcement also introduced Agentforce User Licenses and add-ons, offering unlimited internal (employee-facing) usage through a per-user-per-month pricing (PUPM) model. This is expected to become available later in Summer 2025.
Depending on the final unit price and commercial terms, this could represent a significant opportunity. By adopting a PUPM structure for internal Agentforce usage, organisations can budget more predictably – much like traditional user-based licensing. This reduces the potential budgeting risks and enables teams to maximise ROI on purchased licenses.
That said, it is not yet clear whether this model will be fully fixed or semi-variable. Depending on license coverage and specific use cases, additional charges may still apply – for instance, Einstein Requests, Data Cloud usage, etc. All the same, it is a development worth watching closely!
Bottom line – How Significant Is This Announcement?
These changes represent a meaningful shift in how businesses can adopt and scale Agentforce. For organisations considering AI agents, key challenges often include org readiness, data availability and the ability to forecast and budget effectively. The announcements lower the barrier to entry on the latter.
With the ability to purchase flexibly and obtain more granular reporting in the Digital Wallet to help measure costs vs benefits, teams can iterate, experiment and evaluate the impact of their Agentforce initiatives more confidently, whilst being agile.
That said, it is still crucial to critically assess which pricing model is the best fit; especially as the upcoming employee-facing PUPM model introduces another route to consider.
Overall, these are helpful announcements, which offer more opportunities. Be sure to engage your Salesforce Account Team to explore these routes and gauge which strategy offers the best value for your business.
Summary: Aligning Investment with Value
With the introduction of Flex Credits, Flex Agreements and the upcoming (internal) User License options, there are more options to align expenditure / cost with value derived efficiently. Whether you’re starting to explore Agentforce, or looking to scale, these announcements help teams test, learn and adapt. As always, be sure to evaluate the options carefully to gauge which option best aligns with your organisation’s needs. Ensure you engage your Salesforce Account Team to help select the best fit for your current and upcoming needs.
Until next time, thanks for reading! 
Bonus Penguin Fact 🐧
When you think of penguins, you most likely do not think of volcanic islands or living near the equator! Galápagos penguins (Spheniscus mendiculus) live on the Galápagos islands of Ecuador. Due to their environment, these hardy penguins nest in shady crevices and lava tunnels from former volcanic activity. Learn more here!
Want More?
Found this article useful? Why not share!
Or check out some of our other articles: