Solo

Agency Tax Calculator

What is your marketing actually costing you?

Enter your current marketing setup. We'll calculate the hidden tax you're paying over the AI-native cost floor — and show you exactly what Solo costs instead.

Benchmarks: The Minimum Cost of Marketing (Peng, 2026) · WebFX · Constant Contact · ProfileTree

🔒 Your answers stay on your device.

Your current marketing model

Agency RetainerPaying a monthly retainer

In-House TeamStaff on payroll

Founder-DIYYou do it yourself

Monthly agency retainer

Industry range: $2,500–$12,000/mo (WebFX, 2026)

$5,000 / mo

$2,500$12,000

Marketing staff headcount

Full-time employees dedicated to marketing

3 people

1 person10 people

Average annual salary (fully-loaded)

Include benefits, taxes, tools (~1.3× base)

$85,000 / yr

$50K$150K

Hours per week on marketing

Time creating content, managing ads, strategy, etc.

10 hrs / wk

1 hr30 hrs

Your hourly value

What an hour of your time is worth as a CEO/founder

$150 / hr

$50$300

Industry (optional)

Helps contextualize benchmarks

Your Agency Tax Report

Current annual spend

—

What you're spending today

Annual Agency Tax

—

37% AI cost reduction¹

3-Year Tax (compounding)

—

Yr1 37% · Yr2 45% · Yr3 55%

What Solo costs instead

$3K–$12K

Per year — full AI-native stack

Reality check

A full AI-native marketing stack runs $3,000–$12,000/year vs. — for a comparable human model. That's a 95–98% cost reduction — same output, machine velocity. (PrometAI, 2026)³

Show the math & data sources →

73%

of SMBs aren't sure their marketing is actually working

Constant Contact, 2025⁴

$2.5–12K

per month for a standard agency retainer — $30K–$144K annually

WebFX, 2026⁵

+39%

revenue uplift reported alongside 37% marketing cost reduction from AI adoption

ProfileTree / SalesGroup AI, 2025¹

See exactly where your money's leaking

Book a free Solo Growth Audit — we'll map the specific gaps, show you the AI-native alternative, and hand you a ready-to-run plan.

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Sources & methodology

37% cost reduction / 39% revenue uplift: ProfileTree citing SalesGroup AI research on AI marketing adoption. "AI in Marketing Statistics 2025." profiletree.com · salesgroupai.com. 2025. The 37% is applied as a conservative floor for Year 1 AI-native savings; Years 2–3 reflect documented compounding stack efficiency (45% / 55%).
80% content-time reduction: SalesGroup AI. "AI Marketing Time Savings." salesgroupai.com. 2025. Applied to content creation, social scheduling, and ad copywriting tasks within founder-led and in-house models.
$3,000–$12,000/yr AI stack / 95–98% cost reduction: PrometAI. "AI Marketing Cost Analysis." prometai.app. 2026. Full AI-native stack includes: AI content platform, scheduling, analytics, ad creative generation, and light automation.
73% unsure marketing is working: Constant Contact. "Small Business Marketing Report." constantcontact.com. 2025.
Agency retainer range $2,500–$12,000/mo: WebFX. "How Much Does Digital Marketing Cost?" webfx.com. 2026. Range reflects typical SMB retainers; enterprise and specialist agencies can exceed $25K/mo.
Conceptual framework — The Minimum Cost of Marketing: Peng, Tianlu. "The Minimum Cost of Marketing." SSRN Working Paper. March 2026. Establishes the theoretical floor for AI-native marketing delivery and the structural gap vs. legacy agency models. ssrn.com.
36.2M SMBs / solopreneur surge: U.S. Small Business Administration. "Small Business Facts." sba.gov. 2024–25. Used for market sizing context.

Benchmarks from The Minimum Cost of Marketing (Peng, 2026) + WebFX, Constant Contact, McKinsey, ProfileTree, PrometAI.