Enterprises may soon be paying as much for their developers’ AI token usage as they do for their salaries.
According to Gartner, these costs will meet, or even exceed, the typical software engineer’s monthly salary within the next two years.
This is not only because developers are increasingly adopting generative AI and agentic tools, it reflects a trend toward consumption-based licensing models as vendors balance infrastructure investments with profitability. Rather than the flat per-seat SaaS model of the past, enterprises now pay for developer token use as well.
Gartner senior principal analyst Nitish Tyagi explained that it’s important to note that Gartner’s prediction is based on a global average salary of $2,000 per month; it doesn’t mean AI token usage will exceed all salaries. For instance, in the US, yearly pay rates can be six digits or more.
However, that kind of spend is not out of the realm of possibility, Tyagi emphasized. “I have heard scary numbers like ‘My developer consumed $20K last month,’ or ‘A business user consumed $32K’.”
