What AI Actually Costs a School: Our Pricing, Explained

The pilot went well. Teachers liked the tool, students used it, and the department head took the quote to the budget meeting. Then the questions started. What happens to the price when enrolment goes up next year? The quote says the AI is unlimited — so what is the fair-use limit, and what happens when we hit it? And IT already signed an enterprise agreement with an AI provider last spring: are we paying for that AI twice?

Nobody in the room could answer, so the decision slipped a term. That meeting happens in schools, colleges and training providers everywhere, and it is not the teachers' fault or the finance team's. It is the pricing's. We rebuilt ours so that every one of those questions has a short, plain answer.

The budget meeting nobody enjoys

Most AI tools for an LMS are priced in one of three ways, and each one causes a predictable problem:

• Per student. The bill grows every time enrolment does — so success costs you money, and a big intake becomes a budget problem.
• Bundled “unlimited” AI. Somebody pays for the AI, so “unlimited” always has a limit somewhere. It is just written in a fair-use clause instead of on the price page.
• Tiered plans. Five educators and twenty pay the same tier price, and the jump to the next tier lands at the worst possible moment.

And all three usually charge you for AI whether or not you run it through your own provider account. For an institution that already has an AI agreement it trusts, that is paying twice.

One plan: the Educator Seat

EduGears AI now has one plan for Moodle, Canvas and any other LTI 1.3 LMS: the Educator Seat, $1.67 per educator per month, billed annually ($19.99 per educator per year).

• You pay for educators, not students. An educator is anyone who creates or grades content. Learners are always free, on every plan, however many you enrol.
• Buy exactly the seats you need. One seat or a hundred. Add seats any time in the admin portal — the charge is prorated to your renewal date — and reduce them at renewal.
• Every tool is included. All 30 AI tools, from the Question generator and AI grading to the AI Tutor and Cog, on every seat.
• AI is priced separately, and plainly. Each seat comes with 100 AI credits to start, once. After that, AI runs on AI Credit Packs — $10 for 1,000 credits, which never expire — or on your own AI provider key.

Why price it this low? Because AI in education shouldn't be a privilege of the biggest budgets. Every teacher deserves these tools, and that is the whole point of this price: great teaching tools should be priced like a notebook, not a procurement project. We wrote more about that in Why we priced AI for every school.

What each AI task costs

Every AI task costs the same number of credits on every plan, and your admin portal shows the balance and a log of every AI call. At $10 for 1,000 credits, one credit is one cent.

The pattern is simple: the AI that is cheap to run costs a cent or three, and the AI that is genuinely expensive to run — images, video, reading a whole document — costs more, in proportion. Nothing is hidden inside a fair-use clause, and nobody's AI is quietly throttled.

A worked example: one department, one year

Take a science department with five educators and 400 students.

• Seats: 5 × $19.99 = $99.95 a year, about $8.33 a month. The 400 students cost nothing.
• Starting AI: five seats bring 500 AI credits. That is roughly 160 lesson plans, slide decks or question sets.
• One AI Credit Pack ($10) adds 1,000 credits: about 330 more generations, or 1,000 tutor messages, or 100 images, or a mix.

If each teacher builds two resources a week across a 40-week year, that is 400 generations, or 1,200 credits — about $12 of AI for the whole department, on top of $99.95 for the seats. Heavy use of the AI Tutor or AI grading moves that number, and the admin portal shows you exactly where it goes, call by call.

Already have an AI agreement? Bring your key

If your institution already pays an AI provider, connect that key under AI Providers in the admin portal — OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, DeepSeek or Sarvam. From then on AI runs on your provider account, under your own agreement with them, and no EduGears AI credits are used at all. The plan price stays the same; the AI line simply disappears from our side of the bill.

Bring-your-own-key works on every plan, the free plan included, so IT can test your key before anyone buys a seat. We wrote more about how it works, and why institutions ask for it, in Your AI, Your Key.

If you're already a customer

Nothing changes for you. If your institution is on one of our earlier paid plans, it keeps that plan, its price and its terms, and renews as it does today. Those plans are no longer sold to new customers, and moving to the Educator Seat is entirely optional.

Where to start

Start on the free plan. It includes every tool and 200 AI credits to evaluate them, with no credit card — the free plan is the trial. AI video needs a paid seat or your own key; everything else works. When you are ready, pick your number of seats in the admin portal.

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