ServiceNow Now Assist vs Moveworks vs Aisera: Real Employee Support AI Cost per Resolved Request in 2026
The short answer: these three products do not bill the same thing, so "cost per resolved request" depends far more on how many requests each employee generates than on any list price. Moveworks bills on headcount, Aisera bills on user tiers negotiated through a sales process, and ServiceNow bills a tier uplift plus metered "assists" once a bundled pool runs out. In the model below, the per-employee license only breaks even against a human help desk when each employee files roughly four requests a month or more. The ServiceNow assist meter can look cheaper per resolution, but it hides an assumption that changes the answer completely: how many assists one resolution consumes.
Three vendors, three billing units
Moveworks is priced per employee, not per ticket. A Moveworks listing on AWS Marketplace was reported at $150 per user per year for 1,000–2,500 users on a 12-month contract (REPORTED). Buyers are licensed on total headcount, and usage inside that license is described as unlimited (REPORTED). Procurement data from Vendr puts the median Moveworks contract at about $130,000 a year across 31 purchases, ranging from roughly $89,500 to $271,333, with implementation reported at $50,000–$200,000 or more (REPORTED). ServiceNow completed its acquisition of Moveworks on December 15, 2025, and the product is sold both standalone and inside ServiceNow packages (REPORTED).
Aisera has no public price list. Its pricing page was reported as returning an error and every contract is sales-quoted (REPORTED). Two Azure Marketplace tiers were reported: $200,000 per year up to 1,000 users and $1.2 million per year up to 10,000 users (REPORTED). Vendr-based medians are reported between roughly $90,000 and $108,000 a year, and the two published figures disagree ($90,268 versus $108,225). Implementation was reported as adding 50–100% on top of the subscription (REPORTED). Above 10,000 users, no public rate was available (QUOTE-ONLY / UNKNOWN).
ServiceNow Now Assist changed shape in 2026. From April 9, 2026 it was reported as bundled into the Foundation, Advanced and Prime tiers with a finite pool of assists, after which top-up packs bill per unit (REPORTED). A list overage rate of $0.20 per assist was reported as a negotiating anchor, with settled rates of $0.02–$0.10 (REPORTED). Agentic executions were reported at 25, 50 or 150 assists each, which is $5, $10 or $30 per execution at the anchor rate (REPORTED). Before the bundling, the AI tiers were described as an uplift of roughly $72–$96 per fulfiller per month over a $120 base (REPORTED). ServiceNow's own quote for the enterprise deployment, implementation, knowledge ingestion and integrations was not public (QUOTE-ONLY / UNKNOWN).
The scenario model
All assumptions below are ILLUSTRATIVE and are meant to be replaced with your own numbers.
- Volumes: 1,000, 10,000 and 100,000 employee requests per month.
- One request per employee per month (so headcount equals monthly requests).
- 40% of requests are fully resolved by the AI (sensitivity: 20% and 60%).
- A human-handled request costs $8 fully loaded (sensitivity: $5 and $15).
- ServiceNow: one human fulfiller per 350 requests per month, and 25 assists per AI resolution.
Formula: cost per resolved request = annual AI cost ÷ (12 × requests per month × resolution rate).
Results at 40% resolution
| Monthly requests | Resolved per year | Moveworks license only | Moveworks incl. $50k–$200k implementation | Aisera license (marketplace tier) | Aisera incl. 50–100% implementation |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1,000 | 4,800 | $31.25 | $41.67–$72.92 | $41.67 | $62.50–$83.33 |
| 10,000 | 48,000 | $31.25 | $32.29–$35.42 | $25.00 | $37.50–$50.00 |
| 100,000 | 480,000 | $31.25 | $31.35–$31.67 | QUOTE-ONLY / UNKNOWN | QUOTE-ONLY / UNKNOWN |
Moveworks above 2,500 users is shown at the listed band rate only as a ceiling reference, because larger bands were not publicly priced (QUOTE-ONLY / UNKNOWN). The important pattern is that the Moveworks license-only figure never moves: $150 ÷ (12 × 0.4) = $31.25 at any volume, because the price follows headcount and the model ties requests to headcount. Aisera's implied rate falls from $200 to $120 per user between the two published tiers, which is why its per-resolution figure improves at 10,000 users.
For ServiceNow, only the AI increment is counted, since a company that already pays for human fulfillers pays the base seats regardless.
| Monthly requests | Fulfillers | Tier uplift per year | Uplift per resolved request | Total at $0.20 per assist | At $0.10 | At $0.02 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1,000 | 3 | $2,592–$3,456 | $0.54–$0.72 | $5.54–$5.72 | $3.04–$3.22 | $1.04–$1.22 |
| 10,000 | 29 | $25,056–$33,408 | $0.52–$0.70 | $5.52–$5.70 | $3.02–$3.20 | $1.02–$1.20 |
| 100,000 | 286 | $247,104–$329,472 | $0.51–$0.69 | $5.51–$5.69 | $3.01–$3.19 | $1.01–$1.19 |
These ServiceNow figures exclude implementation, knowledge ingestion and integrations, all of which were quote-only, and they exclude the assists included in the bundled pool, which lowers the real overage bill.
Break-even against a human help desk
The break-even resolution rate is annual AI cost ÷ (12 × requests × human cost per request). For Moveworks and other headcount-priced tools, the more useful version is the number of requests each employee must generate:
Break-even requests per employee per month = price per employee per year ÷ (12 × resolution rate × human cost per request)
| Resolution rate | Human cost $5 | Human cost $8 | Human cost $15 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 20% | 12.50 | 7.81 | 4.17 |
| 40% | 6.25 | 3.91 | 2.08 |
| 60% | 4.17 | 2.60 | 1.39 |
At the $150 listed rate, a company whose employees file about one request a month does not break even under any combination in this table. A company with heavy, repetitive requests (field workforces, shared-service centers, large retail employers) can. Nothing about the product changes between those two companies; only the request density does.
For ServiceNow, the break-even variable is assists per resolution. At $0.20 per assist and $8 per human-handled request, the AI stops saving money at about 37 assists per resolved request ((8 − 0.60) ÷ 0.20). At $0.10 the threshold is 74; at $0.02 it is 370. A "simple" agentic execution at 25 assists clears the bar at the anchor rate; a mid-tier execution at 50 assists does not.
Sensitivity: the assumptions that move the answer
1. Requests per employee. This alone can swing the Moveworks result from clearly unprofitable to clearly profitable (see the table above). 2. Assists per resolution. At $0.20, going from 25 to 50 assists moves ServiceNow from about $5.60 to about $10.60 per resolved request, above the $8 human cost. 3. Resolution rate. Halving it from 40% to 20% doubles every per-resolution figure in the tables. 4. Negotiated unit rate. A ServiceNow assist negotiated at $0.02 instead of $0.20 makes the meter almost irrelevant.
Budgeting traps
- Headcount licensing charges for employees who never file a request. Moveworks is billed on total headcount even though many employees may open one ticket a year or none (REPORTED).
- The assist pool is a budget, not an entitlement. Heavy IT teams were reported as depleting a bundled pool weeks before month-end (REPORTED).
- Overage rates are negotiated at renewal. A per-pack rate left out of the order form is set later by the vendor (REPORTED).
- Enterprise minimums hide in tiers. Aisera's published marketplace tiers start at $200,000 a year, which is above the entire annual human cost of a 1,000-request-a-month help desk at $8 per request ($96,000).
- Implementation is a separate line. Moveworks and Aisera were both reported with implementation costs of roughly 33–133% of the first-year license, depending on scope; ServiceNow's implementation cost was not public.
How to use this model
Replace the ILLUSTRATIVE inputs with your last twelve months of ticket data: requests per employee, share of tickets that are repeatable, and real loaded cost per human-handled ticket. Then ask each vendor for the same three quotes in writing: the price per employee or per resolution, the included pool and overage rate, and the implementation scope. A quote that cannot be expressed as cost per resolved request cannot be compared with the others.