What Notion Custom Agents really cost: credits, limits and a worked month
Notion Custom Agents run on credits at $10 per 1,000 a month. We model a real month for an 8-person team and show where the bill comes from.
On this page
Notion Custom Agents need a Business or Enterprise plan and run on credits. As of October 2026, each member on those plans gets 500 Select credits a month, and a Custom Agent spends its owner's Select credits first. After that it needs Notion credits, which cost $10 per 1,000 a month (or $13 per 1,000 bought annually). When both run out, the agent pauses.
So the real price is the seat price plus a usage line that depends on how often your agents run, how hard each job is and which model does the work. Below is how the credit system works after Notion's October change, a worked month for a small team, and the questions to answer before you switch agents on.
How Notion's credit system works as of October 2026
Notion rebuilt its AI credits this autumn. According to its help centre, new Business and Enterprise workspaces moved to the new system on 19 October 2026, and existing workspaces move on 2 November 2026. There are now three kinds of credit:
| Credit type | Where it comes from | What it pays for | Included |
|---|---|---|---|
| Standard | Each Business or Enterprise seat | Work where Notion picks the model (Auto), such as Notion Agent chat, writing, AI blocks | 1,500 per member a month |
| Select | Each Business or Enterprise seat | Work where you pick the model, and Custom Agents you set up | 500 per member a month |
| Notion credits | Bought by an admin for the workspace | Usage past Standard or Select, high-consumption models, workspace-funded Custom Agents, agents run through the API or a connected app | None; $10 per 1,000 monthly or $13 per 1,000 annual |
A few rules matter more than the table suggests:
- Standard and Select credits are per person. They cannot be pooled, moved between members or swapped for each other. They reset monthly and do not roll over.
- A shared Custom Agent spends its owner's credits. If you build a triage agent that the whole team uses, every run comes out of your 500 Select credits by default. An admin can switch the agent to a workspace budget instead.
- Agents pause when the money stops. If the owner's Select credits are gone and no Notion credits are available, the agent stops until the next reset or until an admin adds credits. Admins get alerts at 80% and 100% of Notion credit usage.
- Agents created before 2 November 2026 keep drawing from shared workspace credits, so older setups behave differently from new ones.
- Downgrading switches agents off. On Free or Plus, existing Custom Agents are turned off (not deleted).
The Notion pricing page sums this up as "free to try, then $10 per 1,000 monthly Notion credits", and lists Business at $20 per member a month, with up to 20% off for yearly billing.
How many credits does one agent run use?
Notion does not publish a price per run, because a run's cost depends on the task and its context. It does publish estimates per task, and the spread between models is the most important number in this post:
| Task size | Examples Notion gives | Credits on Auto | Credits on a frontier model (Opus 5.5) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Simple | Polish an email, translate a message | about 5 | about 50 |
| Medium | Write a work report, triage support requests | about 10 | about 85 |
| Complex | Manage job applications, maintain CRM follow-ups | about 25 | about 150 |
The same job can cost six to ten times more depending on the model. Notion says Auto can make credits go "up to 10 times further" than picking a top model. If you build agents, the model setting is a budget decision, not only a quality one.
A worked month for an eight-person team
Here is a month we modelled for a team our size: eight people on Notion Business, three Custom Agents, 22 working days. The numbers use Notion's own per-task estimates; your real usage will differ, which is exactly the point.
| Agent | What it does | Runs a month | Task size | Credits on Auto | Credits on a frontier model |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Request triage | Sorts and labels incoming requests, 30 a day | 660 | Medium | 6,600 | 56,100 |
| Sales follow-ups | Updates CRM rows and drafts follow-ups, 10 a day | 220 | Complex | 5,500 | 33,000 |
| Friday report | Writes the weekly status report | 4 | Complex | 100 | 600 |
| Total | 884 | 12,200 | 89,700 |
Now the bill:
- Seats. Eight members at Notion's listed $20 is $160 a month.
- Included credits. If one person owns all three agents, only their 500 Select credits apply. If three people own one agent each, 1,500 apply. Credits held by the other members cannot be moved to the agents.
- Notion credits for the rest. On Auto, roughly 11,100 to 11,700 credits are left over, about $111 to $117 a month at $10 per 1,000. On a frontier model, roughly 88,200 to 89,200 credits, about $882 to $892 a month.
- Total. Between about $270 and $1,050 a month for the same eight people, depending almost entirely on the model setting and run volume.
Two things stand out. First, the AI line can be smaller or several times larger than the seat line, and it moves with work volume rather than headcount. Second, monthly Notion credits reset and do not carry over, so you either buy for your busiest month or accept that agents may pause late in the month.
Where Custom Agent bills grow without anyone noticing
From running agents in our own workspace, these are the patterns that move the bill:
- Triggers that fire too often. An agent that runs on every new database row will run on rows nobody needed handled. Filter before the agent, not inside it.
- Long context. Notion notes that the same task in a long, complex thread uses more credits. Agents that read whole databases cost more than agents that read one page.
- Popular shared agents. Because a shared agent spends its owner's credits, the person who built the most useful agent is the one who runs out first.
- Agents called from outside. Running a Notion agent through the API or a connected app uses Notion credits, not the included Select credits.
- Meeting notes. From 1 December 2026, AI Meeting Notes draws on Standard credits, about 10 per one-hour meeting by Notion's estimate. That does not touch Select credits, but it is a second meter to watch.
How to keep Notion agent costs predictable
- Write down each agent's job and trigger before you build it, with an expected number of runs a week.
- Leave the model on Auto unless a task fails on it, and test that claim on ten real examples.
- Set a spending cap per agent. Notion lets owners cap each agent so one cannot use all their credits.
- Fund team-wide agents from a workspace budget, not from one person's Select credits.
- Check Settings → Notion AI → Usage weekly for the first month and compare it with your estimate.
- Decide what happens at zero. If a paused agent would block real work, buy a buffer; if not, let it pause.
The alternative: an agent included in a flat plan
Usage-priced agents are not wrong. They are flexible, and for a team running many small automations inside Notion they may be the best fit. But if you want a predictable monthly bill, it is worth comparing with tools where the agent comes with the plan.
Atrix AI, which we build and run our own company on, is one such option. Builder is $39 a month for 5 seats with 100 agent runs; Studio is $149 a month for 15 seats with 500 runs; yearly billing is 20% off. Chatting with the agent does not use a run, a run that fails before producing anything is given back, and runs reset on the first of the month. The AI agent does project jobs: a Develop run turns a brief into requirements, architecture and planned issues; a Market run produces a go-to-market plan.
Its limits, stated plainly:
- It is not a general builder for standing, trigger-driven agents the way Notion's Custom Agents are. It runs defined jobs.
- There are no top-up packs. When the month's runs are used, you wait for the reset or move up a plan.
- There is no free plan. The 7-day trial needs a card.
- Notion's template and integration ecosystem is far larger, and Atrix imports pages only from Markdown, Word and Excel.
For chores outside those jobs, many teams connect Claude or ChatGPT to Atrix through its MCP server, with scoped access. Those AI calls are billed by your AI client subscription, not by Atrix. Our side-by-side comparison with Notion covers docs, databases and pricing in more detail.
FAQ
How much do Notion Custom Agents cost?
As of October 2026, Custom Agents need Notion Business ($20 per member a month on the pricing page) or Enterprise. Each member gets 500 Select credits a month, which an agent they own uses first. Beyond that, Notion credits cost $10 per 1,000 a month, or $13 per 1,000 bought annually.
What happens when Notion credits run out?
The agent pauses. It resumes when the owner's Select credits reset at the start of the billing cycle, or when an admin adds Notion credits or funds the agent from a workspace budget. Admins are alerted at 80% and 100% of usage.
Can I use Custom Agents on Notion Plus?
No. Notion credits are only available on Business and Enterprise. If you downgrade to Free or Plus, existing Custom Agents are switched off but not deleted.
Do unused Notion credits roll over?
No. Standard and Select credits reset monthly. Monthly Notion credits reset each month, and annual Notion credits expire at renewal. None carry over.
How many credits does a Notion agent run use?
Notion's estimates are about 5, 10 and 25 credits for simple, medium and complex tasks on Auto, and about 50, 85 and 150 on Opus 5.5. Actual use depends on the task and how much context the agent reads.
Is there a cheaper way to run AI agents for a small team?
It depends on volume. For a few light agents, Notion's included Select credits may cover it. For heavy daily use, compare a plan with runs included, such as Atrix, and check the pricing page against your expected volume.
Next step
If you are weighing the two, start with our Notion comparison, then read how seat pricing and AI agents interact.
Sources
Checked on Notion's own pages on 27 October 2026: pricing, what are Notion credits, how AI credits work for Custom Agents, manage your AI credits, purchase Notion credits.