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Published vs quote-only

Agentforce vs Sierra Cost Comparison 2026

How does Agentforce's published $2 per conversation compare with Sierra's quote-only per-resolution model?

Headline answer

Agentforce wins on transparency: $2 per conversation is on the public price page and easy to forecast. Sierra wins on outcome alignment: pay only for a resolved case if you can land the right contract terms. Pick Agentforce if you need a defensible number for procurement today; engage Sierra if you can dedicate eight to ten weeks to a procurement cycle for outcome-based terms.

Side by side

Vendor page

Agentforce

Salesforce Agentforce: $2 per conversation, published on the vendor pricing page, plus Data Cloud grounding.

Where Agentforce wins

  • Defensible $2 per-conversation rate on a public page
  • Negotiable with Salesforce Sales / Service Cloud renewals
  • Foundations free for existing Salesforce customers
Agentforce pricing →
Vendor page

Sierra

Sierra AI: per-resolution, quote only. The vendor markets outcome-based pricing but publishes no rate. Any number must come from a sales conversation.

Where Sierra wins

  • Outcome alignment: pay for resolutions, not conversations
  • Specialist CX-agent vendor, not a CRM bolt-on
  • Dedicated forward-deployed engineer model
Sierra pricing →

Feature heatmap

Green = included on the cheapest published plan. Amber = partial or add-on. Red = not included. Grey = quote only, cannot confirm.

FeatureAgentforceSierra
Published rate✓✗
Outcome-based unit (resolution)✗✓
Bundled with existing CRM✓✗
Forward-deployed engineer included✗◐
Forecastable from public sources alone✓✗
Self-serve trial path✓✗

Resolution-rate sensitivity

Both vendors converge on cost-per-resolved-case if Sierra prices around $1 per resolution and Agentforce conversations end with a resolution roughly half the time (1 in 2 conversations = $4 per resolved case at $2 per conversation). Sierra wins economically when its per-resolution price is below 2x Agentforce's per-conversation price. We refuse to invent the Sierra number, so we cannot make this calculation public; do it inside your procurement sandbox with the Sierra quote.

Switching cost

Direct answer

If you are on the wrong one

Sierra contracts are typically annual minimum commits with outcome-defined SLAs. A Salesforce shop moving to Sierra needs a 90-day data-and-integration plan plus 8 to 10 weeks of procurement cycle. The reverse (Sierra to Agentforce) is rarely seen because Salesforce shops rarely start with Sierra.

Direct answer

How to validate before signing

Run a fixed test corpus across both vendors for at least 30 days, log per-interaction cost in both systems, and confirm the unit of billing (conversation, resolution, message, task) matches your accounting model before committing to an annual deal.

Verification date shown per vendor row