AI Agents Examples: 10 Agents Doing Real Work, With the Numbers Their Makers Published

Most lists of AI agents examples are twenty generic categories with no names, no numbers and no dates. This one is shorter and every example carries all three. We build agents for Indian businesses on n8n and the model vendors' own tools, so we care about what is in production, what it costs per outcome and what went wrong, including the most famous reversal. First a definition that holds up, then ten agents with the figures their makers published, then the two sections searchers actually want: agents for marketing and agents for a small business, with a monthly pilot cost.

Ten AI agents in production, at a glance

Workflow vs agent: Anthropic's definition

The clearest line comes from Anthropic's Building effective agents: workflows are systems where models and tools are orchestrated through predefined code paths; agents are systems where the model dynamically directs its own process and tool use. The same essay advises adding that flexibility only when it demonstrably improves outcomes. Most "agents" sold to small businesses are workflows with a model in one step, and that is often the right design.

Chatbot vs agent vs automation

Textbooks also list five classic agent types, from simple reflex to learning agents. They are useful in a computer science course and rarely useful when buying software, so this post sorts by what the agent does for a business instead.

AI agents examples in production, with numbers

Klarna's assistant, and the 2025 correction

Klarna's February 2024 press release reported 2.3 million conversations in the first month, two-thirds of all support chats, the equivalent work of 700 full-time agents, resolution time down from 11 minutes to under 2, and an estimated $40 million profit improvement for 2024. In May 2025 the CEO told Bloomberg that cost had been "a too predominant evaluation factor" and that Klarna was hiring humans again so a person is always available, while keeping the AI, as reported by Entrepreneur. Both halves belong in any honest example.

Intercom Fin: pay per resolved conversation

Fin charges $0.99 per outcome, where an outcome is a customer confirming resolution, asking for nothing more, or Fin completing a procedure including a handoff, charged once per conversation with no seats required, per Intercom's pricing. Intercom's own site claims an average 76 percent resolution rate across more than 12,000 customers and 2 million weekly resolutions; those are vendor figures. The pricing model is the lesson: you can size a pilot by conversations, not seats.

Salesforce Agentforce: metered by action

Agentforce sells Flex Credits at $500 per 100,000, with a standard action costing 20 credits (about $0.10) and a voice action 30, plus a quoted $2 per conversation and a $5 per user per month licence, per Salesforce's pricing page, which notes the figures are informational and subject to change. For a CRM-heavy sales team this is the agent that lives where the data already is.

Shopify Sidekick: bundled, not sold

Sidekick is included with every Shopify plan and takes roles such as designer, photo editor, writer, tech support and marketer, per Shopify Magic. Shopify's June 2026 enterprise post also reported AI-referred orders growing nearly 13x year over year in the first quarter of 2026. For a merchant the lesson is simpler: the agent arrived in the tool you already pay for.

Claude in underwriting at AIG

Anthropic's financial services announcement from July 2025 quotes AIG's CEO saying Claude let them compress the timeline to review business by more than 5x and raised accuracy from 75 percent to over 90 percent. A document-heavy, rules-heavy task with a human decision at the end is the shape most business agents should copy.

Ramp, Delivery Hero, and the browser agents

Evidently's case roundup records Ramp's merchant-matching agent resolving in under 10 seconds against hours before, and Delivery Hero's agent extracting 22 attribute types for its knowledge base. On the consumer side, Google's Project Mariner reached subscribers of the $249.99 a month AI Ultra plan with up to 10 tasks at once on cloud VMs, per TechCrunch, and OpenAI launched then reorganised its ChatGPT agent product; its help centre now points to newer tooling [unverified, pages blocked our fetch]. Browser agents are real, still changing monthly, and not yet something we would hand a client's accounts to.

AI agents for marketing and for small businesses

HubSpot Agent Hub and Zapier Agents for marketing

HubSpot's Agent Hub lists a Content Agent for blog posts, social content and landing pages in your brand voice, plus Prospecting, Customer, Data, Campaign, Nurture and Revenue agents, included in Starter, Professional and Enterprise editions and metered in HubSpot Credits. Zapier Agents ship templates for lead qualification, ticket auto-answers, SEO drafts and Slack summaries, with 400 free activities a month and Pro from about $33.33 a month annual, per Zapier. Make AI Agents are available on all plans with a reasoning panel and manual approvals, per Make. One rule for all of them: a marketing agent drafts and proposes, a person publishes and sends. Volume without a gate is spam with better grammar.

Three agents a small business can run

The support agent on WhatsApp or web chat: an n8n AI Agent node with a Gemini or Claude model, your FAQ as its only knowledge, and a handoff to a human when it is unsure; the WhatsApp template is a working start. The lead qualification and follow-up agent: it reads a form, scores fit, drafts the first reply and books the call, with a person approving the reply. The invoice and payment follow-up agent: it reads the ledger, drafts reminders at 7, 14 and 30 days, and escalates to a human at 45. Our n8n use cases post has the nodes for each.

What a pilot costs per month

Per-outcome and per-activity pricing make this easy to size. Fin at $0.99 per resolved conversation; Agentforce at $2 per conversation or about $0.10 per action; Zapier Agents free for the first 400 activities; a self-hosted n8n agent for a server of around 6 EUR plus model tokens. Budget by expected conversations, not by seats, and expect the model tokens, not the platform, to be the largest line once volume grows. Our AI automation services guide gives the build and retainer ranges.

How to tell a real agent from a renamed chatbot

Four questions settle it in a sales call. Can it call tools and act on the result, not only answer? Does it check its own work before finishing, for example reading the CRM after writing to it? Can it hand off to a human mid-task without losing context? Is it billed by outcome, action or conversation rather than by seat? A yes to the first three is an agent by Anthropic's definition. A yes to the fourth means the vendor is confident enough to be paid on results. A no to all four is a chatbot with a new name, and there is nothing wrong with that as long as it is priced like one. Many of the AI tools we compare in our AI automation agencies in India list sell both, and the honest ones say which is which.

Frequently asked questions

What is the difference between an AI agent and a chatbot?

A chatbot answers within a conversation from a script or a single model call. An agent, in Anthropic's definition, is a system where the model dynamically directs its own process and tool use to finish a task: calling tools, checking results, deciding next steps. Intercom's Fin, which resolves tickets and completes handoffs, is an agent; a FAQ bot is not.

What are real examples of AI agents in use today?

Klarna's assistant handled 2.3 million chats in its first month in 2024, Intercom Fin reports 2 million weekly resolutions, Salesforce sells Agentforce at $2 per conversation, Shopify bundles Sidekick into every plan, and AIG says Claude cut underwriting review time by more than 5x. All figures are vendor-reported and dated in the post.

How much does an AI agent cost for a small business?

Per-outcome pricing makes pilots easy to size: Fin charges $0.99 per resolved conversation with no seats, Agentforce about $2 per conversation, Zapier Agents give 400 free activities a month, and a self-hosted n8n agent costs a small server plus model tokens. Budget by expected conversations rather than seats.

Did Klarna replace its support staff with AI?

Partly, then it reversed course. In February 2024 Klarna said its assistant did the work of 700 full-time agents. In May 2025 the CEO told Bloomberg that cost had been too dominant a factor and that Klarna was hiring humans again so customers always have a person available, while keeping the AI assistant in place.

What AI agents exist for marketing?

HubSpot's Agent Hub includes Content, Prospecting, Campaign, Nurture and Customer agents, included in its paid editions and metered in credits. Zapier Agents ship templates for SEO drafts, personalised sales emails and Slack summaries. Make and n8n let you build your own with approval steps before anything is published or sent.