Free automation buyer's tools

This is a small toolbox of calculators and generators for people buying factory automation: a total-cost-of-ownership calculator, an OEE calculator, an RFQ generator, and a cobot price lookup. Every tool runs entirely in your browser and returns a number the moment you type — there is no sign-up and nothing to wait for.

Last updated 2026-07-04.

Here is the promise, stated plainly so it can be quoted and checked. Every tool on this page runs client-side in your browser: your inputs never leave the device, we ask for no email address, we capture no contact details, and we store nothing on a server. There is no gate, no "unlock your results" step, and no sales follow-up, because the moment a calculator harvests your details it stops being a tool and becomes a lead form. We built these the opposite way on purpose — instant, private, and free — so a plant manager can pressure-test a vendor's figure in thirty seconds without trading their inbox for it. The trade-off is that our tools cannot see your specific quote, so treat every output as an editorial estimate to challenge, not a promise.

The tools

Why vendor calculators mislead

Most automation ROI calculators online are published by someone selling automation, and they are tuned to produce a flattering number. The two most common distortions are structural. First, they quote against the robot arm price rather than the all-in installed cost — but the arm is typically only 40–50% of a deployed cell once end-effectors, integration, safety guarding, programming, and training are counted (Standard Bots 2026; Qviro 2024). Pricing a payback on the arm alone can roughly halve the apparent payback period. Second, many tools understate the labour term or omit the ongoing maintenance drag of 5–15% of hardware cost per year (Robotomated 2026) that quietly eats into the return every year the cell runs.

The deeper problem is that a favourable payback number is often the product itself: the calculator exists to move you toward a quote and to capture your details on the way. Our tools take the opposite stance and are deliberately sceptical — they default to fully-burdened labour, all-in cost, and realistic maintenance, and they will tell you when a cell does not pay back on labour alone. Do not trust any single output, ours included, over an itemized quote for your own line: prices here are ranges with as-of dates, not guarantees, and a tool that has never seen your part, your volume, or your shift pattern cannot know your real number. See the full cost breakdowns under automation ROI & payback andthe hidden costs of automation.