question Re: NOW ASSIST AI SEARCH LICENSING in Now Assist forum

NOW ASSIST AI SEARCH LICENSING

MattiaD97748969 — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 08:52:13 GMT

Hi,
could you please confirm whether enabling and using Now Assist in AI Search consumes Assists (the consumption units used by Now Assist features), or if this specific AI Search capability does not consume any Assists?
Thank you.

Re: NOW ASSIST AI SEARCH LICENSING

Dr Atul G- LNG — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 08:53:36 GMT

Hi @MattiaD97748969

https://www.servicenow.com/community/now-assist-articles/now-assist-in-ai-search-faq/ta-p/2686538

What are the Licensing & Packaging dependencies?
- Now Assist for CSM, ITSM, HRSD, or other Pro Plus or Enterprise Plus packages

Re: NOW ASSIST AI SEARCH LICENSING

MattiaD97748969 — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 13:04:04 GMT

Hi,
I’ve reviewed the available documentation, but I still need clarification on one point. Could you please confirm whether using Now Assist in AI Search within the Virtual Agent consumes Assists? If Assist consumption does occur, could you also clarify what the actual costs are for these interactions and how they are calculated?
Thank you in advance for your support.

Re: NOW ASSIST AI SEARCH LICENSING

Tanushree Maiti — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 13:23:20 GMT

Licensing based on AI and consumption

ServiceNow’s AI/assistant features (e.g., Now Assist) are separately licensed and often consumption-based (“assists” per use). Usage varies by task—incident summaries use fewer assists than app creation. Expect new billing items and audits, so coordinate with your account team to forecast costs and avoid overages.

Refer: https://www.servicenow.com/community/now-assist-articles/tracking-now-assist-usage-measuring-roi-and-adoption-xanadu-and/ta-p/3460892

https://www.flexera.com/resources/guides/servicenow-audit-best-practices#:~:text=ServiceNow's%20AI/assistant%20features%20(e.g.,Hub%20costs%20with%20Now%20Assist

Also refer: https://www.servicenow.com/community/now-assist-articles/now-assist-in-ai-search-faq/ta-p/2686538#:~:text=Now%20Assist%20in%20AI%20Search%20uses%20a%20Retrieval%2DAugmented%20Generation,are%20provided%20with%20the%20response.

Re: NOW ASSIST AI SEARCH LICENSING

Tricia Cornish — Fri, 27 Mar 2026 22:55:52 GMT

Yes, using Now Assist in AI Search will consume assists. It is a platform capability that is activated with one of the Now Assist for (ITSM, CSM, HR) products.
It sounds like you are asking about assist consumption with the virtual agent.
When you activate Now Assist for VA, that will call Now Assist for AI Search if you're answering questions. The response from the bot is a synthesized response from available content. The problem with answering your question directly is because NAVA assist consumption is calculated based on VA tasks- if you search, then get a synthesized response (yes, assists consumed here), then initiate a catalog request (assists are consumed here), then conversationally launch a VA topic ("I want to connect to a live agent"), those actions consume assists. Each VA conversation could consume varying assists, given the variability of AI tasks that a VA could perform.
Fulfillers and platform users can also use Now Assist in AI Search if it's activated on the Global Search or Workspace search inside the platform. Finally, Now Assist Panel also has a Q&A features - it's just a VA within the platform. If you activate a RAG search within an AI Agent (which you might also have with one of the delivered ITSM agents, you will also consume search assists.
Unfortunately, it's not a 1:1 in all scenarios and is very scenario-specific, as pointed out.
Hope that helps!
Tricia

Re: NOW ASSIST AI SEARCH LICENSING

rpriyadarshy — Wed, 01 Apr 2026 02:12:06 GMT

Here is The Pointed Answer.

Could you please confirm whether using Now Assist in AI Search within the Virtual Agent consumes Assists?--> Yes

If Assist consumption does occur, could you also clarify what the actual costs are for these interactions and how they are calculated?

VA Topic Invocation (Now Assist Virtual Agent topics): 10 Assists per one end-to-end Virtual Agent topic execution

Catalog Execution (Multi‑turn Catalog Ordering in VA): 10 Assists per one end-to-end catalog order (conversational ordering)

Now Assist Q&A Genius Results-1 Assist -One answer card produced in AI Search results
(global search or portal search).

In Backend You Can also Check Table for actual Assist Usage-

sys_gen_ai_usage_log

Why this Much Assist and Count - Its ServiceNow Internal but it depends on How Many TOKENS (Assists in ServiceNow Lingo) were Consumed during LLM Interaction.

Regards