What AI consulting costs, and what changes the number
My prices are published. Here is what sits behind them, and what moves them.
Most consulting pricing is unpublished, which is usually a sign the scope is not fixed enough to price. Mine is on the consulting page, so this article explains what sits behind each number rather than revealing it.
The three shapes
A diagnostic. Fixed scope, fixed price, a week. Mine is €1,500 for up to ten use cases and €3,500 for up to twenty. You end the week knowing which idea is worth a quarter, which to kill, and how you will know either way.
Build. €850–1,100 per day, or €6,000–12,000 fixed scope. For teams who know what they are building and want it shipped by someone who has taken AI through security and governance review before.
Fractional ownership. €6,000–8,000 per month, about a day a week. For organisations running AI across several teams with nobody senior owning the whole thing.
The gap between the low and high end of each is scope, not negotiation.
What legitimately changes the number
How many use cases
The obvious one, and the reason the diagnostic is banded rather than fixed. Twenty proposals is more than twice the work of ten, because the comparison between them is most of the value.
Whether the environment is regulated
Not a surcharge for difficulty. Regulated work carries security review, documented reasoning and a governance trail, and those are hours. The reasoning has to be written down beside every judgement so it survives a room containing risk and compliance.
Whether anyone owns it afterwards
If there is an internal owner, the engagement ends cleanly. If there is not, the work either includes finding one or it produces something that degrades quietly after I leave — and that is worth pricing honestly rather than discovering later.
How much has already been decided
Counter-intuitively, this can raise the price. A team arriving with a settled plan and a committed budget is expensive to help if the plan is aimed at the wrong thing, because the work now includes the conversation about that.
What does not change it
Company size. The same twenty use cases take the same time to assess whether the logo is famous or not.
Urgency. A fixed-scope week is a week. Paying more does not compress the interviews, and a diagnostic run at speed is a diagnostic you cannot rely on.
How to read anyone's AI pricing
Ask what happens if the answer is do not build this. If the fee depends on a build following, the diagnostic is a sales process and should be read as one. That is not dishonest, but it is a different product and should cost differently.
The other question worth asking is what the run cost looks like after delivery. Evaluation, observability, governance, model updates, drift and human quality assurance are the costs that turn a positive business case negative, and they are routinely absent from the proposal that won.
Common questions
How much does AI consulting cost?
My published prices: €1,500–3,500 for a fixed-scope diagnostic week, €850–1,100 per day or €6,000–12,000 fixed scope for build work, and €6,000–8,000 per month for fractional ownership at about a day a week.
What changes the price of an AI consulting engagement?
The number of use cases, whether the environment is regulated, whether anyone internal will own the work afterwards, and how much has already been decided. Company size and urgency do not — the same assessment takes the same time regardless of the logo.
Should AI consultants publish their prices?
Unpublished pricing usually means the scope is not fixed enough to price. Published prices are a constraint on the seller: the scope has to be real for the number to hold.
How do you tell a diagnostic from a sales process?
Ask what happens if the answer is not to build. If the fee depends on a build following, it is a sales process — which is a legitimate product, but a different one, and it should be priced differently.
Scoring 40 AI use cases in a regulated enterprise — what a fixed-scope diagnostic produces — every score written down beside the reasoning behind it.