Ask five AI consulting firms what they charge and you'll often get five non-answers before you get a number, if you get one at all. Some of that opacity is deliberate positioning. Some of it is genuine — the honest answer really is "it depends," because the range between projects is enormous. Here's what actually drives the cost, and how the market broadly talks about it, so you're not walking into a scoping call with no context.
What actually drives the number
- Scope of automation, not just "AI." A single well-defined workflow (e.g., one Jira automation) costs a fraction of a multi-system integration touching several tools and teams.
- Integration complexity. Connecting to your existing stack — your issue tracker, CI, internal auth — is usually more work than the AI piece itself.
- One-off build vs. ongoing operation. A prototype that proves a concept is a different commitment than something that needs to keep running reliably in production, get monitored, and get updated as your codebase changes.
- Billing structure. Fixed-scope project pricing, hourly work, and ongoing retainers are all common, and they front-load risk differently — fixed scope puts estimation risk on the firm, hourly puts it on you, retainers assume an ongoing relationship rather than a single deliverable.
Rough market ranges (context, not a quote)
Industry discussion around AI consulting engagements commonly references figures in this rough shape:
- Small pilots or proof-of-concept projects: often discussed in the low five figures to around $40K
- Medium, multi-month integration projects: commonly cited in the $40K–$150K range
- Fractional/ongoing AI leadership or retainer arrangements: frequently discussed around $5K–$25K per month
Treat these as illustrative of how the market talks about itself, not as quotes, industry-standard rates, or anything resembling a validated survey — pricing varies enormously by scope, region, and firm, and anyone citing one universal number (including a range like the one above) is simplifying a genuinely wide distribution.
Where we land
We bill hourly or as a retainer, scoped once we understand what you actually need — we're not going to force a project into a packaged tier that doesn't fit it, and we're not going to pretend we can give you an accurate number before that conversation happens. What we can tell you upfront: the first step is a free 20-minute scoping call, and you'll walk away from it with a real sense of scope and structure before anyone talks price.