→ AI development pricing
What AI development costs with us, in actual numbers
Most AI agencies make you book a call to find out whether you can afford them. Here are the ranges instead. A feature inside existing software starts around €10,000. A custom AI product with real integrations usually runs €50,000 to €100,000. Private infrastructure on your own hardware starts at €100,000.
These are the bands our work actually falls into, not aspirational pricing. Where your project lands depends on four things, and we go through all four below.
By project type
€10,000 to €25,000
4 to 8 weeks
One AI feature inside software you already ship
A summarizer, an extractor, a drafting assistant or a search that understands the question. Includes discovery, the integration, structured outputs, an eval set and cost telemetry.
€25,000 to €50,000
8 to 14 weeks
Multi-feature LLM integration with eval and observability
Several features across one product, prompt versioning, fallback chains between providers, per-customer cost ceilings and dashboards that show spend and failure rate per feature.
€50,000 to €100,000
3 to 6 months
Custom AI web or mobile application with real integrations
A product rather than a feature. Auth, roles, the AI layer, and connections into the systems the business already runs on. Most of our work sits in this band.
€100,000 and up
from 3 months
Private AI infrastructure, on-premise or sovereign cloud
Open weights models on hardware you control, inside your perimeter, with the operational tooling to keep them running. Priced individually because procurement and compliance vary so much.
Specific work, specific numbers
The bands above cover most enquiries. These are the ones people ask about by name.
- RAG over a defined corpus, single tenant
- €15,000 to €40,000
- Multi-tenant RAG with admin tooling
- €40,000 to €100,000
- AI inside one CRM or ERP, read only
- €12,000 to €30,000
- AI across CRM and ERP with write-back and document intake
- €30,000 to €80,000
- On-premise RAG with full eval and observability
- €60,000 to €150,000 and up
Before a build: assessments and advice
For when you are still deciding. Fixed fees, each ending in a written document, and assessment fees come off the build if we do it. How our AI consulting works.
- Five day review of one AI feature or stalled pilot
- €4,500 to €6,500
- AI readiness assessment, two weeks
- €9,500 to €14,000
- AI due diligence for an investment or acquisition
- €18,000 to €35,000
- Fractional AI and technical lead, three months minimum
- €3,500 to €6,000 a month
What moves the number
Two projects that sound identical on a call can differ by a factor of three once someone looks at the systems. Four things explain almost all of that gap.
How clean the data is
Duplicate records, free-text fields holding four conventions, and a status column three departments read differently. Cleaning that is often the largest line in the estimate, and skipping it produces confident wrong answers.
How many systems have to talk
One system with a modern API is straightforward. Three systems, one of which predates REST, is a different project. Each integration brings its own auth, its own limits and its own failure modes.
How right the output has to be
An assistant that drafts something a person reviews is a cheaper build than a pipeline whose output goes straight into an invoice. Compliance-grade accuracy needs eval coverage, review queues and audit trails, and those are real engineering weeks.
How fast decisions get made on your side
Not a technical factor, but the most common reason a project runs long. If every release waits three weeks for sign-off, the calendar sets the pace and the cost follows it.
When we will tell you not to do it
We turn down work regularly, and it is usually for one of these reasons. Better to read them now than to find out after an invoice.
- The task already has a correct answer that a rule or a database query produces. A model adds cost and doubt to something deterministic.
- Nobody can describe what a good output looks like. Without that there is nothing to evaluate against, and no way to tell progress from noise.
- The volume is genuinely low. Automating something a person does twelve times a month will not pay for itself in any reasonable period.
- The budget is below €10,000. The discovery, eval and deployment work costs more than that regardless of how small the feature is.
How we get from a range to a number
Discovery week. A fixed fee, five working days, and at the end you have a written scope with a firm price attached. We map the systems, look at the real data rather than a description of it, pick the first workflow worth automating, and write down what could go wrong.
The scope document is yours regardless of what you decide next. If you take it to another supplier, that is a legitimate outcome and it happens. We would rather write an honest scope than win a project by underquoting it and arguing about change requests six weeks later.
Pricing questions
How much does it cost to build a custom AI agent?
Most agents land between €25,000 and €80,000. A single-purpose agent working inside one system with a narrow set of actions sits at the lower end. An agent that spans several systems, writes back to a system of record and needs an audit trail sits at the upper end. Below roughly €10,000 you are buying a configured tool rather than an agent, and we will say so rather than take the work.
Why do you publish ranges instead of a fixed price?
Because a fixed price given before anyone has seen your data would be guesswork dressed up as confidence. The ranges tell you which conversation you are in. Discovery week turns the range into one number with a scope attached.
What is discovery week and does it cost extra?
It is a fixed-fee week where we map the systems, the data quality and the one workflow worth doing first. You finish it with a written scope and a firm price, which is yours whether or not you continue with us. The fee is in the low five figures and depends on how many systems are in scope.
What makes an AI project more expensive than expected?
Four things, in order. Messy data, because the model will faithfully reproduce the mess. The number of systems that have to talk to each other. Whether output has to be correct every time or merely useful most of the time. And approval cycles, because a project that needs three sign-offs per release moves at the speed of the calendar, not the code.
Do you work with fixed price or time and materials?
Fixed price per phase after discovery, which is what most clients prefer. Longer engagements sometimes move to a monthly team rate once the scope stops being a moving target. We do not bill hourly for AI work, because hours measure effort rather than the thing you are buying.
What does AI consulting cost with you?
€4,500 to €6,500 for a five day review, €9,500 to €14,000 for a two week AI readiness assessment, €18,000 to €35,000 for due diligence, and €3,500 to €6,000 a month for a fractional technical lead. All fixed fee. Assessment fees come off the first invoice if we build what we recommended, on projects above €50,000, valid six months.
Is there a minimum project size?
Around €10,000. Below that the discovery, the eval work and the deployment cost more than the feature is worth, and you would be better served by an off-the-shelf tool. We would rather tell you that on the first call.