AI Consultancy Pricing

How We Price AI Work

The default engagement model is a fixed fee tied to a defined deliverable. This protects both sides. The client knows what the invoice will be before the work begins. The consultancy is incentivised to scope the work accurately rather than meter time.

Fixed fees work when the brief is clear enough to estimate. The Readiness Sprint is always fixed because its scope is bounded by definition. Discovery and Pilot is fixed in most cases because the prototype is the deliverable. Build and Embed is fixed for the majority of engagements but moves to a time-and-materials model where the integration surface is genuinely uncertain at the outset.

A day rate is offered only when the scope is too open-ended for an honest fixed quote. This applies to fractional advisory work, board-level AI strategy support over a sustained period, or remediation work on a system that has not yet been diagnosed. In every case, the rate band is published openly.

We do not bill for proposal writing, preliminary discovery calls, or the time taken to scope an engagement. We do not bill for travel within the UK unless the engagement requires sustained on-site delivery, in which case it is itemised separately and agreed in writing.

Discovery and Pilot: From GBP 15,000

Duration: 4 to 8 weeks. Delivery: Working prototype, technical documentation, deployment plan.

The Discovery and Pilot package takes a prioritised use case from the Readiness Sprint (or from the client's own analysis) and produces a working prototype. The prototype is functional software, not a slide deck or a mock-up. It runs on a real cloud environment, processes real or representative data, and demonstrates the actual user experience the production version will deliver.

What is included

• A detailed solution design covering architecture, data flow, vendor selection, and the UK regulatory posture for the use case
• A working prototype deployed to a UK or EU cloud region (typically GCP, AWS, or Azure depending on existing client estate)
• Technical documentation suitable for handover to an in-house team or an external delivery partner
• A deployment plan for moving from prototype to production, including cost projections and the operational dependencies that need to be in place
• A senior consultant as the named lead for the duration of the engagement
• Two presentation milestones: mid-point review and end-of-engagement handover

Who it is for

• Organisations with a clear AI use case but no internal capacity to build a credible prototype
• Teams that have tried to build a prototype with consumer AI tools and need a properly engineered version before committing to production
• Boards that require evidence of feasibility before approving full implementation budget

Pricing range

The GBP 15,000 entry point covers a single use case with a clearly bounded data scope and a standard vendor stack. Pricing scales with: number of data sources to integrate, regulatory complexity (financial services and healthcare typically add 20 to 40 per cent), and whether on-premises or air-gapped deployment is required. A typical Discovery and Pilot for a UK SME ranges from GBP 15,000 to GBP 35,000. Engagements above GBP 35,000 usually indicate scope that is better broken into two sequential Discoveries.

Day Rate: GBP 950 to GBP 1,500

The day rate band is used for engagements where a fixed fee is not practical: fractional advisory work, board-level AI support, sustained remediation on a system whose state is not yet known, or short pieces of bespoke work that do not fit a packaged engagement.

Where the day rate sits within the band depends on three factors: seniority of the consultant assigned, whether the work requires sector-specialist regulatory knowledge (financial services, healthcare, legal services), and whether the engagement is delivered remotely or on-site.

For context: Big 4 consultancies bill senior AI consultants at GBP 2,500 to GBP 4,000 per day plus expenses. Independent freelance AI consultants typically bill GBP 500 to GBP 900. The AI Consultancy's band sits deliberately between the two: senior-led, certified delivery (AWS, Google Cloud, Nvidia), with governance and continuity that freelance engagements rarely provide, at a rate below the Big 4 premium.

Day-rate engagements are billed monthly in arrears against a written timesheet. There is no minimum monthly commitment unless one is requested by the client.

Where This Sits in the UK Market

UK AI consultancy pricing falls into three broad bands. Understanding which band a vendor sits in is more useful than comparing headline numbers, because the bands reflect fundamentally different delivery models.

Big 4 and tier-1 consultancies (Accenture, Deloitte, PwC, EY, KPMG, BCG, McKinsey)

Day rates: GBP 2,500 to GBP 4,000+ for senior consultants, GBP 4,000+ for partners. Typical engagement minimum: GBP 150,000. Delivered by a mixed team of senior partners (occasional involvement), engagement managers, and junior consultants (the bulk of delivery). Strong on governance, audit-grade reporting, and credibility with boards. Less well-suited to fast, focused SME engagements where the value is in the working solution rather than the report.

Specialist AI boutiques (Brainpool, 51d, Faculty, The AI Consultancy)

Day rates: GBP 950 to GBP 1,800 for senior consultants. Typical engagement: GBP 15,000 to GBP 150,000. Delivered by senior-led teams with named individual accountability. Productised offerings are common. Stronger on working deliverables and faster turnaround than the Big 4; less well-suited to mandates requiring a 30-person engagement team.

Independent freelancers and small agencies

Day rates: GBP 500 to GBP 900. Typical engagement: GBP 5,000 to GBP 30,000. Suited to single-discipline work (chatbot build, data pipeline, model fine-tuning) where the brief is clear and the regulatory overlay is light. Less well-suited to multi-discipline engagements, regulated sectors, or any engagement where governance and continuity matter.

The AI Consultancy sits firmly in the boutique band. The advantage of this band for UK SMEs and scaleups is the combination of senior-led delivery, productised entry points, and prices that scale with the scope rather than the brand premium.

How to Choose the Right Tier

The simplest test is to identify what is missing.

• If you are not certain which AI use cases are worth pursuing: start with the Readiness Sprint.
• If you have a defined use case but no working prototype: start with Discovery and Pilot.
• If you have a working prototype and are ready to move to production: start with Build and Embed.
• If your need is narrower than a full engagement (an audit of an existing AI app, a legacy system replacement diagnostic, a private deployment for regulated data): start with the relevant specialist product.
• If your need is ongoing advisory rather than a defined project: start with a day-rate engagement and convert to a fixed-fee package if a defined project emerges.

For a longer guide to what AI implementation typically costs UK SMEs, including the five hidden cost drivers that fall outside the build quote, see How Much Does AI Implementation Cost in the UK?

A 30-minute scoping call is free of charge and is not bound to any particular tier. The output of the call is a written recommendation on which tier fits your situation and an indicative price band before any commitment is made.