AI Consulting Cost
AI consulting cost in 2025: discovery, strategy, architecture reviews, and fractional AI leadership.
What drives Cost
AI consulting pricing depends on whether you need a two-week discovery, a rolling strategy engagement, or a fractional AI leader embedded with your team. Short-form discovery runs eight to twenty thousand. Fractional AI leadership sits at eight to twenty-five thousand per month. Deep architecture reviews for regulated enterprises routinely hit forty thousand and up. The ranges below reflect honest consulting scopes, not open-ended retainers.
- 01Engagement length and cadence
- 02Advisor seniority (staff, director, VP-level)
- 03Breadth (single product vs portfolio)
- 04Regulated-industry expertise
- 05Artifact depth (report vs working architecture)
- 06Team enablement and hands-on coaching
Typical pricing tiers
- Stakeholder interviews
- Use-case prioritization
- Written recommendations
- Pilot shortlist
- Reference architecture
- Build-vs-buy analysis
- Risk register
- 12-month roadmap
- 2-3 days per week
- Hiring and vendor selection
- Weekly stakeholder updates
- Hands-on code review
No surprise line items
Every engagement is scoped against a written statement of work. Changes are logged weekly and priced transparently. You always know where the number is going before it gets there.
A statement of work with deliverables, acceptance criteria, and a timeline before we start.
Every scope change is logged and priced within a week of being raised. No end-of-quarter surprises.
You own the code, prompts, weights, and infra-as-code. Standard work-for-hire clauses, no lock-in.
Runbooks, architecture diagrams, and a support retainer so your team can take it from here.
100+ companiesquietlyrunonsystemswebuilt.
Pricing questions
Do you produce slides or working code?
Both. Strategy engagements ship architecture diagrams plus runnable reference implementations where it matters.
Can consulting convert to build?
Yes, and often does. We transfer context directly to our delivery team, no re-discovery.
Who owns the recommendations?
You do. Written reports, architecture diagrams, and vendor shortlists are yours under NDA.
Will you work under an existing vendor-of-record?
Yes. We regularly sub under bigger consultancies when your procurement requires it.
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