What an AI pilot actually costs in the UK. A line-by-line breakdown.

We get the same call about once a week. "We're talking to a Big Four firm, a boutique AI shop or a generalist consultancy. Their pilot is £80,000 over six months. Yours is £18,000 over six weeks. What are we missing?"

The honest answer is usually: nothing. They are charging more. That is it.

But it is a fair question and it deserves a real answer. So we are going to do something the rest of the industry will not. Itemise our pilot, show the maths and explain why the number is £18,000 and not £40,000.

"Almost nobody in AI publishes their pricing. We will."

Why no one publishes this

Most AI engagements are sold on a Time & Materials basis. A day-rate of typically £800 to £1,800 depending on seniority, multiplied by a week-count nobody commits to in writing, padded with a "discovery phase" whose main purpose is to delay scoping until after you have signed.

T&M is good business for the seller. The variance lives with the buyer. If it takes longer, that is a change request. If your data is messier than expected, that is a change request. If a meeting reveals a new requirement, that is a change request.

Fixed price moves all that variance back onto the seller. Which is exactly why most AI consultancies do not offer it. It is harder to sell, harder to scope, harder to deliver. If you mis-estimate, you eat the difference, not the client.

We made our 6-week AI Pilot fixed-price anyway. Here is what £18,000 buys you, broken into the seven things we actually do.

The seven line items

These are the equivalent T&M values for each phase, calculated at our standard senior-engineer rates. We round them into £18,000 flat and absorb the variance.

The maths

Add the line items and you get £22,900. That is what an equivalent T&M engagement would invoice for, assuming nothing went wrong.

We charge £18,000, fixed. We absorb the £4,900 difference and we absorb the risk of overrun. If a piece of the build takes longer than budgeted, that is our problem. Not a change request.

"Fixed price is harder for the seller. Easier for the buyer. That is the whole point."

The bits that are not on the invoice

Three things make the £18,000 worth more than the seven line items above.

Why fixed price is harder for us, not for you

On a T&M engagement, every hour is billable. If a meeting runs long, that is billable. If we mis-scope something, that is billable. If your data is messier than expected, that is billable. The consultant's incentive is to keep the meter running.

On a fixed-price engagement, every hour comes out of our margin. The incentive flips. We want the smallest scope that proves the value, the fewest meetings that get to the right answer and the cleanest data flow we can ship. Speed is in our interest because we do not get paid more for going slow.

This is exactly why most consultancies will not price like this. It works for clients. It is painful for sellers who would rather charge by the hour.

Who this works for (and who it does not)

Fixed-price pilots only work when both sides can agree on scope quickly. That means a fairly narrow profile this is built for.

• UK or Irish business, 50 to 1,000 staff. Small enough to make a fast decision, big enough to have one workflow that genuinely deserves automation.
• One specific workflow already identified. If you are still surveying the business for ideas, you need a discovery sprint first, not a pilot.
• A sponsor who can say yes. MD, FD or Ops Director. Someone who can call the scale-up decision in week six without a steering committee.
• Data we can reach in week 1. If it is air-gapped, paper-only or in an undocumented legacy system, the scope changes.
• A fast yes. The £18k fixed assumes no multi-vendor RFP cycle. If procurement adds three months, the economics break.

If you do not fit that profile, the pilot is not right. We would rather tell you in week zero than waste both our times. The 30-minute call exists to figure that out honestly.

Book a 30-minute scoping call

We run four pilots per quarter. That cap is deliberate. Pilots are senior-engineer led from week one to week six, and four is the number we can deliver properly without thinning the bench. When the quarter fills, the next booking slot is the following quarter.

We do not run a marketing list. The call is 30 minutes, with an engineer rather than a salesperson, and you will get an honest read on whether the pilot is a fit. If it is not, we will tell you what is. Even if the answer is someone else.