How much does AI automation cost?
Automation is the rare purchase where the ROI math is simple: hours saved against a one-time build. Here is how the pricing works, what a realistic first project costs, and when to say no.
How automation is priced
Unlike websites, automation has no meaningful catalog price, because scope varies wildly: connecting two tools is days of work, while an AI copilot on your company knowledge is a real software project. So we price in three honest tiers:
| Proof of concept | days of work, deliberately affordable |
|---|---|
| Focused automation project | quoted fixed, typically low four figures |
| Automation grown into a real tool | from ~EUR 8,900 |
| Application Support | from ~EUR 299 / month |
The ROI math, honestly
Take one process: invoices processed by hand, twenty hours a month, at a blended cost of EUR 35 an hour. That is EUR 700 a month, EUR 8,400 a year, before counting errors and delay. Against a fixed four-figure build, the payback period is months, not years. When the math does not work, and sometimes it genuinely does not, we say so in the discovery call instead of selling you a project.
What drives the price up
- Messy inputs. Clean structured data automates cheaply; scanned PDFs in seventeen formats need real processing work.
- Human-in-the-loop needs. Approval steps and review queues are worth building properly, and they add scope.
- System count. Every extra tool the automation touches adds integration and error-handling work.
- Reliability requirements. A daily internal report failing is an annoyance; a customer-facing flow failing is not. Robustness has a price and is worth paying for selectively.
Practical advice
Start with a proof of concept on your single most annoying process, and measure it for a month before scaling. For the wider context, AI automation for business shows where automation genuinely helps, and the custom software guide covers the pricing when automation grows into a platform. Bring the process to a free discovery call and we will do the ROI math with you, on the call.