How Much Does AI Consulting Cost? Transparent Pricing for 2026.
No ranges in brochures, no "contact us" pricing theater. This page shows exactly what a custom AI build costs, what is included, what moves the price, and how we compare to every other way you could get this work done.
The short answer
Custom AI consulting and implementation runs $6,000 on the low end to $75,000 on the high end, with a monthly retainer starting at $1,500 to keep the system running. The range looks wide. In practice, the scope is the thing that moves the number — not the industry, not the tech stack, and not how fancy the buzzwords are.
We price by problem complexity, across four tiers. Most mid-market engagements land in Tier 2 ($12,000–$30,000) because the typical pain point — say, a sales or quoting workflow that touches two or three internal systems — is genuinely a multi-step problem, not a one-prompt chatbot. Cautious buyers who want to validate the system first can start with a Tier 0 Pilot ($3,000–$5,000, six months of maintenance, clear expansion path). For a detailed look at what each tier ships, see our tier build overview.
The rest of this page breaks down the numbers, explains what is actually included at each tier, tells you what drives the price up or down, and compares the true cost of a consulting engagement to agencies, freelancers, in-house hires, off-the-shelf SaaS, and doing nothing.
Pricing by tier — what each number buys
Every engagement lands in one of four tiers based on the shape of the problem. The prices below are the build fee; each tier also carries a monthly retainer because AI systems that are not maintained stop working. Annual retainer commit takes 15% off the monthly rate — see the FAQ for specifics.
Tier 0 — Pilot
$3,000 – $5,000+ $500 / mo (Pilot Maintain, 6 months)· 4–10 days buildA single narrow workflow you want to validate before committing to Tier 1. The $500/mo Pilot Maintain retainer auto-escalates to the Tier 1 Maintain rate ($1,500/mo) at month 7, unless cancelled in writing at least 30 days prior. Designed for cautious buyers who want to see the system work on a real workflow before committing to a full build-plus-retainer.
What's included
- Single-workflow pilot agent, fixed-fee
- One integration of your choice
- Hosting, API cost absorption, and uptime monitoring for 6 months
- Clear expansion path into a full Tier 1 build at end of pilot
What's not included at this tier
- Multiple integrations or cross-system orchestration
- Custom operator dashboards beyond a minimal status view
- Dedicated client-manager agent on our side
Tier 1 — Single Agent
$6,000 – $12,000+ $1,500 / mo· 2–3 weeks buildOne workflow, one integration, one clear outcome.
What's included
- Custom-built agent tailored to your specific workflow
- One integration (CRM, email, database, or external API)
- Operator dashboard to monitor and adjust
- Deployment on managed infrastructure
- Handoff documentation
What's not included at this tier
- Multiple integrations or cross-system orchestration
- Role-based dashboards for multiple teams
- Custom ERP modifications
Tier 2 — Multi-Step System
$12,000 – $30,000+ $3,500 / mo· 3–6 weeks buildTwo to four agents sharing state across 2–3 systems. The shape most mid-market builds land in.
What's included
- 2–4 coordinated agents with shared state
- 2–3 integrations (CRM, ERP, email, project management)
- Operator dashboard with approval workflows
- Background job processing
- Ongoing optimization on retainer
What's not included at this tier
- Nested supervisor-and-specialist agent hierarchies
- Custom enterprise SSO or SAML integration
- Deep ERP schema changes on the client side
Tier 3 — Agent Hierarchy
$30,000 – $75,000+ $7,500 / mo· 6–12 weeks buildEnd-to-end operations platform. Replaces a meaningful chunk of a team's manual workload. Currently invitation only — we accept Tier 3 engagements once we have three completed Tier 1 or Tier 2 case studies shipped with documented ROI. Existing clients can graduate into Tier 3 from a Tier 2 build at any time.
What's included
- Nested supervisor + specialist agents
- Deep integrations across your full tool stack
- Custom operator dashboard with role-based views
- Dedicated client-manager agent on our side monitoring system health
- Ongoing expansion on retainer
What's not included at this tier
- Net-new ERP selection and migration
- Organizational change-management consulting
- Hardware procurement (edge devices, on-prem GPUs)
What actually moves the price
Industry jargon does not change the quote. These five drivers do. If you know where your project lands on each, you can predict the number within a tier before we even write the scope document.
Integration count
Each connected system adds scope — not just the happy-path call, but auth, rate limits, error handling, and drift when the vendor changes their API. One integration is Tier 1. Two or three is Tier 2. A full ERP plus CRM plus project-management tie-in is Tier 3.
Data quality and format
Clean structured data in a database is fast to work with. PDFs, scanned images, hand-written forms, and spreadsheets with merged cells add extraction scope. If upstream data needs to be cleaned before the agent can reason about it, that shows up in the number.
Approval and human-in-the-loop complexity
A system that drafts and a human approves is simpler than a system that routes different drafts to different approvers based on business rules. More routing logic, more review surfaces, more scope. Honest roadmap conversations here often save you money.
Dashboard and role separation
One operator view is cheap. Five role-based views with permissions, audit trails, and separate report exports add a real dashboard layer. Tier 3 builds almost always have this. Most Tier 2 builds do not need it.
Ongoing retainer shape
The retainer scales with system complexity, not with conversation volume. We absorb the hosting and API cost inside the retainer number — no pass-through billing, no surprise line items at the end of a month when the AI was used more than expected.
How we compare — agencies, freelancers, in-house, SaaS, status quo
Every option has a real place. The table below is an honest read of what each one is good at and what it costs — not a competitor takedown. If one of the other rows is the right answer for your situation, we will say so on the discovery call.
| Option | Upfront | Ongoing | Time to value | Ownership | Honest trade-off |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| GoIppo Systems (us) | $3K – $75K (pilot → full build) | $500 – $7.5K / mo retainer | 2–12 weeks | You own the system; we host and maintain it | We are a small firm. If you need a 40-person bench or global compliance audits on day one, we are not the right fit. |
| Enterprise AI consultancy | $150K – $1M+ | Retainer + pass-through billing | 6–18 months to a pilot | Often licensed or locked to the firm's platform | Fine if you are a Fortune 500 with a procurement department and a year to spare. Overkill for a mid-market business trying to automate a workflow. |
| Generalist freelancer | $3K – $20K | Hourly ad-hoc | Highly variable | You own the code; maintenance is on you | Cheapest upfront. Risky because no one is on the hook when it breaks at 2am and the freelancer is on another contract. |
| In-house AI engineer | $0 build fee | $120K – $180K / yr salary + benefits | 3–6 months (hiring + ramp) | Fully internal | Right move once you have a mature system and a roadmap worth a full-time seat. Expensive and slow to start with if nothing is shipped yet. |
| Off-the-shelf SaaS | $0 – $5K setup | $50 – $2K / mo per seat | Days | You rent it; vendor owns the roadmap | Great when your problem is generic. Breaks the moment your workflow does not match the vendor's opinions. |
| Do nothing | $0 | Ongoing labor cost of the task | — | Status quo | Often the right answer for the wrong reasons. Worth an honest audit of what the workflow costs in salary and attention today. |
Why fixed fees (not hourly)
Hourly billing is the wrong incentive for this kind of work. If we find a way to ship the system in one week instead of four, you should not pay less — you should pay for the outcome. If we are slow, that is our problem to fix, not yours to subsidize.
The only consulting model that matches what the client actually wants is: a fixed number for the build, and a predictable monthly retainer for the ongoing operation. That is how we price. The number you see in the scope document is the number you pay.
50% is invoiced at kickoff, 50% on delivery. Retainer starts the month the system goes live. No hourly line items, no pass-through API fees on top. Read the full process for how this plays out phase by phase.
Pricing in context — what a typical engagement looks like
A hypothetical 40-employee manufacturer in North Georgia is quoting 20–30 custom jobs a week. The sales ops lead spends three hours per quote cross-referencing drawings with a pricing spreadsheet and their ERP. That is 60–90 hours a week of skilled labor on a task that is mostly pattern matching.
A Tier 2 AI quoter build — document extraction on the inbound drawings, pricing logic tied to the existing sheet, draft quote generated and routed to the sales lead for one-click approval — lands between $18,000 and $25,000 in build fee, with a $3,500/mo retainer. Payback, measured purely against the labor hours recaptured, is typically under four months. Scope, numbers, and timeline are spelled out up front — no surprises, no change orders dribbling in after kickoff.
Not every engagement looks like that. A compliance-reporting agent for an Atlanta professional services firm lands at Tier 1. A full operations platform for a Barrow County contractor lands at Tier 3. The shape of the problem decides, not the industry. Want a concrete read on where your project lands? Describe the workflow and we will tell you.
Where you are matters — a quick geographic note
Pricing is the same statewide, but in-person discovery and kickoff are part of the reason mid-market Georgia companies choose us. We work with teams across Atlanta, Athens, Barrow County, and the wider North Georgia region. If driving out to your facility and seeing the workflow in person would make the scope better, we will do it.
Frequently asked pricing questions
What does AI consulting actually cost in 2026?
For a custom build that ships a working system, expect $6,000–$75,000 for the build plus a monthly retainer starting at $1,500. We also offer a Tier 0 Pilot — a $3,000–$5,000 fixed-fee pilot on one narrow workflow with a $500/mo maintenance retainer for six months — for buyers who want to validate the system before committing to a full build. A single-purpose Tier 1 agent is $6,000–$12,000. A Tier 2 multi-step system tying together 2–3 tools is $12,000–$30,000. A Tier 3 full agent hierarchy covering end-to-end operations is $30,000–$75,000 (currently invitation only while we build our case-study portfolio). Every engagement carries a monthly retainer because AI systems that are not maintained stop working.
Why do enterprise AI consulting firms charge $100,000 and up?
They price for Fortune 500 procurement, not for what the work actually takes. A big firm has to absorb seven-figure sales cycles, partner margin, offshore delivery handoffs, and months of slideware. None of that makes the system work better. For a mid-market company a $100K+ engagement usually ends in a deck and a pilot that never ships. That is the gap we exist to fill.
Do you charge hourly or by the project?
Fixed fees by project complexity, never hourly. Hourly billing punishes speed, and speed is the entire point. If we find a way to ship a system in one week instead of four, you should not pay less — you should pay for the outcome. We scope the work up front, quote a fixed number, and split it 50% at kickoff and 50% at delivery.
What affects the final price of an AI build?
Integration count, data quality, approval workflow complexity, and whether the system needs a human-facing dashboard. Three integrations are a Tier 2. Connecting to a single CRM or spreadsheet is a Tier 1. If your data lives in PDFs that have to be extracted before anything else can happen, that adds scope. If half a dozen roles each need a different view of the same system, that adds scope. We scope before we quote, so the number you see is the number you pay.
Is there a cheaper way to get started?
Yes — Tier 0 Pilot. A $3,000–$5,000 fixed-fee pilot on one narrow workflow, with a $500/mo Pilot Maintain retainer for the first six months. At month seven, the pilot retainer auto-escalates to the Tier 1 Maintain rate ($1,500/mo) unless you cancel in writing at least 30 days beforehand. Tier 0 exists for cautious buyers who want to validate the system on a real workflow before committing to a full build. If you are ready to commit from the start, a Tier 1 single-agent build is the normal entry point — one workflow, one integration, one clear outcome, $6,000–$12,000.
Is there a discount for committing to an annual retainer?
Yes — annual commit takes 15% off the monthly rate. Maintain annual is $15,300/year (vs. $18,000 month-to-month). Optimize annual is $35,700/year (vs. $42,000). Operate annual is $76,500/year (vs. $90,000). The discount is not a sales lever — it reflects that an annual commit lets us reserve engineering capacity for you ahead of time rather than scrambling when a month-to-month client needs a larger change order.
What is included in the monthly retainer?
Hosting, API cost absorption (no pass-through billing), uptime monitoring, bug fixes, minor tweaks, and a monthly performance report. Higher retainer tiers add proactive improvements and a dedicated client-manager agent on our side watching system health. Retainers start at $1,500/month for Tier 1 systems and scale with the complexity of what is deployed.
How does AI consulting cost compare to hiring an in-house AI engineer?
One senior AI engineer in Georgia runs $120,000–$180,000 in base salary plus benefits, plus the cost of onboarding, plus the risk that the hire does not work out. You get one person with one skill set. A consulting engagement with us gives you a shipped system and an ongoing retainer relationship for a fraction of that first-year cost. Once the system is live and expanding, some clients do hire internally to own it — at that point, we transition. Until then, there is no good reason to carry the burn of a full-time hire.
Do you work with companies outside Georgia?
Our focus is mid-market businesses in Georgia — Atlanta, Athens, Barrow County, and the wider North Georgia corridor — because in-person discovery and kickoff calls matter for systems that touch your real operations. We take occasional engagements outside the state when the fit is clearly right, but the pricing, process, and retainer structure are the same.
Want a concrete number for your project?
Describe the workflow that eats your team's time. Our scoping agent will show you which tier it lands in and what a build would look like — no commitment, no price tag until we scope it properly.