Most AI automation agencies charge one of three ways: fixed-price projects (roughly $2,000 to $25,000 per system), monthly retainers (roughly $1,500 to $10,000 a month), or hourly consulting ($100 to $300 an hour). The wide ranges are real, and they are the first thing to understand: the market has no standard rate card, most agencies publish no prices at all, and two quotes for the same automation can differ by 10x.
This guide gives you the real numbers, the pricing models behind them, and the questions that separate a fair quote from a padded one. It ends with our own published prices, because a pricing guide from a company that hides its own pricing is not much of a guide.
The three pricing models, and what each actually costs
Fixed-price projects. One named automation, one price, one deadline. Simple single-system builds (lead routing, follow-up sequences, CRM cleanup) typically run $2,000 to $6,500. Multi-system builds and custom agent work run $7,500 to $25,000. Above that you are usually buying either genuine enterprise complexity or a brand name.
Monthly retainers.Ongoing build-and-maintain arrangements start around $1,500 to $2,500 a month at the low end, cluster between $4,000 and $8,000 a month for a dedicated senior operator’s attention, and reach $10,000 and beyond when the agency staffs a team. The thing to check is what a month actually buys: hours, named deliverables, or “access.”
Hourly consulting. $100 to $300 an hour for automation consultants and engineers, higher for named specialists. Hourly works for scoping and advice. It works badly for builds, because the incentive runs against finishing.
The fourth number nobody quotes: the diagnostic. Some agencies run a paid audit or assessment first, usually $1,000 to $5,000, often credited against later work. This is generally a good sign, not a bad one. An agency willing to be paid to tell you what NOT to build is an agency you can believe when it tells you what to build.
What actually drives the price up or down
- How many systems the automation touches. One CRM is one price. CRM plus billing plus a marketing platform plus a scheduling tool is real integration work, and honest agencies price each added system explicitly.
- The state of your data. This is the cost driver buyers least expect. If your CRM has duplicate records, empty fields, and stages nobody agreed on, the automation either gets built on sand or the cleanup gets priced in. Ask any agency how they handle it; the answer tells you whether they have shipped automations that survived contact with real data.
- Custom AI work vs. assembled workflows. Most business automation is workflow assembly on proven tools, and should be priced like it. Custom model work is rarer and more expensive. Be suspicious of a custom-AI price for an assembled-workflow scope.
- Maintenance. Automations break when the tools underneath them change. Market rate for per-system monitoring and upkeep runs $300 to $800 a month. If a proposal has no maintenance answer, the automation has a planned lifespan nobody mentioned.
Where the money gets wasted
The expensive failure in this market is not overpaying for a working automation. It is paying anything for an automation that gets abandoned. The pattern, from buyer accounts, runs: an ambitious agent project, a demo that impresses, a rollout the team routes around, a quiet cancellation some months later.
Three questions expose most of it before you sign:
- “What exactly will exist when you are done, and who on my team owns it?” No named deliverable and no named owner means you are buying hours, not outcomes.
- “What has to be true about my data and process before this works?” An agency that answers “nothing, we handle everything” has not looked, or is not planning to.
- “What happens when it breaks in month four?” Listen for a number and a process, not reassurance.
Our prices, published
We sell fixed-scope automation for B2B go-to-market teams, at published prices, foundation first. The ladder:
- AI Revenue Scan: free. A self-serve readiness read.
- AI Revenue Audit: $2,500. Connects to your actual stack (20+ tool integrations), computes a maturity heat map, and hands you a prioritized automation map with fixed prices attached. 100 percent of the fee credits toward your first build or your first Partner month within 90 days. If we find nothing worth building, you get the fee back and you keep the findings.
- Revenue Automation Builds: $2,500 to $6,500 per named system. Fixed price, named scope, a delivery clock, a runbook, and your team trained to own it.
- AI Revenue Partner: $2,500 a month (a monthly engagement, not equity). Up to three systems monitored and maintained, plus a monthly working session. AI Revenue Partner Plus: $8,000 a month for companies automating in more than one function.
- AI Team Training: $5,500.
Why the audit comes first: most AI automation fails for a boring reason. It is built on a broken operations foundation, and the debt you could tolerate for years (dirty data, duct-tape process, fields nobody fills in) now decides whether AI works for you at all. Paying for the diagnosis before the build is how you avoid buying automation your foundation cannot hold. The full ladder, with every number on one page, is on our services and pricing page.