Buying AI
What AI consultancy actually costs in the UK
Real UK market rates for AI consulting in 2026: day rates, fixed-fee audits, project costs and retainers, plus where the money usually gets wasted.
Most UK AI consultancies will not publish a price. The stated reason is that every engagement is different. The actual reason is usually that the number is set by what the client appears able to pay.
We publish ours, and we think the whole market should. Here is what AI consultancy costs in the UK in 2026, what you get at each level, and the specific places where organisations waste the most money.
The market rates
Across the UK market in 2026, four pricing models dominate.
| Model | Typical UK range | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Day rate | £600-£1,800 (SME-focused); £1,500-£3,000+ (enterprise firms) | Ongoing advisory, filling a specific capability gap |
| Fixed-fee audit or assessment | £750-£35,000 depending on scope and firm tier | Deciding what to do before committing budget |
| Project / implementation | £2,500-£250,000+ | Building a defined thing with a defined outcome |
| Retainer | £500-£6,000 per month | Continuity, escalation cover, incremental improvement |
The spread within each row is enormous, and it is not primarily a quality signal. It tracks the supplier’s cost base far more closely than it tracks the outcome you receive.
What the tiers actually are
Independent consultants: £600-£1,200/day
One experienced practitioner. At the good end, you get someone who has genuinely shipped systems and will tell you the truth quickly, because their reputation is the whole business. At the bad end, you get someone who completed a course in March.
The test is simple and the answer should be immediate: ask what they have personally put into production, and what broke. Anyone who has done the work has a specific and slightly painful answer. Anyone who has not will talk about frameworks.
Good for: assessments, architecture decisions, a second opinion on a vendor proposal, unblocking a stuck team. Bad for: anything requiring delivery capacity or continuity beyond one person.
Boutique and specialist firms: £1,000-£1,800/day, projects £25k-£150k
Small teams, usually specialised by sector or capability. Enough capacity to deliver, senior people actually on the work rather than on the pitch, and a partner who notices if it goes wrong.
Good for: production builds in a regulated context, work that needs both engineering and governance. Bad for: very large multi-workstream transformations where you need sheer headcount.
Large consultancies and systems integrators: £1,500-£3,000+/day, projects £250k+
Brand assurance, scale, and the ability to satisfy a procurement process that requires a supplier of a certain size. Real strengths for genuinely large programmes.
The well-known failure mode is the seniority gradient between the pitch team and the delivery team. This is manageable if you address it in the contract: name the individuals, fix their allocation, and make substitution require your approval.
Good for: enterprise-wide programmes, board-level cover, work that must survive a formal procurement. Bad for: a single well-defined build, where you will pay a substantial premium for overhead you are not using.
What we charge
| Service | Fee | Duration |
|---|---|---|
| AI readiness assessment | From £4,500 | 2-3 weeks |
| AI governance and compliance | From £7,500 | 3-6 weeks |
| Private / self-hosted AI deployment | From £18,000 | 4-8 weeks |
| AI implementation | From £25,000 | 6-12 weeks |
| Advisory retainer | From £1,800/month | Rolling, 30 days’ notice |
Fixed fee wherever the scope can be fixed. If we cannot scope it confidently, we say so and propose a short paid discovery rather than quoting a number we would have to revise.
Where the money actually goes wrong
Having seen a reasonable number of these budgets, the waste is remarkably consistent.
Paying for strategy you already have. A large proportion of AI strategy engagements produce a document confirming what the leadership team already believed, at a cost of £15,000-£35,000. If you can already name the three processes that hurt most, you do not need a strategy phase. You need someone to assess whether AI can address them.
Piloting on synthetic data. The pilot succeeds, and then real data turns out to be messier, more sensitive and differently structured. The pilot proved nothing except that the vendor can build a demonstration. Insist on a small slice of real data under a proper agreement, even if it takes three weeks to arrange; those three weeks are the cheapest de-risking available.
Discovering the compliance requirement at the end. The most expensive failure mode by a wide margin. A system architected around a hosted API, then blocked at information governance, is frequently not fixable by adjustment: the data flows are wrong at the foundation. Rebuild costs typically exceed the original build.
Rented architecture. Beware anything where the consultancy’s own middleware sits permanently between you and your systems, licensed per seat. The build price looks competitive; the five-year cost is not. Ask directly: if we part company in a year, what stops working?
Paying for a proof of concept that was never going to production. PoCs are worth doing when there is genuine technical uncertainty. They are not worth doing to convince a stakeholder who has already decided, or to satisfy a requirement to be seen doing AI. £25,000-£85,000 is a lot to spend on internal politics.
What good value looks like
Reasonable questions to ask any supplier before signing:
- What will you tell me not to build? (If the answer is nothing, they are quoting, not advising.)
- Who specifically does the work, and are they on the call today?
- What do I own at the end, and what stops working if we part company?
- How will we measure whether this worked, and who agrees the measure?
- What data classification will touch this in production, and does the architecture support it?
- What is the exit? Can my team run this without you in six months?
The last one matters most and is asked least. A supplier who is comfortable making themselves unnecessary is worth considerably more than one who is not, and in our experience is the one you end up calling back.
Our pricing page lists everything with what is included. If you want to talk through which tier your problem actually needs, book a call. We will tell you if the answer is “none of them”.