How we price the first system.

The question we are asked most on a first call is the most reasonable one: what will this cost?

Our honest answer is that we will not quote it cold. Here is why, and how pricing works instead.

Why we will not quote cold

A price given before anyone has looked at the work is a guess. Either it is padded to cover what nobody knows, so you pay for our uncertainty, or it is too low, and the gap comes back later as change requests. Neither is a good start to a partnership.

Waiting also protects you. A proposal written before discovery tends to describe the technology, because that is all anyone knows yet. A price set after the Blueprint describes your business: the hours, the systems and the return.

So we price in steps. Each step is small enough to price properly, and each one tells you whether the next is worth taking.

Step 1: the strategy call

It is free, and it lasts 45 minutes, with a founder. There is no pitch deck. We ask how the work really happens and where the hours go. You leave knowing where AI would likely pay in your business, whether or not you work with us.

Step 2: the AI Blueprint, priced up front

Every engagement starts with the AI Blueprint. Over six weeks, we learn how your business works: the departments, the systems, the people and the handoffs. We turn it into a ranked list of where AI pays first, with the expected return for each item. It also covers what we will need from your systems, and how the work will be governed.

The Blueprint has a fixed price, agreed before we start. You know what it costs, what you get and when you get it.

Step 3: the first system, at a fixed fee

The first system is a fixed fee, set from what the Blueprint finds. By then we both know the scope, the systems involved, the data, the people who will use it and how success will be measured. That is what makes a fixed price honest.

We agree the acceptance criteria before the build starts. If you want to change the scope partway through, which happens and is often a good sign, we reopen the conversation openly rather than absorb it quietly or bill it by surprise.

Most first systems are live six to twelve weeks after the Blueprint.

What it costs to run

A system has running costs as well as a build cost: hosting, and the AI models it calls. We show you these before you commit, and we design to keep them sensible. Simple tasks use small, inexpensive models; heavy reasoning uses larger ones only where it earns its keep. If the system runs on your own cloud, those costs sit on your own bill, where you can see them.

What you own

You own everything we build: the systems, the data, the prompts and the documentation. There is no licence that holds your own work hostage. If you ever want to run it without us, you can.

Help with the cost

For Irish businesses, public co-funding can sometimes apply. One client, a fit-out manufacturer, found that a detailed Blueprint made its Enterprise Ireland co-funding application straightforward. We cannot promise funding, but we will tell you on the first call if it is worth looking at.

What we are really pricing

A first system is not the end of the spend. It is the start of a way of working. We price it to be worth doing on its own, because if it isn’t, there should not be a second one. When it is, the second system is faster and cheaper, because it reuses what the first one built.