AI automation agency pricing: what the market actually charges
Published ranges span three orders of magnitude. SuperDupr publishes $2,500–$25,000 per project with $300–$800/mo support. DestiLabs publishes $8,000–$25,000 for a proof of concept and $80,000–$200,000 for multi-agent systems. Directory-observed hourly rates run roughly $10–$150. Our own published price is a $497 pilot, $4,950–$9,950 build and $1,997–$4,997/mo.
Disclosure, before anything else
Disclosure: TrainYourAgent is an AI automation agency. This page prices our own market, our own prices are in the table alongside everyone else's, and we are not the cheapest option on it. The category norm is agencies publishing pricing guides that conclude their own tier is correct; we have instead published the figures and let you see where we sit.
The options, and the losing case for each
Fixed-price project — A defined scope for a defined number, delivered and handed over. Best for: Well-specified work with a clear finish line. SuperDupr publishes $2,500-$25,000 per project with $300-$800/mo support afterwards, and breaks that down further into voice agent deployment at $1,500-$5,000 setup plus $200-$800/mo, CRM automation at $3,000-$8,000, and full workflow systems at $10,000-$30,000. Fixed price transfers scope risk to the agency, which is what you are paying for. Not for: Discovery. A fixed price requires a fixed scope, and if you cannot write the scope, the agency will price the uncertainty into the number or hand you a change-order process. Both are worse than paying for a short paid discovery first.
Tiered build pricing — Published bands by system complexity, with matching run costs. Best for: Buyers who want to know which bracket they are in before the sales call. DestiLabs publishes four tiers: a conversational agent at $8,000-$25,000 to build and $500-$2,000/mo to run, a task-execution agent at $25,000-$80,000 and $1,500-$5,000/mo, a multi-agent system at $80,000-$200,000 and $4,000-$12,000/mo, and an enterprise platform at $200,000-$500,000 and up with $10,000-$50,000+/mo. Publishing the run cost next to the build cost is unusual and useful. Not for: Anyone who mistakes the tier for the price. These are bands, not quotes, and the difference between the top and bottom of a band is often the entire budget of a smaller business. Use them to work out which conversation you are having, not what you will pay.
Monthly retainer — Ongoing build-and-operate for a recurring fee. Best for: Systems that need to keep working rather than just be delivered. Published market retainers run from $300-$800/mo for light support up to $10,000-$50,000+/mo at enterprise scale. Our own published retainer is $1,997-$4,997/mo after a $4,950-$9,950 build fee, and our published automation-service range is $5,000-$50,000+ to build and $3,000-$20,000/mo to operate. The retainer is what pays for the maintenance nobody budgets and everybody needs. Not for: Finished work. A retainer on a system that no longer changes is a subscription to nothing. Agree in writing what the monthly buys — hours, response times, specific improvements — and revisit it every quarter, or it quietly becomes rent.
Hourly and time-and-materials — Pay for time, usually from individuals or smaller shops. Best for: Genuine unknowns and small pieces of work. Directory listings observed on DesignRush show AI development rates spanning roughly $10 to $150 an hour, with the low end offshore and the high end specialist US boutiques, and minimum project budgets banded from under $1,000 through $1,000-$10,000, $10,000-$25,000, $25,000-$50,000 and $50,000 and up. Not for: Large projects. Hourly billing puts all the scope risk on you and gives the supplier no incentive to be efficient, which is a bad combination past about forty hours. Use it for discovery and small defined tasks, then move to fixed price once you know what you are building.
Enterprise consultancies — The large firms, at the prices you would expect. Best for: Organisation-wide transformation with procurement, governance and a board to satisfy. Published third-party figures put Accenture and Deloitte Digital engagements at $100,000 and up. What you buy is capacity, insurance and a name that survives an audit. Not for: Anything an SMB is trying to do. At these prices the discovery phase alone exceeds most small businesses' entire AI budget, and the deliverable is frequently a strategy rather than a running system.
TrainYourAgent (ours) — Our own published pricing, in the same table as everyone else's. Best for: SMBs and mid-market operators who want a specific system built and run without a headcount. Published: a $497 pilot, a $4,950-$9,950 build fee, $1,997-$4,997/mo to run, 21 days from kickoff to live, and a 30-day money-back guarantee on the build fee measured against a written spec. Separately published: $1,000 audit for consulting and AI search work, $5,000-$50,000+ builds with $3,000-$20,000/mo operation for larger automation engagements, and $35,000-$150,000 for software engagements. Not for: Buyers who want the cheapest hour. Directory-observed offshore rates start around $10/hr and we are not competing there. Also not for enterprise transformation — at that scale you want a firm with a governance practice and an indemnity policy, and that is not us. And not for anyone whose requirement is solved by a $49/mo product, which we will tell you on the call.
Published pricing from agencies that publish it, read off their own pages on 23 August 2026. Agencies that do not publish are listed as not publishing, because that is the finding.
SuperDupr — Project / build: $2,500–$25,000 per project; Ongoing: $300–$800/mo support; Stated minimum: None stated; Published where: Its own site
DestiLabs (tiered) — Project / build: $8,000–$25,000 PoC · $25,000–$80,000 task agent · $80,000–$200,000 multi-agent · $200,000–$500,000+ enterprise; Ongoing: $500–$2,000 · $1,500–$5,000 · $4,000–$12,000 · $10,000–$50,000+; Stated minimum: None stated; Published where: Its own site
DestiLabs (workflow framing) — Project / build: PoC ~$8k–$25k · single workflow ~$35k–$70k · multi-workflow ~$70k–$150k+; Ongoing: Voice run costs $0.12–$0.15 per connected minute; Stated minimum: None stated; Published where: Its own site
Latenode — Project / build: $2,000–$15,000 per project; Ongoing: Platform $17/mo; Stated minimum: None stated; Published where: Cited by SuperDupr
Thoughtful Automation — Project / build: Reported as starting at $50,000; Ongoing: Not published; Stated minimum: Reported six-month minimum; Published where: Third-party only — see note
Accenture / Deloitte Digital — Project / build: $100,000+; Ongoing: Not published; Stated minimum: Not published; Published where: Cited by SuperDupr
Freelancers (AAA model) — Project / build: $1,000–$10,000 per project; Ongoing: Varies; Stated minimum: None; Published where: Cited by SuperDupr
TrainYourAgent — Project / build: $497 pilot · $4,950–$9,950 build · $5,000–$50,000+ larger automation · $35,000–$150,000 software; Ongoing: $1,997–$4,997/mo · $3,000–$20,000/mo on larger engagements; Stated minimum: None; monthly terms; Published where: Our own pricing page
Footnotes on that table
Thoughtful Automation's row carries no verified figure. The '$50,000 minimum with a six-month commitment' claim appears in a third-party agency listing and we could not confirm it against a Thoughtful first-party page, so we have not published it as a price. There are also third-party reports of the company sunsetting stand-alone services, which we could not verify either.
Latenode, Accenture, Deloitte Digital and the freelancer band come from SuperDupr's published agency comparison rather than from those companies' own pages, and are labelled accordingly.
The DesignRush figures are observations of agency listings in a directory, not a rate card and not a survey.
The TrainYourAgent row is our own published pricing. We are one of the compared options and have disclosed it above.
Why is AI agency pricing so hard to find?
Because most agencies do not publish it, and the ones that write 'pricing guides' overwhelmingly publish ranges wide enough to accommodate any conversation. There are three defensible reasons for that. Scope genuinely varies enormously — the same sentence, 'we want an AI agent for customer service', describes a $5,000 project at one company and a $250,000 project at another. Value-based pricing is real, and an agency that saves a business $400,000 a year has an argument for charging more than cost-plus. And competitive concealment works: publishing a rate card invites undercutting. There is also one indefensible reason, which is that an unpublished price can be set after the agency has learned what you can afford. That is common enough in this market that it is worth naming. The consequence for a buyer is that you cannot benchmark without doing what we have done here: reading the pages of the minority who publish and treating everything else as unknown. What follows is exactly that, with each figure traced to where it came from.
What do the agencies that publish actually charge?
SuperDupr publishes project pricing of $2,500-$25,000 with $300-$800/mo support afterwards, and further breaks its work down into voice agent deployment at $1,500-$5,000 setup plus $200-$800/mo, CRM automation at $3,000-$8,000, and full workflow systems at $10,000-$30,000. That is the most granular published breakdown we found at the SMB end of the market. DestiLabs publishes the most complete tiered structure: a conversational agent at $8,000-$25,000 to build and $500-$2,000/mo to run; a task-execution agent at $25,000-$80,000 and $1,500-$5,000/mo; a multi-agent system at $80,000-$200,000 and $4,000-$12,000/mo; and an enterprise platform at $200,000-$500,000 and up with $10,000-$50,000+/mo. Elsewhere on its site the same firm frames the same work as a proof of concept at roughly $8,000-$25,000, a single-workflow agent at roughly $35,000-$70,000 and multi-workflow automation at roughly $70,000-$150,000 and up, alongside voice run costs of $0.12-$0.15 per connected minute. Our own published pricing sits deliberately at the lower end for a narrower scope: a $497 pilot, a $4,950-$9,950 build fee and $1,997-$4,997/mo to run, with separately published ranges of $5,000-$50,000+ to build and $3,000-$20,000/mo to operate for larger automation engagements and $35,000-$150,000 for software work. Below all of that sit individual contractors, where directory listings show hourly rates from roughly $10 to $150 and minimum project budgets banded from under $1,000 to $50,000 and up. Above it sit the large consultancies at $100,000 and above.
Which figures in circulation did not survive checking?
Several, and it is worth naming them because they appear in comparison content that reads authoritatively. SuperDupr is frequently cited as charging $5,000-$50,000+ per project. Its own published figure is $2,500-$25,000, with $300-$800/mo support. The support figure is right and the project range is roughly double what the agency states. Thoughtful Automation is frequently cited as starting at $50,000 with a six-month minimum. We could not confirm that against a Thoughtful first-party page — the claim appears in another agency's published comparison. We have therefore not published it as a price, and there are additionally third-party reports that the company has been sunsetting stand-alone services, which we could not verify either. If Thoughtful is on your shortlist, get current terms directly. Directory hourly rates are frequently cited as $35-$149. The listings we observed span a wider band, roughly $10-$150, with the bottom end being offshore providers that a US buyer may or may not consider comparable. The banded minimum project budgets we observed were under $1,000, $1,000-$10,000, $10,000-$25,000, $25,000-$50,000 and $50,000 and up. We also could not verify a widely repeated '$1,000 flat AI audit' attributed to a firm trading as The AI Agency. No first-party page confirmed it, so it does not appear in our table — though it is worth noting that a four-figure paid audit is a common and sensible entry product across the category, and our own published audit price is $1,000.
How should you evaluate a quote?
Four questions, in this order, and the answers matter more than the number. What exactly is delivered, in nouns? 'An AI agent that handles inbound service calls, integrated with your scheduling system, with a written runbook' is a deliverable. 'AI transformation' is not. If the proposal cannot be restated as a list of things that will exist at the end, the price cannot be evaluated. What happens if you stop paying the monthly? If the system stops running, you have bought a subscription with a large setup fee and should price it as one over three years. If it keeps running and you lose only maintenance, that is a genuinely different product. Who owns the accounts? Model API keys, platform subscriptions, phone numbers and repositories should be in your name with the agency granted access. An agency that resists this is telling you where its leverage comes from. What is the exit? Ask directly what happens if you hire in-house in twelve months. A serious firm has an answer and will write it down. Ours is that accounts stay in your name, the written build spec is yours, and the retainer is monthly.
How should you evaluate a quote? — specifics
Deliverables stated as nouns, not outcomes.
Written answer on what stops when the retainer stops.
Accounts and keys in your name from day one.
A handover plan agreed before you sign, not after.
What is a fair price, given all this?
Fair is whatever survives a comparison to the alternative, and the alternative is usually one of three things. Against a packaged product: if a $49/mo AI receptionist does the job, no build fee is fair. This eliminates a large share of prospective engagements and any agency worth hiring will tell you so on the first call. Against an in-house hire: a software developer's US median wage is $133,080 and BLS puts benefits at 30.1% of total compensation, so roughly $190,000 loaded. An engagement that delivers less than a full role's worth of value should cost meaningfully less than that, and most published SMB engagements do — a $9,950 build plus $4,997/mo is about $69,000 in year one. Against doing nothing: this is the comparison nobody runs and the only one that actually determines whether the spend was correct. If you can count what the problem costs — missed calls, rekeyed records, hours lost — then any price below that number over a sensible payback period is defensible, and any price above it is not, no matter how reasonable it looks next to a competitor's quote. The specific number matters far less than whether you can answer those three comparisons. Buyers who can, rarely overpay. Buyers who cannot, frequently do, at every price point on this page.
Figures we deliberately did not publish
Thoughtful Automation's '$50,000 minimum, six-month commitment'. Could not be confirmed against a first-party page; it appears only in another agency's published comparison. Not published as a price here.
The '$1,000 flat AI audit' attributed to a firm trading as The AI Agency. No first-party confirmation found, so it is absent from the table.
Any market average or median for AI agency pricing. No verifiable survey exists that we could find, so this page publishes only individual firms' published figures.
Latenode's, Accenture's and Deloitte Digital's figures, which come from SuperDupr's published comparison rather than from those firms' own pages, and are labelled as such in the table.
Price log — what was read, and where
SuperDupr: Projects $2,500–$25,000 with $300–$800/mo support; voice agent deployment $1,500–$5,000 setup plus $200–$800/mo; CRM automation $3,000–$8,000; full workflow systems $10,000–$30,000. Also cites Latenode $2,000–$15,000 per project with a $17/mo platform, Thoughtful Automation from $50,000 with a six-month minimum, Accenture/Deloitte Digital $100,000+, and vetted freelancers $1,000–$10,000 — read from https://superdupr.com/blog/best-ai-automation-agencies on 2026-08-23. STALE FIGURE CORRECTED. The commonly quoted SuperDupr range of '$5,000–$50,000+' is roughly double what SuperDupr publishes.
DestiLabs: Tier 1 $8,000–$25,000 build, $500–$2,000/mo · Tier 2 $25,000–$80,000, $1,500–$5,000/mo · Tier 3 $80,000–$200,000, $4,000–$12,000/mo · Tier 4 $200,000–$500,000+, $10,000–$50,000+/mo. Headline range $8,000–$350,000+ — read from https://www.destilabs.com/blog/ai-agent-development-cost-2026 on 2026-08-23
DestiLabs: PoC ~$8k–$25k · single-workflow agent ~$35k–$70k · multi-workflow automation ~$70k–$150k+ · voice run costs $0.12–$0.15 per connected minute — read from https://www.destilabs.com/blog/best-ai-automation-agencies-2026 on 2026-08-23. The brief's '$8–25k PoC, $35–150k+ builds' matches this page.
DesignRush: AI development agency hourly rates observed spanning roughly $10–$150/hr; minimum project budgets banded under $1,000, $1,000–$10,000, $10,000–$25,000, $25,000–$50,000, and $50,000 & up — read from https://www.designrush.com/agency/ai-companies on 2026-08-23. PARTIALLY CORRECTED. The commonly quoted '$35–149/hr' band is narrower than what the listings actually show.
TrainYourAgent: $497 pilot · $4,950–$9,950 build · $1,997–$4,997/mo run · 21 days to live · 30-day money-back on the build fee. Also published: $1,000 audit; $5,000–$50,000+ build and $3,000–$20,000/mo operate for larger automation; $35,000–$150,000 per software engagement — read from https://www.trainyouragent.com/pricing on 2026-08-23. Our own published pricing. Disclosed above.
US Bureau of Labor Statistics: Software developer median annual wage $133,080 (May 2024); benefits 30.1% of total compensation (ECEC, released 12 June 2026) — read from https://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-technology/software-developers.htm on 2026-08-23. Used for the in-house comparison benchmark.
How much do AI automation agencies charge?
Published figures span three orders of magnitude. SuperDupr publishes $2,500-$25,000 per project with $300-$800/mo support. DestiLabs publishes $8,000-$25,000 for a proof of concept up to $200,000-$500,000+ for an enterprise platform. Directory-observed hourly rates run roughly $10-$150. Our own published pricing is a $497 pilot, $4,950-$9,950 build and $1,997-$4,997/mo.
What is a typical AI agency retainer?
Published ranges run from $300-$800/mo for light support, through $1,500-$5,000/mo for an operated task-execution agent, to $10,000-$50,000+/mo at enterprise scale. Our published retainer is $1,997-$4,997/mo, or $3,000-$20,000/mo on larger automation engagements. Ask what stops if you stop paying — the answer changes what you are actually buying.
Why won't most AI agencies publish their prices?
Partly because scope genuinely varies enormously, partly because value-based pricing is legitimate, and partly because an unpublished price can be set after the agency learns what you can afford. Publishing is a costly signal: agencies that do it are willing to be compared and have scoping repeatable enough to have a price.
What should a proof of concept cost?
Published ranges are roughly $8,000-$25,000. What matters more than the price is the design: one workflow, one integration, one input type, a named metric with a numeric pass mark agreed before kickoff, and real data rather than curated examples. A proof of concept without a pre-agreed pass mark produces a demo and no decision.