Independent freelancers charge $75 to $150 an hour or $600 to $1,200 a day. Boutiques charge $150 to $350 an hour, $1,500 to $2,500 a day, or $2,000 to $8,000 a month on retainer. Mid-tier firms charge $300 to $600, Big 4 $300 to $800, MBB $300 to $900, and fractional CAIOs $5,000 to $30,000 a month.
This is a rate-table lookup with arithmetic on top. It multiplies a published rate band by the volume you enter and shows the low, mid and high totals, plus where any rate you were quoted sits inside its tier. It models the inputs you entered; it is not a quote and it evaluates no specific firm.
Six tiers trade in this market and the gap between the cheapest and most expensive hour is roughly twelve-fold. That gap is not twelve-fold competence; it is a difference in what is attached to the hour. A freelancer at $75 to $150 an hour sells one person's time. There is no bench, no review, no continuity if they get sick, and the rate reflects that honestly. For a defined build with a defined end, it is frequently the best value in the entire table. A boutique at $150 to $350 an hour sells a small senior team. The premium buys someone to review the work, capacity to absorb a schedule slip, and advice that is connected to delivery rather than separated from it. Mid-tier at $300 to $600, Big 4 at $300 to $800 and MBB at $300 to $900 overlap heavily at the bottom and separate at the top. The overlap is real: a mid-tier senior and a Big 4 senior often cost the same. What differs is the ceiling, the ability to staff several workstreams simultaneously, and the institutional weight of the name in a boardroom. A fractional Chief AI Officer at $5,000 to $30,000 a month is a different product entirely. You are not buying hours, you are buying part-time ownership of a decision area.
Buy hourly when the work is small, bounded and you can specify it. Hourly is the most honest unit for a defined task and the worst unit for anything open-ended, because it puts you and the supplier on opposite sides of every question about scope. Buy daily when the work is workshop-shaped: discovery sessions, architecture reviews, training. A day rate at $600 to $1,200 for a freelancer or $1,500 to $2,500 for a boutique is usually discounted against the hourly equivalent, and it removes the incentive to watch the clock. Buy a retainer when you need availability rather than output. A boutique retainer at $2,000 to $8,000 a month buys a standing claim on senior attention. The failure mode is that a retainer with no defined deliverable quietly becomes a subscription nobody uses, so attach a monthly checkpoint to it. Buy a fractional CAIO at $5,000 to $30,000 a month when the problem is that nobody senior owns the AI agenda. That is an organisational problem and no amount of hourly delivery work fixes it.
They own the decisions that no individual project owner can make: which problems to attack in what order, which vendors to use, what governance and data handling rules apply, what to build versus buy, and what capability needs to exist inside the company in two years. The band is wide because the role scales with the organisation. At $5,000 a month you are buying a few days of senior attention and a roadmap that gets reviewed. At $30,000 you are buying most of a senior executive's week, including presence in leadership meetings and accountability for outcomes. The honest test for whether you need one is whether your AI spend is currently a collection of unconnected pilots run by whoever was enthusiastic. If it is, a fractional CAIO usually pays for itself by cancelling things, which is the least glamorous and most valuable thing in the role. TrainYourAgent publishes fractional CAIO pricing on the same basis as everything else: $1,000 audit · $5,000–$30,000/mo fractional CAIO.
Match the tier to the type of uncertainty you have, not to the size of your company. If you know what to build and need it built, buy the cheapest tier that can build it reliably. Paying MBB rates to implement a known integration is a straightforward waste. If you do not know what to build, and the cost of building the wrong thing is large, the calculus changes and senior strategy time is cheap relative to a misdirected build. If the problem is that your organisation cannot decide, no tier of external advice fixes it and you need a fractional owner instead. If the problem is regulatory, audit-adjacent or will be scrutinised by a board that cares about the name on the report, the institutional tiers are priced for that specific reason and it is legitimate to buy it.
Find the tier in the table, then find where the quoted rate sits inside its band. A rate at the top of the boutique band, $340 an hour, is not out of line, but it should come with the seniority that justifies it, and it is reasonable to ask who specifically is doing the work. A rate below the bottom of its tier band deserves more scrutiny than one above it. Nobody sustainably delivers boutique work at freelancer rates, so a quote that does one of those things is usually describing the other. Ask for the blended rate, not the headline rate, on any engagement staffed by more than one person. Larger firms staff as a pyramid, and the effective rate you pay is usually well below the partner rate you were quoted and well above the analyst rate doing most of the work. Finally, convert everything to a total. A rate is a unit, and units are easy to argue about and hard to compare. The calculator on this page exists mostly to turn rates back into totals so you can compare tiers on the same footing.
It depends on tier. Observed 2026 bands are $75 to $150 for an independent freelancer, $150 to $350 for a boutique, $300 to $600 mid-tier, $300 to $800 at Big 4 and $300 to $900 at MBB firms.
$600 to $1,200 a day for an independent freelancer and $1,500 to $2,500 a day for a boutique. Day rates are typically discounted against the hourly equivalent and are the right unit for workshop-shaped work.
$5,000 to $30,000 a month in the observed 2026 band. The bottom of the band buys a few days of senior attention and a reviewed roadmap; the top buys most of a senior executive's week and accountability for outcomes.
Observed retainers run $2,000 to $8,000 a month and typically buy standing access to senior attention rather than a fixed block of hours. Inclusions vary enormously, so compare what is delivered before comparing prices.