What AI automation costs.
Four lines make up the price: the build, running it, the tools, and your team's time. Most quotes show the first two. Here are all four, with the ranges agencies publish and what we charge.
The four lines on the bill.
The ranges below come from agency pricing guides published in 2026. They are what agencies say they charge, not audited numbers, but they agree with each other closely enough to plan around.
The build
Designing and testing each workflow on your real data. Published agency ranges in 2026: $1,500 to $5,000 for a single small-business workflow, $5,000 to $20,000 for a larger system.
Running it
Monitoring, fixing what breaks when a tool changes, keeping AI models current. Usually $500 to $2,000 a month for a small business.
The tools
Automation platforms like n8n, Make or Zapier, plus AI usage. For most small businesses, a few dollars to a few hundred a month.
Your team's time
Someone still reviews what the AI hands over. Budget for it: it is the line most quotes leave out.
What makes one workflow cost more.
Two workflows can sound alike and price very differently. These four things decide it.
How many tools
Two tools that already talk to each other is a small job. Five tools, one of them old, is not.
How messy the input
Clean form submissions are cheap to automate. Free-text emails, scanned PDFs and handwriting take more work and more checking.
What's at stake
Sorting newsletters can run unattended. Anything touching money, patients or legal records needs approval steps, logging and testing.
How much volume
Ten items a day and ten thousand a day are different builds, with different tool bills.
What we charge.
A $250 workflow review, credited toward the build. Then from $1,500 per workflow to build, and $500 to $1,000 a month to run, depending on how many workflows we look after. The tools and AI usage are billed to you at cost, in accounts in your name.
No savings promises. We'll show you which jobs we'd automate and roughly how many hours each takes today, and you decide whether it's worth it.
The cost nobody quotes.
AI is confidently wrong some of the time. A well-built workflow plans for that: it sends anything uncertain to a person and keeps a record of what it did. That review takes real minutes each week. A quote that leaves it out isn't cheaper, it's incomplete. Where AI needs a person, and where it doesn't
Questions we hear.
How much does AI automation cost for a small business?
Published agency pricing in 2026 puts a single workflow at roughly $1,500 to $5,000 to build and $500 to $2,000 a month to run. The tools themselves are usually the smallest line. Ours start at $1,500 per workflow and $500 to $1,000 a month.
Why is there a monthly fee after the build?
Because automations break quietly. A tool renames a field, an AI model is retired, a login expires, and the workflow stops without telling anyone. The monthly fee pays for someone to notice and fix it.
Can I do it myself with Zapier or Make?
For simple, low-stakes jobs, yes, and you should. The cost shows up later: when it breaks, when nobody remembers how it works, or when it makes a confident mistake with a customer or an invoice.
Will AI automation replace an employee?
Rarely, for a small business. It usually gives back hours from the repetitive part of several people's jobs. Be wary of any quote built on salary savings.
Who pays for the software and AI usage?
You should, directly, in accounts in your business's name. Then the automations are yours, and the bill is visible instead of buried in a markup.
Get a price for your workflows.
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