What does it cost to add AI to a small business?

The short version

Nobody can quote you a real price without seeing the work, so be wary of anyone who does. What we can tell you is how the costs break down and what the pieces usually run.

The assessment

Most engagements start here, and it is fixed price, usually $1,500 to $3,000 depending on the size of the business. You get a written read on where AI is worth it for you, rough numbers on what each thing saves, and an honest call on whether to buy something off the shelf or build. If you go ahead and build with the same person, that fee comes off the build.

Paying for the plan first sounds like an extra step. It is the thing that keeps you from spending real money on the wrong project, which the research says small firms do by under-investing in the parts that make AI actually work.

The build

A focused automation, something that researches leads or sorts intake or reconciles across your tools, tends to land in the low thousands. Bigger or more connected work costs more, and the assessment is where that gets scoped so there are no surprises.

The ongoing model cost usually shocks people by being small. A normal small business runs a normal amount of work, so you are often looking at tens of dollars a month, not a big platform bill. If your data cannot go to the cloud, a private on-prem setup swaps that monthly cost for a one-time machine you own.

Fixing a broken app is its own thing

If you already built something on Replit or Lovable and it keeps falling over, that is a different track. The look-at-it step runs $750 to $1,500, and a full fix and move is commonly $3,000 to $10,000 depending on how rough the app is. More on that in what it costs to fix a Replit app.

If you want a real number for your situation, that is what the assessment produces.