What does a custom AI project cost for a mid-sized company?
A custom AI project for a mid-sized company typically costs from around $25,000 for a pilot that automates one job, to around $75,000 for a workflow across several of your systems, to $150,000 and up for a customer-facing assistant or platform. Running costs come on top, and for most internal tools they are tens of dollars a month, not thousands.
Evidence
Running costs are the part vendors rarely mention, so here is one of mine. Every week this site's citation tracker asks AI assistants the questions our clients ask, about 180 answers a run, and records which sources they cite. Its AI bill is read from production, not estimated.
- $0.54 to $1.10 per weekly run of the citation tracker
- 3 runs recorded, each billed on its own
- About 180 AI answers collected and read per run
The same is true of the internal tools I build for clients: the build is the cost, and the monthly bill is small enough to be a rounding error beside it.
Around $25,000: a pilot, one tool for one process
A single internal tool that removes one repetitive job. Reading invoices, delivery slips or forms into your accounting or inventory system, or drafting replies to the common half of your inbox for a person to approve. It is built on your data, connected to one existing system, and has a review screen so nothing goes out unchecked.
This is roughly where a worthwhile custom AI project starts, and the right first step for most companies: it proves the idea on real work before anything larger is committed.
Around $75,000: an integration, a workflow across several systems
AI woven through a whole process rather than one step: intake, classification, drafting and hand-off across two or three of your systems, such as email, the CRM and the document store, with reporting on what the AI did and what a person changed.
This is the size where most of the measurable savings live, and where an AI Audit beforehand earns its keep by choosing the workflow.
$150,000 and up: a custom assistant or platform
Something your customers touch, or a system that replaces a category of work across the company. A customer-facing assistant that answers from your ERP and product documentation, with a person reviewing anything it is unsure of, or an internal platform several departments run on. At this size the work around the AI belongs in the budget too: the data it reads from, a security review and training the team that runs it.
What drives the cost
The AI model is rarely the expensive part. The cost follows the work around it:
- How many systems it connects to. Each one, whether accounting, CRM, ERP or a shared drive, is its own integration to build and test.
- The state of your data. Clean records in one system cost less to build on than the same records spread across spreadsheets and inboxes.
- Who sees the output. A tool your staff check before anything goes out needs less safeguarding than an assistant your customers talk to directly.
- How much must be checked. Review screens, logs of what the AI did and reports on what people changed are part of the build, and they are what makes it trustworthy.
- Security and privacy requirements. A contract that keeps data in Canada, or on your own machines, adds work.
These are ranges, not quotes. A real number comes from looking at your process, which is what the AI Audit is for.
Running costs each month
Every estimate I give includes what the system costs to run each month, because AI API bills are real. For most internal tools it is tens of dollars a month, not thousands: a pilot reading a distributor's paperwork runs at under $50 a month, and an intake workflow across three systems at $100 to $300 a month. A customer-facing assistant costs more, in proportion to how many people use it.
Running costs are an operating expense, paid from the business each month, separate from the build.
Next step
A Canadian company does not have to pay for the build up front. BDC's LIFT program lends from $25,000 for AI projects, which is where a pilot starts. See BDC LIFT for AI projects for what a loan costs each month, and AI funding for Canadian businesses for the other programs.
Tell me the process you want AI to take on, and I will tell you which of these shapes it is and what it would cost to build and to run.