What does AI automation cost a UK small business?

Most UK consultancies charge £800 to £1,500 a day, and a first automation project usually lands between £10,000 and £30,000. Jig charges £2,400 fixed to automate one process in 21 days: £1,200 to start and £1,200 only if the measured time saving matches the projection. Day rates reward time spent. Fixed prices reward results. If a supplier won't publish a number, the number probably depends on your budget rather than the work.

That's the whole answer. The rest of this page explains why the range is so wide, and how to avoid paying for a strategy document instead of a working system.

Why the prices are all over the place

Three different things get sold under the same word, and they aren't comparable.

What you're buying	Typical UK price	What you end up with
Advice — audits, strategy, roadmaps	£2,000 – £10,000	A document. Useful if you genuinely don't know where to start, and useless if you do.
A build — working automation	£10,000 – £30,000 for a first project	Software your team actually uses.
A retainer — ongoing support	£1,500 – £5,000 a month	Right once systems are live. Premature before that.

The gap exists because almost nobody publishes a price, which makes comparison shopping difficult and keeps the number negotiable. That's good for suppliers and bad for buyers.

What we charge

£2,400 to automate one process, delivered in 21 days, for businesses of roughly 25 to 150 people. £1,200 to start. The second £1,200 is due only if the measured saving matches what we projected in the audit, in writing, before any work began.

If it misses, you keep the system and don't pay the balance.

We're cheaper than the market because we're new, and we'd rather earn the case studies than argue about a price with nothing to point at. That will change once there are numbers on the wall.

Four questions to ask anyone before you hire them

Ask these in the first conversation. Most providers fail at least two.

Show me something you've built.

A working system on a screen, not a case-study PDF. If the answer is a slide deck, you're buying advice.

Does it run inside our systems?

The right answer names your actual stack — email, Excel, your CRM, your job system. The wrong answer is a new platform your staff have to log into.

What's the price?

If it takes three meetings to hear a number, the number depends on you rather than on the work.

What happens if it doesn't work?

Fixed price with a results clause beats a day rate for a first project, because it moves the risk off you.

What to automate first

For a business of 25 to 150 people, the first jobs worth automating are almost always the same four: reading enquiries and drafting quotes, moving data between two systems that don't talk, chasing the same information every week, and rebuilding the same report. None of it needs custom machine learning. That's low-four-figure territory, not six.

When it isn't worth it

If a job takes ten minutes and happens twice a week, leave it alone. Roughly two hours a week is where a build starts paying for itself inside a year, and below that the honest advice is to spend the money elsewhere.

Work out what your own worst job costs — nine questions, no email required.

Straight answers