GUIDE 02
What AI actually costs
Short answer
Most of the cost of an AI project is not the model. It is the work of connecting a system that is right most of the time to a business process that has to be right every time. Four factors move the price, and three costs never appear in the quote at all.
The workbook shows where the days go in a project, how the work is priced and why, how to measure whether it is worth doing, and why a €28,000 automation can pay while a €3,500 one is waste.
What is inside
- Chapter 01 — What you are actually paying for: where the days go
- Chapter 02 — The four things that move the price
- Chapter 03 — The three costs that never appear in the quote
- Chapter 04 — How the work is priced, and why
- Chapter 05 — Whether it is worth it: two numbers and one question
- Chapter 06 — Why expensive can be worth it and cheap can be waste
- Chapter 07 — Reading a quote: seven questions for any vendor
Download the workbook
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What are you actually paying for?
Not the AI. The model is usually the smallest line on the invoice. You are paying for the work of connecting a system that is right most of the time to a business process that has to be right every time — discovery, integration, the approval and rollback path for anything that writes, and testing proportional to what a wrong output would cost.
A read-only automation across one documented system is eight to twelve days of work. The same automation across four systems, one writing into your accounting package and one requiring a judgement call, is fifty to seventy. Identical description on the proposal, six times the work.
Why can an expensive automation pay while a cheap one wastes money?
Because the deciding variable is volume, not price. A €28,000 automation across a five-person back office frees 3,640 hours a year and pays back in about eleven months. A €3,500 automation aimed at one weekly report frees 125 hours and never pays back at all.
The second factor is what happens to the freed time. If the person stays and is paid the same, you have not saved money — you have released capacity, and it is only worth something if it lands on work that was not getting done. Assume half of it evaporates unless somebody is deliberate about it.
Questions we are asked
How much does an AI automation cost?
Bespoke automation is quoted rather than list-priced, because the honest range runs from a few thousand euros to well past thirty thousand. Four factors set it: how many systems it touches, whether it writes or only reads, how much judgement is required, and who operates it afterwards. A thirty-minute conversation covering those four is enough to place a project in a band.
What costs are usually missing from a quote?
Three. Data preparation, which cannot be outsourced because only your team knows which document is current. Maintenance, which runs 15–20% of the build cost per year and rises after year three. And the running cost at real volume, which scales with success.
How do I work out whether it is worth it?
Take the hours a week the process consumes, multiply by 52 and by the loaded hourly cost of the people doing it. On the Greek average full-time salary that is about €14.17 an hour once employer contributions and the fourteen-month payment cycle are counted. Compare that against the year-one cost of owning the system.
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