Ask three AI consultants what something costs and you'll get three different kinds of answer: an hourly rate, a fixed price, a monthly fee. None of them is dodging. They're selling different deals, and each one puts the risk of the job running long on a different person.
The board above has the published prices, grouped by what they're a price for. The rest of this is how to compare them for your own job.
Hourly, fixed, monthly or a hire
By the hour. You pay for the time, so if the job runs long, you pay for that too. It suits a small, clear piece of work, or a few hours of advice from someone who's built this before. AI consultants on Upwork generally charge $35 to $60 an hour, and the most experienced charge $100 or more.
A fixed price. The consultant carries the overrun, so the price carries a cushion. It's only as good as the scope written into it: “an AI assistant for our office” isn't a scope, “answer these 30 questions from our price list and hand anything else to Maria” is.
Every month. A retainer or subscription buys steady capacity rather than one job. It makes sense when there's a list of things to build and keep running, not when there's one project. Ask whether you can pause it in a quiet month.
A hire. Only when there's full-time work for years. A software developer's median pay was $135,980 in May 2025. Wages are about 70% of what private employers spend per worker, so with benefits and payroll taxes that's about $194,000 a year, and that's a general developer, not an AI specialist.
One job, three ways
By the hour
- Estimate
- 40 hours at $60
- If it takes 40
- $2,400
- If it takes 70
- $4,200
Cheaper while the job stays under about 67 hours. Past that, the overrun is yours.
Fixed price
- For the scope in writing
- $4,000
- Excludes
- hosting, API usage, subscriptions
- Changes after sign-off
- $95/hr
The overrun is the consultant's problem. Anything not written down is a change order.
Monthly
- Subscription
- $5,500 a month
- Covers
- one build at a time, from your list
- Pause or cancel
- anytime
Wrong for one job. Starts to pay when there's a list behind it.
Every month after, whichever you pick: the software it runs on, the AI usage at your volume, and someone to fix it when a form or a login changes.
At $60 an hour, the hourly line is cheaper only while the job stays under about 67 hours, which is $4,000 divided by $60. At 70 hours it's $4,200. The fixed price buys a known total. The monthly line is the wrong deal for one job. It starts to pay when there's a list behind this one, and when the upkeep in the box above would otherwise be billed by the hour.
The part most quotes leave out
The build is a one-time cost. Running it isn't. Whatever you build runs on software you pay for every month, uses an AI model that bills by how much you use it, and breaks when something it depends on changes, like a form, a login or an export. The line that covers all that in a quote often reads something like: “Hosting, API usage and third-party subscriptions billed separately. Changes after sign-off at $95/hr.”
A fixed price covers what's written down. Anything else is a change order at their hourly rate. So get the monthly running cost written into the quote, at your volume. And ask whose name the accounts and the code are in. If it's theirs, leaving means rebuilding.
That's also where AI costs differ from ordinary software. A demo that answers your questions well can take an afternoon. It sounds just as sure when it's wrong, which is why the checking costs money. Making it right on your real messages, every day, is most of the work: testing it against hundreds of real examples, deciding what it does when it isn't sure, and having a person check the answers that matter. A quote that's cheap because it skips that part isn't cheap.
Start with a plan, and keep it small
A paid assessment before any build is worth it, as long as it's sized like a plan and not like a project. Upwork lists AI readiness audits at $1,500 to $4,000, and four firms that publish fixed prices charge $3,500 to $9,500. Whatever you pay, you should come away with a written scope you could hand to anyone on the board above for a fixed quote, plus what each piece will cost to run. Sometimes the scope is smaller than you expected. Part of the job may be ordinary automation, a $29.99-a-month Zapier plan with no AI in it, and part may be ChatGPT Business or Claude Team at $25 a seat a month, with two seats minimum, and an afternoon of setup.
What I charge
My roadmap is $1,500 for about two weeks, credited in full if you continue. After that it's currently a $5,500 monthly subscription: one build at a time, shipped to production. Pause or cancel anytime. You own everything.
Here's what that isn't. It's one engineer, not a team, so if you need five things built at once, an agency will get there sooner. If you need a few hours of advice, an hourly consultant is cheaper. And if the roadmap's scope is a Zapier plan and two seats of a chat assistant, that's what it says.