AI-implementatie

What does implementing AI cost?

Marc Cornelius22 October 2026 · 4 min read

What does implementing AI cost? The honest answer is: it depends. Except that is a lousy answer to walk away with. So I will just give you the real numbers, the ranges we use, and where the money goes. So you do not have to guess and do not end up facing surprises.

Fixed prices, no hourly billing

We work with fixed prices. Never by the hour. Hourly billing is dead in the AI era, because AI makes most work faster and you would be punishing yourself for your own speed. With a fixed price you know where you stand upfront. If a job overruns because we hit teething problems, that is our problem, not your invoice. It is also the fairest incentive: we benefit from efficiency, you from a predictable price.

The ranges, right out on the table

An in-company AI workshop runs between 1500 and 2500 euros. A seat at an open workshop costs 300 to 400 euros per person. A Business OS setup, meaning AI embedded firmly into how your business runs, ranges from 1000 to 4000 euros, depending on the size of the company. A prototype taken to a real product via AI sits between 3000 and 15,000 euros. Genuinely custom software sits between 5000 and 30,000 euros. Wide ranges, true. What you pay exactly depends on the size and the complexity of your process.

From what budget it makes sense

Below 4000 euros, custom work gets hard to justify. Not because we would rather not, but because below that figure you cannot build enough for it to genuinely help. Have a smaller budget? Start with a workshop or a Business OS setup and build out from there. Starting small is fine. But do not leave yourself short on half a product that never reaches the finish line.

“Below 4000 euros, custom work gets hard to justify. Start with a workshop and build out from there.”

Argo: from a classic 30 to 40k to a tenth

Argo made quotes via an Excel sheet per client, with all the manual work around it. Having such a quoting process built classically cost 30 to 40,000 euros. We built it for about a tenth of that. How? With Claude and Claude Code I build working prototypes and a solid base, which I hand to our developers. That saves us weeks together. The same job that used to cost 50 to 150,000 euros can now be done 10 times faster and more efficiently. We pass that gain on in the price.

The costs owners underestimate

The build price is not the whole bill. Two things get consistently forgotten. One: maintenance and hosting, count on roughly 150 to 300 euros a month. A tool is a living thing, not a one-off purchase. Two, and this one is pricier: adoption. A tool nobody uses is 100 percent waste, whatever the build cost. We have seen it: a well-built system nobody touched after delivery, because the way of working was never aligned with the team. Six months later the contract was cancelled. The most expensive cost item is not the build, but a delivery that gathers dust on the shelf.

What sets the bottom or top of a range

You hit the bottom with a clear, bounded process where you know upfront what needs to happen. The top comes from complexity: links to existing systems, many users, sensitive data, and a process that has not been cleaned up. That is why we map your process first. A clean process is cheaper to build than a messy one, every single time. Save there and it pays back double.

Workshop or build straight away?

Whether you start with a workshop or go straight to building depends on the knowledge already inside the team and on your question. Little AI experience in the team? Then a workshop is the smartest starting point: people learn what it can do, and that makes a later build far smoother because the team already thinks along. If the knowledge is there and the question is clear, you can skip ahead to building. The usual order is workshop, then a Business OS setup, then genuinely custom work. Not because it is a mandatory ladder, but because each step makes the next one cheaper and better.

Want to know what it would be for you?

A good price estimate starts with knowing what you need, and you only know that once your process is on the table. Book an intro, we will map it together and you get a fixed price with no surprises. If it does not add up for you, we will say so. Saves us both time.