What it costs
We publish what it costs.
Most firms in this market will not put a number on a page. It is the single most common complaint from the businesses we speak to, so here is ours, in the order you would actually pay it, with what you walk away holding at each step.
- Every step priced before it starts
- Nothing to commit to on day one
- Something you keep at the end of each one
Free, 30 minutesNo obligation to go further
Or call 0161 543 7189
The four steps
Four steps, and you can stop after any of them.
Nobody sensibly hands over five figures on the strength of one phone call. So the sequence is built to be left at any point, every step is priced before it starts, and every step leaves you holding something you keep.
- Discovery callFree
- Constraint audit£2,000
- Proposal and build£5,000 to £15,000
- Maintenance£2,000 to £5,000
- Step one
Discovery call
Free30 minutes
Tell us where the business is getting stuck.
We ask about the work rather than the budget, because the budget is not what decides whether this is worth doing. You describe the process that keeps going wrong and we ask questions about it.
You leave withA straight answer on whether there is anything here worth pursuing, and what we would look at first.
- Step two
Constraint audit
£2,00014 days
We go and measure it, inside the actual work.
Fourteen days and three sixty minute calls with Sam or Adam directly, not an account manager. The calls are the smallest part. Between them we are inside the work: tracing every hand-off, counting where information gets retyped, timing how long a job actually waits against how long anyone touches it, reading the exceptions your team has been absorbing without telling anyone, and pulling the real numbers out of the tools you already run on.
You leave withA written constraint map of the process, the measurements underneath it, a recommendation, and a fixed price for the build.
- Step three
Proposal and build
£5,000 to £15,000One off, scoped by the audit
The price is agreed before anyone writes code.
We design, write, integrate, test and deploy against your real data, your real rules and the exceptions your team already works around. The audit set the scope, so there is no discovery happening on your invoice.
You leave withA working system in ordinary daily use, and a team that can operate it without us in the room.
- Step four
Maintenance
£2,000 to £5,000Per month
The system keeps earning after we stop building it.
Owned, monitored and improved while the business changes around it. Rules move, people join, volumes shift, and a system nobody maintains quietly becomes the next constraint.
You leave withA system that still fits the business in a year, and someone who already knows how it was built.
Start with the constraint, not the quote.
Book a discovery callThe constraint audit
The £2,000 buys an answer, not a pitch.
14 days, built around three sixty minute calls with sam or adam. A free audit is a sales call with a document attached, and it has to arrive at a recommendation to build something, because that is the only way it ever pays for itself.
What happens between the calls
- Every hand-off traced end to end, including the ones nobody documents
- Waiting time separated from working time, measured rather than estimated
- The exceptions your team absorbs quietly, written down and counted
- Real numbers pulled from the tools you already run on
- The cost of the constraint calculated from your figures, not a benchmark
What you keep if you never build anything
- The constraint mapA written picture of the process we examined: every hand-off, who owns it, where the work waits and where it gets done twice.
- The measurementsThe numbers underneath the map. Touch time separated from waiting time, volumes, and how often the exception path is actually taken.
- The recommendationWhat we would do about it and in what order, including the parts that are not a software problem and should not be solved with software.
- A fixed price to build itA scoped, fixed price proposal. It is yours to keep, and yours to take to another firm if you would rather they built it.
The fee is not deducted from the build. That is deliberate, and it is the whole point: it means we carry no financial reason to recommend building anything, so the recommendation is worth reading.
The call comes first.Thirty minutes, free, so we both know the audit is worth £2,000 before you spend it.
The market
What everyone else charges.
Useful context, because the range in this market is enormous and nobody publishes it side by side. These are the bands UK firms advertise, read from their own pricing pages in August 2026.
| Who | To build | To keep it running |
|---|---|---|
| Independent or freelance | £5,000 to £15,000 | Rarely offered |
| AGMM | £5,000 to £15,000 | £2,000 to £5,000 a month |
| UK boutique AI consultancy | £20,000 to £150,000 | £2,000 to £20,000 a month |
| Big four and enterprise | £60,000 to £300,000 and up | Retained programmes |
The gap between our band and the one above it is not a discount. It is the cost of the people in between: sales, account management and the layer that exists to coordinate the people actually building. There are two of us and we do the work ourselves.
Where we stop
Times we will tell you not to build.
The audit sometimes finds the constraint is not a software problem. When it is a pricing decision, a staffing decision, or a process nobody has written down yet, putting software on top of it makes the problem faster rather than smaller, and more expensive to unpick later. When that is the answer, that is the answer, and you still keep the audit.
Before you spend
What people ask about the money.
- Do you publish fixed prices?
- The discovery call is free and the constraint audit is a fixed £2,000. The build is quoted as a fixed price at the end of the audit, inside the £5,000 to £15,000 band. Maintenance runs £2,000 to £5,000 a month depending on how much is running.
- Why is the audit paid rather than free?
- A free audit is a sales call with a document attached. It has to arrive at a recommendation to build something, because that is the only way it ever pays for itself. Ours is paid, and the fee is not deducted from the build, so we carry no financial reason to recommend building anything.
- What happens if the audit says do not build anything?
- That is a legitimate result and you still keep the audit. When the constraint is a pricing decision, a staffing decision or a process nobody has written down, software on top of it makes the problem faster rather than smaller.
- Why are your prices lower than a bigger consultancy?
- Because you are paying for two engineers who do the work themselves. There is no sales team, no account layer and nobody billing for coordinating the people who build. Most of what a larger firm charges is the cost of the people between you and the work.
Start with the constraint, not the quote.
Tell us where the business is getting stuck. On the call we will map the constraint and give you a clear next step, which might be the audit, might be training, and might be no build at all.
Book a discovery callOr read the evidence and what we build