What AI consulting actually costs in Australia.
Almost nobody in this market publishes prices. We do. Here's the whole landscape: hourly rates, per-agent pricing, project fees, embedded delivery, and our real numbers, so you can walk into any sales call already knowing what things should cost.
Ask an Australian AI consultancy what they charge and you'll usually get the same answer: "it depends, let's book a call." Some of that is legitimate, scope really does vary. But a lot of it is pricing by what the room will bear.
We publish our prices. Partly because it filters the conversations we have, and partly because we think the buyer should know the going rates before anyone gets them on a call. So here's the map.
The four pricing models you'll run into
Every AI consulting offer in Australia is one of these four shapes. The label on the website differs; the shape doesn't.
| Model | Typical range (AUD) | What you're buying | Watch for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hourly / day rate | $150 to $350+ per hour | A person's time. Common with solo consultants and dev shops. | No outcome attached. The incentive runs the wrong way: slower work earns more. |
| Per agent / per automation | $5K to $15K per agent | A discrete automation: an email triage bot, an invoice processor. | Who maintains it when it breaks? Who owns the knowledge it runs on? Ten agents at $10K each is $100K with no operating layer underneath. |
| Project / transformation | $50K to $200K+ | A scoped build, often strategy-led. Directory data (Clutch's AU listings) puts the average AI project in the $50K to $200K band. | Strategy decks counted as deliverables. Check what actually ships and runs. |
| Embedded delivery | $20K to $100K per engagement | A senior operator inside your business, shipping workflows with your team and training them as part of the work. This is Works' model. | Less common, harder to find. The test: does the team keep building after the engagement ends? |
How much does an AI audit cost in Australia?
Audits and assessments are the entry point everywhere, anywhere from free (a sales call wearing a costume) up to about $15K for genuine multi-week diagnostic work.
Our audit is priced by team size: $4,000 up to 30 people, $5,000 for 31 to 50, and $12,500 for 50-plus. Fixed, agreed before we start, takes two weeks, and ends with a deliverable you could hand to any developer: workflow maps, quantified pain in hours and dollars, a team proficiency score, and a 90-day build plan ranked by ROI. The full breakdown is on the AI Audit page.
The rule of thumb for judging any audit price: a 45-minute audit is a sales pitch. If the price is zero and the duration is under an hour, you're buying a pitch, not a diagnosis.
How much does AI implementation cost?
Our published numbers, since this is the part everyone hides:
| Works product | Price (AUD) | What ships |
|---|---|---|
| Audit | $4K / $5K / $12.5K by team size | Two weeks. The full diagnostic and a costed build plan. |
| Embed | $20K to $40K | 90-day sprint. One senior operator embedded, the Works Brain installed, your team trained, typically 6 to 10 production workflows shipped. |
| Build | $50K to $100K | 8 to 12 weeks. Custom multi-agent systems and deep integrations, typically 12 to 20 workflows plus the infrastructure layer. |
| Optimize | $4K per month | Ongoing. The Brain stays current, new agents ship as needs evolve, models get upgraded. |
Embed and Build run on velocity: we commit to a workflow count per sprint and you see what's coming, shipped, and queued every fortnight. The unit is shipped infrastructure running in your stack. If the workflow doesn't run, the ticket isn't done. You're not paying for hours nobody can verify.
The hire comparison
Companies that try to solve this in-house hire a Head of AI: $180K+ a year, a 6 to 12 month search, and a full-time salary for what is actually a capability problem, not a headcount problem. Works is the fractional version of that role. An embedded operator, 90 days, and your team keeps the capability when we leave.
The comparison that actually matters: what ships
The honest way to compare any of these prices isn't the dollar figure. It's what's running in your business at the end, and who can keep building once the engagement ends.
An Embed ships typically 6 to 10 production workflows in 90 days, installs the knowledge layer they run on, and leaves your own team trained to build the next one without us. Price any quote you get against that: cost per shipped workflow, and whether the capability stays when the consultant leaves.
What moves the price up or down
Up: more teams and more systems to integrate, compliance and data-governance requirements, custom infrastructure, and anything that needs deep integration into your CRM or ops stack rather than sitting beside it.
Down: clean data, a decision-maker in the room, and starting in one function instead of boiling the company. Most of our engagements start in sales and marketing because that's where ROI shows up fastest, then expand.
Five questions to ask any AI consultancy before you sign
1. What ships, and who owns it? If the deliverable is a strategy deck, the price is too high at any number. If you can't keep the system when they leave, you're renting.
2. Who maintains it when it breaks? Agents break. Models change. If the answer is "call us," ask what that costs.
3. Will our team be able to build the next one without you? The expensive version of AI consulting is the one you have to buy twice.
4. Can we see velocity during the engagement? Fortnightly visibility of shipped vs queued should be table stakes.
5. What does it cost? Out loud, in writing, before the discovery call. If that's hard to get, that tells you something too.
Let's get to Work!
Start with the audit.
Two weeks, fixed price by team size, and a build plan ranked by ROI that's yours either way. It starts with a 30-minute chat.
Book a call →Or find out what we'd build first → Describe your biggest operational headache, get a starter roadmap.