Key points
- A rough price is worth knowing before you hire an AI consultant in the UK, since a quote means little with nothing to measure it against.
- Over the half year to November twenty twenty-six, UK contract adverts for AI consultants put the median day rate, the middle one, at five hundred and seventy-five pounds, with most between about four hundred and fifty and seven hundred.
- Those adverts mostly reflect individual contractors. A consultancy usually costs more, as it pays for sales and insurance too, and AI Consultancy Finder found no published figure for how much more.
- Among firms with ten to forty-nine staff, a government survey put average AI spending in twenty twenty-five at ten thousand five hundred pounds. A few heavy spenders lift that average, and forty-three per cent of businesses using AI paid nothing for it.
- The survey covers only firms of five or more staff, and its totals include software, not just consultants.
- At the median rate, the small-firm average pays for about eighteen contractor days, with software and running costs on top. That is AI Consultancy Finder's own rough sum, not a published figure: no source gives a typical project size, and yearly AI spend includes software. Pricier help means fewer days.
- Building systems costs more than advice, and tidying data often eats the hours. Still, the fee often isn't the largest expense: over a project's life, usage charges, updates and staff time checking the AI's work can come to more.
- Ask what each price covers, and the monthly running costs in ordinary and busy spells. Check each quote's day rate against the published range. The complete guide, sources and dates included, is on AI Consultancy Finder.
Transcript
A rough price is worth knowing before you hire an AI consultant in the UK, since a quote means little with nothing to measure it against. Over the half year to November twenty twenty-six, UK contract adverts for AI consultants put the median day rate, the middle one, at five hundred and seventy-five pounds, with most between about four hundred and fifty and seven hundred.
Those adverts mostly reflect individual contractors. A consultancy usually costs more, as it pays for sales and insurance too, and AI Consultancy Finder found no published figure for how much more. Among firms with ten to forty-nine staff, a government survey put average AI spending in twenty twenty-five at ten thousand five hundred pounds.
A few heavy spenders lift that average, and forty-three per cent of businesses using AI paid nothing for it. The survey covers only firms of five or more staff, and its totals include software, not just consultants. At the median rate, the small-firm average pays for about eighteen contractor days, with software and running costs on top.
That is AI Consultancy Finder's own rough sum, not a published figure: no source gives a typical project size, and yearly AI spend includes software. Pricier help means fewer days. Building systems costs more than advice, and tidying data often eats the hours.
Still, the fee often isn't the largest expense: over a project's life, usage charges, updates and staff time checking the AI's work can come to more. Ask what each price covers, and the monthly running costs in ordinary and busy spells. Check each quote's day rate against the published range.
The complete guide, sources and dates included, is on AI Consultancy Finder.