What AI consulting costs.

01

What do AI consultants charge by the hour?

Hourly rates are the easiest number to find and the least useful on its own, because the firms that publish them differ by a factor of six.

1. Small and offshore development shops

   Clutch collects rates from client reviews. Its AI pricing guide, updated September 2026, reports that most of the AI development companies it lists charge $25 to $49 an hour. The listings at that rate sit mostly outside the United States and Western Europe.

2. US contractors on federal schedules

   The GSA's CALC+ tool publishes the ceiling hourly rates that vendors have agreed with the US government. For the labor category Data Scientist, across 150 rates on Multiple Award Schedule contracts as of September 17, 2026, the 25th percentile is $130.82, the median $155.24, and the 75th percentile $194.82 an hour. Ceilings are maximums, and task orders often come in under them.

Both sources are for people who build. Strategy work by the hour is rare, because the firms that do it sell days or projects instead.

02

What do the large consultancies charge per day?

The large firms rarely publish rates, with one exception. To sell to the UK government they file rate cards on the G-Cloud framework, and those cards are public. Each card gives a day rate by SFIA level, from level 1, follow, to level 7, set strategy and inspire. The figures below are the G-Cloud 14 cards filed in 2024, for an eight-hour day, before VAT and expenses.

1. Deloitte LLP

   £450 a day at level 1 to £2,450 at level 7 for strategy and architecture. Development and implementation runs lower at the top, £2,050.

2. KPMG

   £400 at level 1 to £2,855 at level 7, the same across its service lines.

3. DXC Technology

   £668 to £2,186 a day on its UK card. Its nearshore card, staffed from Bulgaria, tops out at £1,593, and its offshore card, staffed from India, runs £178 to £822.

The cards let you price a team. Take a six-week strategy engagement with a level 7 partner one day a week and three consultants full time, one at level 4 and two at level 5. On Deloitte's card that is £173,700. On KPMG's it is £194,880. Add VAT, travel, and whatever the scope grows into.

The same cards show what location does to price. DXC's India card runs at between a quarter and two fifths of its UK card at the same level.

03

What does a fixed-scope AI project cost?

Project prices follow scope, so the useful public number is a distribution rather than an average. Clutch reports that the AI development projects in its verified reviews most often fall between $10,000 and $49,999, that the average project comes to $120,594.55, and that the typical timeline is 10 months, which it puts at $11,553.45 a month. The average sits far above the most common band because a minority of large programs pull it up.

Five things move a project quote more than the choice of firm.

• Whether the data exists and can be reached, or has to be assembled first.
• Whether the system's answers can be checked against something, or a person has to review each one.
• How many systems it has to connect to, and who controls them.
• Whether the scope is fixed before the work starts or discovered during it.
• Where the team sits, as the DXC cards above show.

04

What does a fractional Chief AI Officer cost per month?

Monthly retainers for a part-time AI executive are the newest of the four markets and the least standardized. Two published prices and one guide from the sellers' side.

1. A managed IT provider

   $1,950 a month for a named AI executive, an AI inventory in the first month, and a monthly advisory cadence, offered to organizations of 50 to 1,000 seats (o365hq.com, 2026).

2. An independent operator

   $7,500 a month, with a $750 one-day strategy session as the entry point, offered to companies with $1 million to $30 million in revenue (theerinmoore.com, 2026).

3. A marketplace guide

   HireAFractionalExec puts the 2026 range at $5,000 to $30,000 a month. Advisory-only work at four to eight hours a week is $5,000 to $10,000, and a hands-on transformation lead at 15 to 20 hours a week is $18,000 to $30,000.

The spread is about what the role includes. At the low end the executive advises and reviews. At the high end they own the portfolio and the vendor decisions and sit in the meetings where money is committed. Our version is the Standing Partner, and its page says what the role owns.

05

What does hiring in-house cost instead?

The comparison a CFO will make. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics puts the median annual wage for data scientists at $120,230 as of May 2025, before benefits, recruiting, and the months before the hire is productive. One data scientist on that salary costs about the same per year as the average Clutch project and more than the low end of the fractional retainers, and comes without the senior judgment about what to build.

Most companies end up with both, an owner on the payroll and outside help scoped to one decision or one build. The order matters, because a hire made before the company knows what it is building spends the first year finding out.

06

How do you read a quote?

• Ask what unit the price is in. A day rate hides the number of days. A project price hides the scope. A retainer hides the hours.
• Ask who is on the team and at what level. On the cards above, level 7 costs five to seven times level 1 at the same firm.
• Ask what happens when the scope changes. A fixed fee with a written stop point is a different product from a day rate with none.
• Ask for the number the work will move and how it will be measured. A price with no baseline has nothing to be judged against later.
• Ask what you keep. Code, models, prompts, documentation, and a person on your side who can run it.

07

How does Fulkerson Advisors price its work?

A fixed fee per engagement, agreed in writing before we start, and quoted after a thirty-minute call, because the scope decides the number. The Diagnosis is three weeks. The Build is twelve weeks with a stop point at week three, where we refund the remainder if the system should not go to production. The Standing Partner is two to four days a month with no minimum term.

We don't publish prices, because a price set before the call would fix the scope before we know it. The guide to choosing a firm has the six questions to ask any firm before you sign, ours included.

08

Questions

09

Sources