How much does it cost to get AI set up in my business?

The price is the first thing you want and the last thing anyone will give you. Most AI companies hide it behind a discovery call, then size the quote to whoever turns up. So here are the numbers up front, no calendar link required.

The three price tags

AI assistants: £15 to £25 per person per month. This is ChatGPT, Claude or Copilot helping your people draft, summarise and analyse inside the work they already do. Microsoft 365 Copilot Business is £19.32 per user per month billed monthly, excluding VAT. Public pricing, cancel any time, and the right first step for almost every business.

Platform automation: a small monthly fee plus setup work. This wires AI into the tools you already own, so a website enquiry gets classified, lands in your CRM and gets a proper reply within minutes. The subscriptions and AI usage cost little at small business volumes. The real cost is the setup: a few days of focused work in-house, or a modest project fee if someone builds it for you.

A bespoke build: low thousands of pounds and up. Custom software written around a workflow that is core to how you make money. Worth it when nothing off the shelf fits. A waste of money when something does.

What do UK businesses really spend?

UK government research found that businesses adopting AI spent a median of £2,000 in 2024, against a mean of £19,000. In plain terms: most adopters spend a little, a small minority make a deliberate larger bet, and the average gets dragged up by that second group. If your first quote is ten times the median, the burden of proof sits with the quote, not with you.

Why does everyone hide the price?

Two honest reasons and one less honest. "AI" covers everything from a single licence to a system that runs your whole intake process, so one number for the whole range would be a guess. Every project touches different systems with different amounts of mess in the data, and nobody knows yours until they look. And some sellers simply price by what you look like rather than what the work is.

Here is my rule: if a supplier cannot give you even a range before a call, walk. The range above took one short page. Anyone who builds these systems for a living can do the same.

What should you do with these numbers?

Start at the cheapest tier that could plausibly solve your problem. Put one or two people on an assistant subscription this week, pick your most repetitive task, and only think about a bespoke build once an automated workflow is already paying for itself. The full breakdown, including what drives a build quote up and the running costs that catch people out, is in our guide to what AI automation costs a UK small business.

And if you ask us to quote and the honest answer is "you need a £20 a month subscription, not us", that is the answer you will get.