Quotes for custom AI range from a few thousand dollars to several hundred thousand, often for what sounds like the same thing. Here's what actually drives the price, and how to tell a real number from a guess.
A custom AI build isn't a product with a sticker price, because no two businesses need the same thing. The cost is driven by scope: how many processes you're automating, how many systems the AI needs to connect to, how much data has to be unified, whether it's one team or many locations, and how much custom work sits on top of the core. A focused build solving one clear problem is a fundamentally different undertaking to a multi-division deployment, and should be priced differently.
Anyone who quotes you a firm number before understanding your operation is guessing, and a guess that's too low at the start usually becomes a painful conversation later.
Five factors do most of the work in determining what a build costs:
The sensible way to price a custom AI build is to start with a short, paid discovery phase before committing to the full build. Discovery maps your operation, identifies which problem is costing you most, and produces a written quote for a scope you both understand. It de-risks the spend for you and means the eventual number is grounded in reality.
As a rough guide, focused single-team builds typically start in the tens of thousands, while larger multi-division deployments run into the hundreds of thousands. But the only number that matters is the one based on your actual operation.
The first conversation is thirty minutes, what's costing you most, and whether Wild Systems is the right answer.
ben@wildsystems.com.au