What an AI workflow assessment costs in the UK, and what you get

A diagnostic that tells you where your business's hours are actually going, and what to fix first, typically costs somewhere between £500 and £3,500 in the UK, with most published prices sitting between £750 and £1,000. HoursBack's version is £799 for one owner's business, or from £1,199 for a team of two, with the setup steps written under the recommendations rather than left for you to work out. Training or enablement, where someone teaches your staff to use tools you already pay for, is usually priced by the day and varies with the trainer. Implementation support, someone sitting with you to actually set things up, is most often sold as an add-on rather than on its own. A custom build, someone writing something that does a specific job for you, is priced job by job, because the work itself varies too much to fit on a price list.

That is most of what sits under the label "AI consulting" in the UK right now. Separate the four things being sold, and the range for each one stops looking arbitrary.

What the other pricing guides don't promise

Before the pricing detail, one claim worth stating plainly. We've read every UK pricing guide we could find on this topic, and not one of them promises implementation-grade setup steps as part of a diagnostic. They promise a report, a scorecard or a roadmap - findings, in other words. HoursBack's report puts numbered setup instructions under the recommendations: five to ten steps per automation, naming the actual tool and the actual menu, in plain English. Those setup steps cover the automations and the tooling fixes - the parts you genuinely can follow like a recipe. Where the report flags an agent opportunity instead, it tells you what the agent would do and roughly what it would save. Building it is a job in itself, not something the report hands you as a recipe.

The four things sold as "AI consulting"

"AI consulting" covers at least four different things, and most of the confusion comes from not knowing which one you're being quoted for.

1. A diagnostic. Someone works out where your hours go and what to fix first. You end up holding a document.
2. Enablement or training. Someone teaches your team to use tools you already pay for. You end up holding a more confident team, and sometimes a short training note.
3. Implementation support. Someone sits with you and sets things up. You end up holding working tools, configured rather than just recommended.
4. A custom build. Someone builds a system that does a job for you. You end up holding software that runs the job without you.

Most bad buying happens when these get crossed: paying build money for a diagnostic, or expecting a build and receiving a slide deck.

What's being sold	What you walk away holding	Typical UK price
Diagnostic	A written report: what's costing you time, what to fix first	Roughly £500 to £3,500, most £750-£1,000
Enablement or training	A team that can use tools it already owns	Day rate, varies by trainer and group size
Implementation support	Tools set up and working, not just recommended	Usually sold as an add-on, rarely on its own
Custom build	Software that runs the job without you	Priced per job; no honest average exists

Who you hire moves the price as much as what you buy

The table above explains price by product. Published UK guides more often explain it by provider, and both are true at once. Within any of the four things above, day rates cluster into three rough bands depending on who you're actually hiring: freelance and independent consultants typically sit at £500 to £750 a day, boutique specialist firms at £600 to £900, and larger consultancies, including the big-name firms, at £1,000 to £1,500 or more. A day rate quoted well outside that middle band is worth asking about directly - it usually means you're paying for the firm's overhead, or its brand, rather than for more work getting done.

Pricing itself tends to take one of four shapes: a fixed fee for defined work like a diagnostic, a day rate for open-ended advisory, a monthly retainer for ongoing support once something's built, and, less often outside large organisations, an outcome-based fee that moves with results. Most SME buyers will only ever be quoted the first two.

A fixed fee is not an hourly rate. The £799 covers the session, the analysis after it, the written report and two check-ins, agreed before you start rather than accruing by the day the way the rates below do.

Who you hire	Typical day rate
Freelance or independent consultant	£500-£750
Boutique specialist firm	£600-£900
Larger consultancy or big-name firm	£1,000-£1,500+

What moves the price inside each band

Within any one of those four categories, a handful of things move the number:

• How many people get interviewed. One conversation with the owner costs less to run than a week of individual conversations across a team.
• Whether it covers one owner or a whole team. A single diagnostic and a team diagnostic are different jobs, not the same job priced twice.
• Whether you get a written deliverable or just a conversation. A report you could hand to someone else takes longer to produce than an hour of advice.
• Whether implementation is included or sold separately. Bundling the setup work into the price changes what the number actually covers.
• Whether it's priced for the whole job or by the day. A day rate with an open-ended number of days is a different commitment to a fixed price for a fixed piece of work.
• How long it's expected to take. Published guides put a full audit at one to three weeks. A same-day or same-week diagnostic is a faster, narrower product, and the price should reflect that rather than sit above the slower version.

The market can't agree with itself on price

One figure comes up in almost every UK guide: how much more you should expect to pay in London than elsewhere. The guides don't agree. One puts the London premium at 8 to 12 per cent. Another puts it at 15 to 25 per cent. A third puts it at 20 to 30 per cent, and a fourth at 20 to 40 per cent. Two of those figures, the lowest and the middle-high one, sit on different pages of the same website.

It's evidence for the argument already made above: "AI consulting" isn't one product with one price, so any single percentage applied across the whole category is going to be wrong for most of what it's describing. The provider-tier table and the four-things table earlier on this page exist because a range that wide stops being useful the moment you can't see what's driving it.

Regulation and your sector move the price too

UK regulation is a genuine cost driver, not background noise. Published guides price data-privacy and regulatory-compliance specialisation at a 20 to 35 per cent premium over general AI consulting rates, because GDPR and sector rules add real work: checking what data a workflow touches, where it's stored, who can see it, and whether the ICO's rules on automated decisions apply to anything you're proposing to automate. If your business is regulated on top of that - financial services, care, anything handling client money - expect to sit at the upper end of whatever range you're quoted, because there's more to check before anyone can responsibly recommend anything.

Sector matters for a related reason: a diagnostic for a firm handling client money or vulnerable people takes longer to do properly than one for a retailer. We've written up the hour-costs specific to 31 UK industries if you want the version for your own trade rather than the general one.

Retainers, if you want ongoing help after the report

A diagnostic is a one-off. If you want someone keeping an eye on new automations, retraining a model, or adding features as things change after it, that's usually sold separately as a monthly retainer. Published UK guides put SME-scale retainers anywhere from around £99 to £1,000 or more a month, depending on how much ongoing work is involved and the size of the firm you use.

HoursBack sells one. If you'd rather work through your list systematically than pick items off one at a time, the same working sessions run on an ongoing basis: regular working sessions, not advisory calls, moving through your own list with an item live by the end of each one. Ask us what that looks like for your business.

What's not in the headline price

The quoted price for a diagnostic rarely covers what happens after you have the report in hand. Two costs turn up later in published guides: usage fees for any AI tool billed per call, which add up if a workflow runs often, and maintenance, when a connected system changes how it works and something needs fixing. Most diagnostic fees just don't include them, ours among them - the £799 is a single payment, with no subscription attached. What a specific tool costs to run each month afterwards is a separate decision you make with the report in hand.

Do the sum before you decide

Here's the sum a diagnostic should let you run, not just gesture at. Take the hours a week you'd get back, multiply by what an hour of that person's time actually costs the business - not their salary alone, the fully loaded figure, including on-costs - then multiply by the weeks you'll actually run it. Subtract what you paid.

As an illustration rather than a claim about any particular business: five hours a week - the minimum the report has to identify, or the fee comes back - assuming you act on it, at a modest £25 loaded hourly cost, is £125 a week, or roughly £6,500 across a year, against a £799 fee. Your own numbers will be higher or lower depending on whose time you're getting back and what it's actually worth to the business.

What matters is that you can run this sum before you buy, with figures you'd be happy putting in front of an accountant, rather than take someone's word for it afterwards. Published guides put a healthy payback period for a diagnostic-led programme at six to twelve months; on this illustration, the £799 pays for itself in about six weeks once you act on what the report finds - well inside that range. If a proposal implies longer than six to twelve months, ask why. See what the Assessment includes if you want to run your own numbers.

What too cheap and too expensive look like

A free assessment is a sales call. That's a plain description, not a criticism - know which one you're sitting in before the call starts. A free hour with someone whose business depends on you buying the next stage is not neutral.

At the other end, be wary of a large bespoke quote produced before anyone has asked how your week actually runs. A published price for a clearly defined product is a different thing, and a good sign: ours are further down this page. A big custom number arriving before anyone has looked at your business should give you pause - it can't have come from your situation.

One specific structure is worth naming on its own. Some guides treat a diagnostic fee that gets credited back against a later build as a conflict of interest rather than a discount: if the same money only comes back to you once you sign the build, the person doing the diagnosis is financially better off finding you a build to sell, regardless of what the honest answer turns out to be. HoursBack's £799 is a standalone fee, not a deposit - nothing about it depends on you buying anything else afterwards. To be plain about the other half of that: HoursBack does sell Custom AI Agent Builds, and makes money doing it. The report says so directly when it thinks you need one, and just as directly when it thinks you don't.

Questions worth asking before you sign

Beyond the deliverable test below, a short list of practical questions catches most of what's left:

• If the scope moves once work has started, does a fixed price protect you from that, or are you on an open-ended day rate?
• Are the payment terms staged against milestones, or paid in full upfront?

Fixed-price work in published guides is commonly split part upfront and the rest on delivery. Ask for the equivalent from anyone quoting you a fixed fee, and be wary of anyone asking for all of it before they've done anything.

The deliverable test

One question cuts through most of this: what will I be holding at the end, and can I act on it without you?

If the answer is a report someone else in your business could pick up and act on, that's a diagnostic doing its job. A working tool answers the question just as well - that's implementation or a build doing its job. And if the honest answer is closer to "trust me, it worked", you are buying confidence in a person rather than a document or a tool. That might be exactly what you want; just know that is what you are paying for.

Ask the question outright before you pay. If the seller can't answer plainly, don't buy. See what a HoursBack assessment report actually contains for what "a document you can act on" looks like in practice. That's also why setup instructions sit under the recommendations rather than a separate paid step, described above - the test only means something if the answer holds up before money changes hands.

Could you just do this yourself

You can get partway there without paying anyone, whatever size your business is. List every tool you pay for, list every task that eats more than an hour a week, and mark where they overlap - that's a genuinely useful hour spent.

What it won't do is tell you which of the twenty things you find is worth fixing first, or write the setup steps once you've picked one. The real limit isn't headcount - it's spotting your own bottleneck when you're the one who built the workaround and stopped noticing it. If your list raises more questions than it answers, that's what the Assessment sorts out.

Should a consultant map your workflows before building anything, or is that paid discovery fluff?

Put in the words a buyer would actually use rather than a vendor's: someone who talks to the team, maps how work actually moves through the business, and tells you what to prioritise before anything gets built. That's what a diagnostic is meant to be. Whether it's fluff or not depends on where you're starting from.

Sometimes it genuinely is fluff, if you can already name the three things you want built and roughly how - in which case paying someone to map it out again is paying to relearn what you know.

Most of the time, though, the businesses asking this question can't yet name all three things, or they can name one and are guessing at the rest. In that case the mapping is doing real work, and whether anyone calls it "discovery" is beside the point. What settles it is whether you end up with tasks, tools and steps in order, something someone in your business could pick up and act on, or with a slide deck and no named owner for what happens next. The deliverable test above is how you check which one you're being offered before you pay for it.

What happens after the report lands

What people worry about most isn't a wrong diagnosis. It's paying for a roadmap that nobody, including the buyer, opens again two months later. That's a reasonable thing to worry about - plenty of "AI consulting" ends the moment the report is delivered.

Every HoursBack assessment includes two scheduled check-ins after the report lands: a call at 7 days and another at 30. Both are included in the £799, not sold as an extra.

The tracking doesn't stop once those two calls are done. HoursBack keeps a record of your report's items on its own systems, and when something gets ticked off or progress is made, that's visible to us too, not just noted somewhere on your side. It isn't unlimited support on tap - it's the difference between a report that gets filed once and one that's still being watched.

Which one you actually need

The four are not a ladder you climb in order. Picking the wrong one is what makes this feel expensive, so it is worth being honest with yourself about where you are.

If you have not looked at any of this yet, start with a free quiz or audit. It costs nothing to find out roughly where you stand. Our AI readiness checklist covers the same ground.

If you already know exactly what you need built, ask about the Custom AI Agent Build directly - pricing is agreed after a short scoping call, and you don't have to buy a diagnostic first. Most people who get this far still book the Assessment, because it's what turns a vague sense of "we need something for X" into something specific enough to price and build.

If your hours are disappearing and you could not say precisely where, that is what the diagnostic is for. This is the common case, and it is the one most owners are in whether or not they would put it that way.

If nothing much is changing right now, that is usually a reason to do it rather than a reason to wait. A diagnostic run in a quiet month becomes preparation for the next six months of planning, rather than something you rush once a problem has already started costing you.

And if your last attempt at this failed, work out why, and say so on the call, because that changes what the report needs to cover. A diagnostic will not fix a pilot that never had backing in the first place, though it will usually tell you which of the two you were dealing with. See the difference between a pilot and a strategy if that sounds familiar.

What HoursBack charges

Plainly, where a price is published:

• HoursBack Quiz - free. Nine questions, a score, and quick wins you can act on immediately.
• HoursBack Assessment - £799. A 60-minute diagnostic session followed by a written report: where your hours go, what to fix first, an implementation plan, and ROI projections. If yours doesn't show at least 5 hours a week worth reclaiming, the £799 comes straight back - we've never had to issue that refund. We guarantee what we deliver, not what you do with it. Here is what actually happens in one.
• HoursBack Team Diagnostic - from £1,199 for two people, then £400 for each additional person. The consolidated report lands up to two working days after the last interview session.
• Implementation Session - £349. One 90-minute working call: we take an item off your list and get it running before the call ends. You drive, we point. It isn't sold on its own; it only makes sense once there is a report to work from.
• HoursBack retainer - price on request. Regular working sessions, not advisory calls, moving through your own list with an item live by the end of each one, rather than one item at a time.
• Custom AI Agent Build - from £949, priced case by case after a short scoping call. We don't publish one figure for this, because what it costs depends on what the work turns out to involve.

The time cost on your side is the other half of this. The Assessment is one 60-minute session, plus however long it takes you to read the report properly. The Team Diagnostic adds one session per person interviewed beyond you.

Common questions about AI assessment pricing in the UK

How much does an AI audit cost in the UK?

Published, fixed-price UK AI audits and diagnostics typically run from around £500 to around £3,500, with most sitting between £750 and £1,000, depending on what you're actually buying. "AI consulting" covers four different things - a diagnostic, training, implementation support, or a custom build - and each is priced differently. A diagnostic is the one people usually mean by "audit": someone works out where your hours go and what to fix first, and you end up holding a written report. HoursBack's version is £799 for one owner's business, or from £1,199 for a team of two, with the setup steps written under the recommendations.

What's a reasonable AI consultant day rate in the UK?

Published guides put UK AI consultant day rates roughly between £500 and £1,500, with the range explained by who you hire rather than by seniority alone: freelance and independent consultants typically sit at £500 to £750, boutique specialist firms at £600 to £900, and larger consultancies at £1,000 to £1,500 or more. A day rate well outside the tier you'd expect for that type of provider is worth a direct question about what's driving it.

Is a free AI audit worth it?

It can be. A free check is usually the front of a sales process, and it's worth knowing that going in. HoursBack's free quiz works the same way. It's genuinely useful for a first look: it tells you roughly where you stand and points at your biggest opportunity. What it usually doesn't do is interview you properly or produce a written report you could hand to someone else and have them act on it.

What's the difference between an AI audit and an AI readiness assessment?

In practice, UK providers use the two terms almost interchangeably, so the difference is usually about depth rather than definition. A "readiness assessment" more often describes a lighter, free tool - a set of questions that returns a score and a maturity band, like HoursBack's own quiz. An "audit" or "diagnostic" more often describes the paid version: a structured conversation about your actual workflows, followed by a written report with the setup steps included.

How long does an AI workflow assessment take?

HoursBack's assessment is a 60-minute session, followed by a written report - a digital, passcode-protected checklist you can act on, with a separate video walkthrough - and check-ins at 7 and 30 days. The free quiz takes about two minutes and gives you an instant score rather than a session. Published guides put a typical full audit at one to three weeks; the Team Diagnostic adds individual interviews with each team member beyond the owner, so the consolidated report lands up to two working days after the last interview session.

Do I need an AI audit before an AI project?

Not for every project - if you want to try ChatGPT on one task this afternoon, just try it. A diagnostic earns its keep when you're about to commit real time or budget and aren't sure where to start: it stops you paying build money for a diagnostic problem, or paying for a diagnostic to reconfirm something you've already worked out. The deliverable test cuts through it - what will you be holding at the end, and can you act on it without help?

Should a consultant map our workflows before building anything?

Usually, yes, but only if the person you're paying is willing to tell you when it isn't necessary. If you can already name the three things you want built and roughly how, that mapping step is paying to relearn what you know - go straight to a build conversation instead. If you can't, someone interviewing the team and mapping how work actually moves before recommending anything is doing real work. What you're holding at the end tells you which one happened.

Where to go from here

If you're still weighing up which of the four you actually need, the free quiz takes a few minutes and costs nothing. It will tell you roughly where you stand before you spend anything.

If everything above points to the Assessment, that's the £799 option, with the guarantee attached. A related, similar pattern: a two-person textile agency reclaimed nine hours a week so far, with another fourteen identified once the report named where they were going.