Three things dominate: task complexity, integration depth and required reliability. An internal assistant is cheaper than a customer-facing system, because the latter needs much stronger auditability and error handling.
| Package | What you get | Price | Time |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pilot | 1 use case, 1 system, internal use | €1.5k – 3.5k | 2–4 weeks |
| MVP | 1–2 use cases, 2–3 integrations, monitoring | €3.5k – 7.5k | 4–8 weeks |
| Full | 3+ use cases, ERP/CRM integration, audit | €9k – 25k | 8–16 weeks |
| Operations | Hosting + tuning + support | €250 – 1,000 / mo | ongoing |
An average internal assistant costs €15–150 / month in API calls at SME scale. Customer-facing chat can run €150–900 / month. I always use a model mix: routine work on cheaper models, critical decisions on the strongest one.
If an admin colleague gains 10 hours per week thanks to AI, that is roughly €450 / month in salary cost (loaded). A €4,500 MVP pays back in ~10 months — and that ignores fewer-errors savings.
An AI agent does not replace a human. It 2–4×s a human's productivity in a specific process. The fastest ROI is in high-volume, repetitive, rule-ish work: quoting, invoice processing, first-line support, reporting.
Got a concrete project? Email me for a 30-minute discovery call and a realistic estimate.