Cost
How much does AI consulting cost in Ireland?
The short answer
For an Irish SME, a single workflow built properly and handed over starts at roughly €3,500 and rises with the number of systems it must touch and how much governance you need evidenced. Day-rate strategy work costs less and delivers a document; a working tool costs more and changes the week. Local Enterprise Office and Enterprise Ireland supports often cover a meaningful share for eligible businesses.
What you are actually buying
Most AI quotes in Ireland fall into three shapes. A strategy piece, which produces a document and a recommendation. A licence, which gives you a platform and leaves the workflow design to you. Or a build, which ends with a tool your team uses on Monday morning.
They are not comparable, and price alone will mislead you. The question worth asking a supplier is what exists at the end and who owns it.
The four things that move the number
Systems touched. One inbox and one folder is straightforward. An accounts package, a CRM and a rota system talking to each other is not.
Data readiness. If the information the tool needs lives in scanned PDFs or somebody's head, part of the cost is getting it into a shape a machine can read.
Governance depth. A logged audit trail and role based approvals are standard here. Formal documentation for a regulator or a large client's procurement team is more work again.
Ownership. If you want to run it entirely yourself, more of the budget goes into documentation and training. That is usually money well spent.
Why roughly €3,500 is the floor
Below that, the honest options are a script with no approvals, no logging and no handover, or a report. Neither is a workflow you can rely on or explain. If the budget is under that, the better use of it is training your team to use off-the-shelf assistants well, which is a real answer and sometimes the right one.
How to compare quotes fairly
Ask every supplier the same five questions:
- What is running in my business at the end, and on whose accounts?
- Who approves an output before it reaches a customer?
- What is logged, and can I export it?
- Who trains my staff, and is the attendance recorded?
- If I stop paying you, what stops working?
The answers separate a build from a subscription faster than any price comparison.
Common questions
- Why is there no price list on the site?
- Because the same brief costs very different amounts depending on how many systems it touches and how clean the data is. A published range either flatters simple projects or frightens off good ones. Twenty minutes on a call gets you a real number.
- What makes a project more expensive?
- Every extra system it must read from or write to, data that has to be cleaned before it is usable, approval chains with several roles, and evidence requirements from a regulator, client or board.
- What makes it cheaper?
- One system of record, text you already hold in a searchable place, one person who can approve outputs, and a willingness to ship a narrow version first.
- Can Irish grant funding cover AI consulting?
- Often, yes. Local Enterprise Office and Enterprise Ireland supports frequently apply to AI and digital projects for eligible SMEs and typically offset a meaningful share. Eligibility and rates are set by the funding body, so check with your LEO before you budget.
- Are there ongoing costs after handover?
- Two kinds. Model and platform usage, which is usually modest and billed to your own accounts, and optional care if you want someone on call. If you want neither, nothing breaks: the accounts and credentials are in your name.
- Is a cheaper freelancer not the same thing?
- For a script, yes. The cost difference here is governance and handover: approvals, logging, an audit trail, training and documentation another developer could follow. If you never need to explain how a decision was made, you may not need that.
Next step
A 20-minute call is enough to tell you whether there is a workflow here worth building, and to say so plainly if there is not.