The short answer
An AI consulting engagement with Lumeor costs $7,500 to $40,000 and runs two to eight weeks. A focused sprint for one department lands at $7,500 to $15,000. A company-wide roadmap with a working prototype of the top use case lands near $28,000 to $40,000.
The fee buys decisions: which use cases are worth doing, in what order, whether to buy or build each one, and what rules your team should follow when using AI tools. If you mainly want a quick diagnostic of where you stand, an AI readiness assessment is the smaller first step.
Where the money goes
| Phase | Share of effort | What happens |
|---|---|---|
| Discovery interviews | 15–20% | Talk to leaders and the people doing the work, collect pain points and ideas |
| Process and systems review | 20–25% | Map the workflows behind top ideas, check data quality and API access |
| Use-case scoring | 10–15% | Estimate value, effort, risk and buy-versus-build for each candidate |
| Roadmap and business cases | 20–25% | Sequence the work, estimate budgets and timelines, define success measures |
| Policy and governance | 10–15% | AI usage policy, data rules, tool approval process |
| Readout and handover | 5–10% | Leadership presentation, Q&A, documents your team can act on |
Prototype work, when included, adds its own phase on top of these and is what moves an engagement into the highest tier.
The costs that come after
Consulting itself has no running cost, but a roadmap commits you to spending elsewhere. Plan for these when you read any recommendation:
- AI tool seats. Assistants such as ChatGPT, Claude or Microsoft 365 Copilot are billed per user per month. The total scales with how many people get access, so roll out to the teams with clear use first.
- Builds. Each custom agent, chatbot or automation on the roadmap has its own build cost and its own running costs for model usage and hosting.
- Staff time. Interviews, testing and change management take hours from your team. This is the cost most budgets leave out.
- Training. Tools only pay off if people use them well. See what AI training for employees costs.
- Ongoing advice. Some companies keep a part-time AI lead after the roadmap is delivered. See what a fractional AI officer costs.
How to keep the cost down
- Arrive with a short list. If you already know the three processes that hurt most, the engagement can go deep instead of wide.
- Limit the interview list. Talk to the people closest to the work, not every manager.
- Skip the prototype if the path is clear. When the top use case is a well-known pattern, go straight to a build quote.
- Write the policy once. A simple AI usage policy that names approved tools and data rules covers most small companies.
When not to hire a consultant
If you have one obvious use case, such as support emails piling up, skip strategy and get a build quote for that one thing. If your team simply needs to learn to use ChatGPT or Claude well, training is cheaper than consulting. If budget is tight and the question is narrow, an independent specialist may be enough; our AI consultant vs freelancer comparison covers the trade-offs.
How Lumeor prices consulting
Every engagement is a fixed fee for named deliverables, agreed after an intro call. Senior people do the interviews and write the roadmap, and on-site sessions are available across Greater Philadelphia. Where an off-the-shelf tool fits a use case, the roadmap says so. For how this compares with hiring a large firm, see AI studio vs big consulting firm.