eleven firms checked september 2026

AI consulting firms and AI consulting companies by what they charge and who publishes it

Every guide to this market quotes confident hourly ranges. None of them come from the firms. We read eleven AI consulting firms own service pages and counted how many published a number, then converted the one cost buyers consistently underestimate, the discovery phase, into the unit that actually matters: engineer months of building.

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the short answer

AI consulting firms are paid to decide what a company should build with AI and to justify the decision. Not one publishes a price. Of eleven firms checked in September 2026, nine service pages were readable and zero listed an hourly rate, a day rate or a project minimum. The figures everyone quotes are third party reported: $75 to $150 an hour for independents, $150 to $350 for boutiques, $300 to $600 for mid tier firms and $300 to $900 for Big Four and MBB senior staff. The number that decides most budgets is not the rate, it is the discovery phase. A standard six week discovery with three people is 540 billed hours, which at MBB rates is roughly $324,000, or about eighteen engineer months of actual building at independent rates. Buy consulting when the hard part is the decision. Buy delivery when you already know what to build.

The transparency audit

Which AI consulting companies publish a rate, and what they publish instead

This is a first party check, not a directory listing. In September 2026 we requested the main AI services or AI consulting page for each firm below and read what was on it. The question was narrow: does this page state an hourly rate, a day rate, a project minimum or any rate card. The answer was the same every time.

Firm	Tier	Price published	What the page offers instead
McKinsey (QuantumBlack)	MBB strategy	None, page blocked automated access	Client stories and capability overview, contact route only
BCG X	MBB build unit	None	Proprietary AI products, venture builds, AI Science Institute
IBM Consulting	Global systems integrator	None	AI strategy and governance, data services, agentic AI
Slalom	National consultancy	None	Six capability pillars from strategy through trust and security
LeewayHertz	Boutique, AI native	None	Three engagement models: dedicated team, team extension, project
Quantiphi	Boutique, AI and data	None	Industry solutions and platform partnerships
Tredence	Boutique, analytics led	None	AI consulting service lines by industry
Fractal	Boutique, enterprise AI	None	Enterprise AI products and case studies
RTS Labs	Boutique, US mid market	None	AI consulting and data strategy service pages
Markovate	Boutique, AI native	Unverifiable, page blocked automated access	Not readable at time of check
Accenture and Deloitte	Big Four and global SI	None found	AI service URLs had moved or returned 404 at time of check

Zero rate cards out of nine readable pages is a cleaner result than we expected, and it is worth understanding why rather than just complaining about it. Consulting is priced on the perceived value of the decision, not on the cost of the hours, so a published rate would anchor every negotiation against the firm. That logic is defensible. The consequence for you is not: you cannot shortlist on price, so you have to shortlist on scope and then run a quote process, which takes weeks.

The practical response is to make the firms compete on a written brief that you control. Send the same document to three firms, specify the deliverable rather than the duration, and require the proposal to break out discovery from delivery as separate line items. When the same brief comes back priced three different ways, the differences tell you more about each firm than any rate card would. If your requirement is narrower than a full program, compare the answer against what an AI development company would charge to simply build it, and against hiring an AI consultant directly for the advisory part alone.

Reported rates

What AI consulting firms reportedly charge, by tier

Every figure in this table is third party reported, because as section 01 establishes there is no first party source to cite. Use it the way you would use a salary survey: to tell whether a proposal you have received is normal, not to argue that a firm should charge less. The right hand column is the one that changes decisions.

Tier	Reported hourly	Typical engagement	Buy this when
Independent practitioner	$75 to $150	Weeks, one person, advisory or hands on	You need a specific skill or a second opinion, not a team
Boutique AI firm	$150 to $350	One to two quarters, small senior team	You know the use case and want it built and handed over
Mid tier consultancy	$300 to $600	Two to four quarters, mixed seniority	Several business units are involved and change management matters
Big Four and MBB	$300 to $900	Multi quarter program, large mixed team	The decision is board level and needs external authority behind it

The spread from top to bottom is roughly eight times for people who are, in many cases, solving the same technical problem. That is not evidence of a rip off. The higher tiers are selling things a practitioner genuinely cannot supply: indemnity, procurement compatibility, a bench deep enough to survive someone leaving, and an outside name on the recommendation when an internal disagreement needs settling. The mistake is paying for those things when none of them is what is blocking you.

Notice also that the reported Big Four range starts at the same $300 as the mid tier range. Junior consultants on a brand name engagement are billed at rates that overlap heavily with senior people at smaller firms, which is why the seniority mix of the proposed team matters more than the logo. Ask for the named team and their years of applied AI experience before you compare any two proposals.

The discovery conversion

What a discovery phase costs, priced in engineer months of building

Almost every AI consulting engagement opens with a discovery or assessment phase, commonly four to eight weeks, billed at full rate, producing a roadmap rather than a running system. Buyers approve it easily because it is small relative to the program. Here is the same spend expressed in the unit you can compare it against.

The model is deliberately simple and every input is stated. A six week discovery, three people, thirty billed hours each per week, is 540 billed hours. We price those hours at the midpoint of each reported tier range, then convert the total into build time at the independent practitioner midpoint of $112.50 an hour and a 160 hour engineer month.

Tier running discovery	Midpoint rate	540 hour discovery	Same money as build time
Independent practitioner	$112.50	$60,750	3.4 engineer months
Boutique AI firm	$250	$135,000	7.5 engineer months
Mid tier consultancy	$450	$243,000	13.5 engineer months
Big Four and MBB	$600	$324,000	18 engineer months

Eighteen engineer months is a year and a half of a competent practitioner building things, spent before a line of production code exists. That comparison is not an argument against discovery. It is an argument for knowing which one you are buying, because discovery genuinely earns its cost in exactly one situation: when it prevents you building the wrong thing. If your organization has three plausible directions and no way to choose, $135,000 to pick correctly is cheap. If you already know the workflow you want automated, the same money spent confirming it is the most expensive way to feel reassured.

There is a cheaper way to buy the same certainty, and it is worth considering before you approve a discovery budget. Building the narrowest possible version of the thing teaches you more about feasibility than any assessment, because it makes contact with your real data. That is the logic behind proving the idea with a proof of concept first, and our breakdown of what an AI development company actually costs puts that path next to a full engagement. A four week build that fails tells you something a six week assessment cannot.

One caution on reading the table too literally. Engineer months are not interchangeable with consulting months, and a practitioner building without direction can burn eighteen months producing something nobody adopts. The conversion is a cost frame, not a recommendation to skip thinking. Use it to ask a sharper question in the proposal meeting: what specifically will we know at the end of discovery that we do not know now, and what would it cost to learn that by building instead.

Scope

What AI consulting firms actually do

The six service lines below appeared, in almost identical language, across every firm page we read. The wording is standardized enough that it tells you very little about who is good. What it does tell you is what a full engagement is expected to cover, which is useful when you are checking a proposal for gaps.

AI strategy and roadmap

Where AI should apply in your business, sequenced by value and feasibility. This is the deliverable most engagements are really selling, and the one most likely to arrive as a document.

Use case identification

Workshops that capture processes, then score candidate use cases. Genuinely valuable when done with operators rather than executives, thin when it is a survey of opinions.

Data readiness

An honest assessment of whether your data can support what you want to build. This is where most AI programs actually fail, and the one section worth paying senior rates to get right.

Solution architecture

The technical design: models, retrieval, integration points, evaluation. Insist your own engineers can review it, because an architecture nobody internal understands cannot be maintained.

Model and agent development

The build itself, where the firm stays past the roadmap. Ask directly whether the people who wrote the strategy are the people who will write the code, because usually they are not.

Governance and compliance

Policy, risk controls, model monitoring, audit trails. Weighty in regulated industries and close to optional outside them, so check you are not buying a bank grade framework for a marketing workflow.

The single most useful question to ask about this list is where the engagement stops. Firms that end at architecture hand you a design and leave; firms that continue through development own the outcome. Both are legitimate, but they are priced similarly and valued very differently. If the proposal ends at a roadmap, you still have the entire build ahead of you, and you should price that now rather than discover it in a quarter. Our guide to the questions worth asking before hiring an AI development company covers the wording that gets a straight answer.

Who each tier is for

Matching the firm to the decision you are making

MBB strategy firms

McKinsey QuantumBlack, BCG X, Bain

Buy when the question is which businesses to be in and AI is one input to that. You are paying for analytical rigor and for a recommendation the board will accept. You are not primarily paying for engineering, and the delivery work often moves to another firm afterward.

Big Four and global integrators

Deloitte, Accenture, IBM Consulting

Buy when the program spans many business units, touches regulated processes, and needs the operating model changed around it. Their real strength is the unglamorous work of making a change stick across thousands of people, which boutiques cannot do.

National and mid tier consultancies

Slalom and similar

Buy when you want senior delivery capacity with account management and local presence, without MBB rates. Usually the right answer for a large but single domain program, such as putting AI through one function properly.

Boutique AI native firms

LeewayHertz, Quantiphi, Tredence, Fractal, RTS Labs

Buy when the use case is already identified and you want it built by people who do only this. Reported rates are roughly half mid tier and a third of MBB, and the team that scopes the work is usually the team that builds it.

A fifth option sits underneath all of these and is routinely forgotten: hiring the specific expertise directly for the specific gap. Plenty of AI programs stall on one missing skill, a retrieval engineer, an evaluation specialist, someone who has shipped agents into production before, and a firm engagement is an expensive way to import one person. If that describes your situation, compare a proposal against hiring AI engineers directly or against the AI agent development company route, where the audit and crossover work the same way it does here.

Diligence

Six questions that separate AI consulting firms quickly

Because you cannot compare on price, comparison has to happen on answers. These six get past the capability deck faster than anything else we have seen work.

Who writes the code?

Name the individuals and their applied AI history. If the strategy team and the delivery team are different companies or different continents, you need to know before signing, not at handover.

What exactly does discovery produce?

Ask for a sample deliverable from a comparable engagement, redacted. Firms with substantive discovery output share it readily. Firms selling a template get vague.

Who owns the model and the pipeline?

Ownership of code, weights, prompts, evaluation sets and data pipelines should be written down. Ambiguity here is what turns a one off engagement into a permanent dependency.

What happens to the capability after handover?

A good engagement leaves your team able to change the system. Ask specifically what training and documentation are included and who maintains it in month seven.

How is success measured?

Insist on a metric agreed before work starts, tied to the business process rather than to model accuracy. Accuracy improvements that change no decision are the most common way AI projects quietly fail.

Can we start smaller?

The answer reveals the business model. Firms confident in their delivery will scope a narrow first phase. Firms that need the full program to make the economics work will explain why smaller is impossible.

By what you need

If a consulting engagement is not the right shape

Hire an AI consultant directly

The advisory part, without a firm wrapped around it.

AI development company

When you know what to build and need it built.

AI agent development company

A vendor audit and build versus subscribe crossover.

AI proof of concept

Buy certainty by building small, not by assessing.

AI implementation services

Taking an approved roadmap through to production.

Enterprise AI development

Multi system programs with governance attached.

AI automation services

Process automation rather than a strategy program.

Hire machine learning engineers

When the gap is one specific modeling skill.

AI consultant vs AI developer

Which role your problem actually calls for.

The honest version

When an AI consulting firm is the right call, and when it is not

We run a hiring marketplace, so the obvious incentive is to tell you to skip consulting entirely. That would be wrong often enough to be worth saying plainly. Consulting firms earn their rates when the constraint is genuinely the decision: when several business units disagree, when a regulator will ask how the choice was made, when the operating model has to change around the technology, or when an internal recommendation needs outside authority to survive contact with a board. None of those problems is solved by better engineers.

The pattern that wastes money is different and much more common. A team already knows the workflow it wants automated. It can name the systems involved and describe what success looks like. It then buys a strategy engagement anyway, because that is the familiar way to start, and spends a quarter and six figures arriving at the conclusion it walked in with. If you can write down the process, the systems it touches, and how you would know it worked, you are buying delivery and should pay delivery rates for it.

Where BotGigs fits is narrow and worth stating precisely. We do not sell strategy programs. We match a written brief to vetted AI and automation specialists, with hire fees published on our pricing page rather than folded invisibly into a day rate. For the middle of this market, a company that knows the use case and needs senior people to build it, that is a cheaper and faster path than a firm engagement. For a board level transformation across a regulated enterprise, it is not, and you should hire one of the firms in section 05.

Questions

Questions buyers ask about AI consulting firms

How much does AI consulting cost?

No AI consulting firm publishes a rate, so every number in circulation is third party reported. Those reports put independent practitioners at $75 to $150 an hour, boutique firms at $150 to $350, mid tier firms at $300 to $600, and Big Four or MBB senior staff at $300 to $900. Project engagements are reported from about $15,000 for an executive briefing to several million for an enterprise rollout.

Do AI consulting firms publish their prices?

Effectively none do. Of eleven firms checked in September 2026, nine service pages were readable and not one published an hourly rate, a day rate, a project minimum or a rate card. Two more blocked automated access entirely. Every firm routes the price question to a contact form, so expect a quote process rather than a comparison of published numbers.

What do AI consulting firms do?

Across the eleven firms checked, the advertised scope is consistent: AI strategy and roadmap, use case identification and prioritization, data readiness and data engineering, solution architecture, model or agent development, and governance. The split that matters to a buyer is whether the firm stops at the roadmap or stays to build and operate what the roadmap describes.

How do I choose an AI consulting firm?

Match the firm tier to the decision you are actually making. Board level direction across many business units justifies MBB or Big Four. A single production system does not. Ask who writes the code, whether the discovery deliverable is a document or running software, what happens to the team after handover, and who owns the model and the data pipeline at the end.

Are boutique AI consulting firms better than the Big Four?

Better is the wrong axis, scope is the right one. Large firms carry the change management, procurement and political cover that multi year enterprise programs need. Boutiques ship narrower work faster and usually leave the capability with your team. At reported rates a boutique costs roughly half a mid tier firm and a third of an MBB engagement for the same hours.

What is the difference between an AI consulting firm and an AI development company?

A consulting firm is paid to decide what to build and to justify the decision. A development company is paid to build it. Consulting deliverables are assessments, roadmaps and business cases. Development deliverables are running systems. Many firms now advertise both, so ask which one the proposed engagement is before you sign it.

How long does an AI consulting engagement take?

A discovery or assessment phase commonly runs four to eight weeks before any build starts. That phase is the one worth scrutinizing, because it is billed at full rate, it produces a document rather than a system, and at the reported senior rates a six week discovery run by three people costs about as much as eighteen engineer months of building.

Is AI consulting worth it?

It is worth it when the hard part is the decision and not the code, which is genuinely the case in regulated industries, in multi business unit rollouts, and where an outside opinion is needed to settle an internal argument. It is poor value when you already know what to build, because you are then paying strategy rates for delivery work.

How much do the Big Four charge for AI consulting?

They do not publish it. Third party reporting puts Big Four and MBB senior staff at $300 to $900 an hour, with enterprise transformation programs running into the millions. None of those figures appear on the firms own pages, so treat them as a sanity check on a proposal you receive rather than as a price you can hold anyone to.

What should an AI consulting engagement deliver?

Insist on named, testable artifacts. A prioritized use case list with estimated value and effort per item, a data readiness assessment that names the specific gaps, an architecture your own engineers can review, and a build plan with sequencing. A slide deck summarizing your own operations back to you is not a deliverable worth senior rates.

Can I skip the discovery phase?

Often yes, when the use case is already clear and the constraint is engineering capacity rather than direction. The honest test is whether you can write down the workflow to automate, the systems it touches and how you would know it worked. If you can write those three things, you are buying delivery and should pay delivery rates.

What is a fair AI consulting rate for a mid market company?

Reported boutique pricing of $150 to $350 an hour is the band most mid market buyers land in for genuine senior AI expertise. Below roughly $100 an hour you are usually buying general software development rather than AI specialism. Above $500 an hour you are paying for brand, procurement cover and change management alongside the technical work.