If you are weighing up an AI agent project, the first question your finance team will ask is simple: how much will it cost? Most agencies answer with a vague "it depends" and a request for a discovery call. That is frustrating when you are trying to build a business case. So we are going to do something almost nobody in the UK market does and publish our real prices, along with an honest explanation of what pushes the figure up or down.
An AI agent is software that can carry out multi-step work on your behalf, such as reading a customer email, looking up the relevant account, drafting a reply and updating your records, rather than just answering a single question. If you want the wider picture before we get into numbers, our guide to Claude AI agents for business explains what they are and where they earn their keep. This post is purely about the money.
SpotDev's fixed prices, in full
We work in fixed-price packages. There are no day rates, no hourly billing and no scope that quietly creeps once the project starts. You know the cost before you commit, which makes the business case far easier to approve. Here is the complete list.
| Package | Price | What it is for |
|---|---|---|
| AI and Data Readiness Assessment | £5,000 | A structured review of your data, systems and best opportunities, with a costed plan. Ideal if you want certainty before you invest further. |
| AI Foundations | £8,000 | Your first working agent in production, set up properly, so you can see real value quickly. |
| Custom Agents | £20,000 | One or more bespoke agents built around a specific process, with deeper integration into your tools. |
| AI Transformation | £45,000 | A broader programme across multiple processes or teams, with governance and rollout support. |
For most UK businesses planning a build rather than just a study, the working range to budget for is £8,000 to £45,000. The first rollout is typically live in two to three weeks, so you are not waiting months to see anything working. When you are ready to map a package to your situation, you can talk to a Claude engineer and see the full list with a contact form.
What actually drives the cost up or down
The price is not arbitrary. A handful of practical factors decide where a project sits in that range. Understanding them helps you scope sensibly and avoid paying for complexity you do not need.
How many integrations the agent needs
An integration is a connection between the agent and another system, such as your CRM, your helpdesk, your finance software or a database. The more systems an agent has to read from and write to, the more work goes into building and testing those connections safely. An agent that lives inside one tool is cheaper than one that has to orchestrate four. This is usually the single biggest cost lever.
The state of your data
Agents are only as good as the information they can reach. If your data is clean, well organised and consistent, an agent can be pointed at it quickly. If it is scattered across spreadsheets, duplicated or full of gaps, that groundwork has to happen first. This is exactly why the £5,000 Assessment exists: it tells you, before you spend more, whether your data is ready or whether a tidy-up should come first.
The number of agents and the breadth of the rollout
One agent handling one process is a contained project. A programme that puts agents into several teams, each with their own workflow, is a larger piece of work. Cost scales with breadth, which is the difference between the Custom Agents package and the AI Transformation package.
Governance, security and oversight
Governance means the rules and controls around what an agent is allowed to do, who can see its outputs and how its decisions are checked. A regulated business, or one handling sensitive customer data, will rightly want stronger controls, audit trails and human review steps. That assurance is worth paying for, and it sits at the higher end of the range.
Why fixed prices, and not day rates?
Day rates put the risk on you. If a project runs long, your bill grows, and the supplier has little incentive to be efficient. A fixed price puts that risk on us, where it belongs. You approve a number, we deliver against it, and our job is to be disciplined about scope. It also makes internal sign-off far simpler, because the figure your board sees is the figure you pay.
It is worth separating two costs that often get muddled. There is the build cost, which is what you pay SpotDev to design and deploy the agents, and there is the ongoing software cost, which is what you pay the AI provider to run them. If you want to understand that second figure, our guide to Claude Enterprise pricing in the UK breaks down the plans and what you actually need.
Build versus buy: the cheapest option is not always the right one
An off-the-shelf AI tool can look cheaper on day one, and for some simple needs it genuinely is the sensible choice. The trade-off is that you adapt to the tool rather than the tool adapting to you, and the per-user licence cost can mount as you scale. A custom agent costs more to build but fits your exact process and your own systems. We have set out the full comparison in our piece on custom Claude agents versus off-the-shelf AI tools, which is the right read if you are still deciding which route to take.
What you are paying for at SpotDev
We are a UK consultancy that specialises near-exclusively in Anthropic's Claude, and our engineering team is in-house, so nothing is subcontracted abroad. We have delivered more than 300 technology projects, and that experience is what lets us quote a fixed price with confidence rather than padding an estimate to cover unknowns. We work best with UK businesses of roughly 30 to 250 staff, where a well-scoped agent can take real work off people's plates without a year-long programme.
Frequently asked questions
How much does an AI agent cost in the UK?
At SpotDev, AI agent projects are fixed price. A readiness assessment is £5,000, your first agent in production is £8,000, bespoke custom agents are £20,000 and a broader transformation programme is £45,000. Most businesses planning a build should budget in the range of £8,000 to £45,000.
Why do most agencies not publish their prices?
Many agencies bill by the day, so the final cost is unknown until the work is done, which makes a fixed figure hard to commit to in advance. We use fixed-price packages instead, so we can publish the numbers openly and you know the cost before you start.
What makes an AI agent project more expensive?
The main factors are the number of systems the agent connects to, the state of your data, how many agents you need across how many teams, and the level of governance and security required. More integrations and stronger controls move a project towards the higher end of the range.
How quickly can we see something working?
The first rollout is typically live in two to three weeks. That means you can see a real agent doing real work early, rather than waiting months before anything is in production.
Work with a Claude specialist
SpotDev designs, builds and deploys custom Claude agents and enterprise Claude rollouts for UK businesses, with fixed packages from £8,000 to £45,000 and a first rollout live in two to three weeks. Explore our Claude implementation packages or talk to one of our engineers.
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