Pricing explained
What an AI readiness assessment costs in 2026
Published prices for an AI readiness assessment run from about $1,500 to $35,000. The number depends on how many workflows are examined, how deep the data review goes, and whether the fee is credited back against the work that follows.
The short answer. A small-business assessment covering one or two workflows is $1,500 to $8,000. A mid-market assessment covering several workflows and a data review is $5,000 to $20,000. A regulated-enterprise assessment with compliance requirements is $18,000 to $50,000. Horizon's entry diagnostic is $1,500, credited in full against a pilot started within 60 days.
What are firms actually charging?
These are prices published openly on consulting firms' own websites as of September 2026. Most firms in this category publish nothing at all, so this is the visible part of the market rather than the whole of it.
| Provider type | Published price | What it covers |
|---|---|---|
| Entry diagnostic (Horizon) | $1,500 | One priority workflow, systems and data review, readiness and risk scorecard, 30/60/90-day roadmap. Credited against a pilot. |
| Small-business assessment | $2,000–$8,000 | One or two workflows, a readiness score, a recommendation. Published bands from small US firms. |
| Mid-market assessment | $5,000–$15,000 | Several workflows, data quality review, ROI model, costed pilot plan. |
| Platform-specific readiness (for example Microsoft 365 Copilot) | $18,000–$35,000 | Licensing, identity, permissions and governance review inside one vendor's stack, usually for regulated firms. |
| Enterprise / multi-business | $15,000–$50,000+ | Portfolio-wide assessment, multiple departments, formal governance deliverables. |
Why is the range so wide?
Four things move the price, in roughly this order:
- How many workflows are in scope. One workflow can be assessed properly in a week. Five cannot.
- Whether the data is examined or only discussed. Looking at real records takes far longer than interviewing people about them, and it is the part that determines whether AI will work at all.
- Compliance requirements. HIPAA, CMMC, SOC 2 and similar frameworks add documentation the assessment has to produce.
- Who does the work. A senior practitioner costs more per hour and usually takes fewer of them.
What should an assessment deliver?
If a proposal does not name these five things, the price is not comparable to anything:
- A readiness and risk scorecard that separates verified evidence from estimates.
- A documented baseline of the workflow as it runs today, or a plan to collect one.
- A prioritized 30/60/90-day roadmap with owners, dependencies and measures.
- A build, buy, or fix-first recommendation, including the option of not investing.
- A written scope agreed before work begins, so the fee cannot drift.
Is a credited fee a conflict of interest?
Some firms argue that crediting the assessment fee against later work removes the assessor's independence, because the assessor is paid more if the answer is "yes, build something." It is a fair objection and worth answering directly.
Horizon credits the $1,500 against a pilot started within 60 days, and the diagnostic can still end in "fix your data first" or "do not invest yet." Two things keep that honest: the recommendation is written down with the evidence behind it, and the measures for any pilot are agreed before the pilot starts, so an unjustified pilot fails visibly and quickly. If you would rather pay for a fully independent assessment with no credit attached, that is a reasonable thing to ask for, and any competent firm should offer it.
When is an assessment not worth paying for?
Skip it if you already know the workflow you want to fix, you have a clean data source for it, and someone internally owns the outcome. In that case you are paying for delivery, not diagnosis. An assessment earns its fee when several candidate workflows compete for the same budget, when nobody can say what the current process actually costs, or when the last AI pilot stalled and no one can explain why.
How to compare two proposals
Put them side by side on five questions: how many workflows, how many days of work, whether real records are reviewed, what the written deliverables are, and what happens to the fee if you do not proceed. Price differences usually collapse into scope differences once those are answered.
Horizon's AI Readiness Diagnostic — $1,500
Focused intake, process interview, systems and data review, readiness and risk scorecard, executive findings, and a 30/60/90-day roadmap. Credited in full against a pilot started within 60 days. A written scope and fee come before any work begins.
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