Pricing
What it costs, and what the money buys.
Four rungs, every one a fixed price for a fixed scope. All prices in Australian dollars, excluding GST.
For the shape of the market: a Big 4 AI scoping engagement is benchmarked in Australia at A$120,000 to A$400,000 before a line of code, sandlabs.com.au ↗ and contract AI engineers run A$800 to A$1,150 a day. Robert Walters Salary Guide 2026 ↗ Our diagnostic is about four days of one contractor at the top of that rate. We publish the numbers so you can decide without calling us.
Where it fits
Start hereA$4,500
2 weeks · fixed price, fixed scope
In scope
- Half-day workshop, then three to five sessions with the people who do the work
- A ranked shortlist of five to eight opportunities, scored on hours saved, cost and risk
- Written report, 90-minute readout, fixed quote for the top item — valid 90 days
Not in scope
- Any build — nothing is written or connected in these two weeks
- A privacy, security or financial audit
- Travel outside greater Sydney (billed at cost, agreed first)
Two weeks is long enough to learn your workflow, not your trade. If the shortlist comes back short, we say so rather than pad it.
One workflow, live
A$9,000
2–3 weeks · fixed price, fixed scope
In scope
- One workflow built end to end, one system integration
- Acceptance criteria agreed in numbers before work starts, tested on real records
- Written procedure, walkthrough video, two weeks of post-go-live fixes free
Not in scope
- A second workflow or integration
- Model, hosting and licence fees — paid by you, to the vendor
- Cleaning up your data before we start
One workflow means one. Three that look similar from the office are usually three jobs. The second is a new quote — you hear that during the first.
Implementation sprint
A$12k–28k
3–6 weeks · fixed price, fixed scope
In scope
- One measurable outcome, named and numbered before we start
- Several integrations, counted in the quote; a test suite that stays in your repository
- Monitoring at handover, training, a short written update every week
Not in scope
- Scope added after signing — re-quoted on the same fixed basis
- A data cleanup project (quoted as its own piece of work)
- Replacing a core system
The band is wide because integrations are where the money goes. You carry no risk if we misjudge; we keep the difference when it goes quickly. That is the trade, both ways.
Run it with us
A$3.5k–7.5k /mo
ongoing · fixed price, fixed scope
In scope
- Monthly monitoring against the measure agreed at build time, tuning when it drifts
- Model upgrades and re-testing when a vendor ships a change
- The written record of what your AI does, office hours, quarterly review
Not in scope
- New workflows — quoted as builds
- A help desk for your staff, or 24-hour on-call
- Vendor licence and usage fees
A retainer is not insurance. If your system is stable and your business is not changing, cancel it — we will say so when that point arrives.
The diagnostic fee comes off the build. Start within 90 days of the readout and you pay A$4,500 less. No clawback if you walk away.
Under 20 people? Skip the diagnostic. One call, then a fixed quote for one workflow. And use the free help first — the federal Digital Solutions program gives small businesses up to five hours of near-free digital advice. business.gov.au, checked 8 August 2026 ↗
02 · Payment
We do not sell days.
A day rate pays us more for working slowly and puts the risk of our own estimate on you. We would rather carry it: if a build takes twice the days we expected, the price does not move. What it costs you is rigidity — the scope is written before we start, and anything added later is quoted separately. That trade is what lets us put a number on a public web page and stand behind it.
Half up front, half on acceptance
The second invoice only when the work meets the criteria we agreed before starting.
Invoices due in 14 days
GST added on the invoice.
Retainers: 3-month minimum, then 30 days’ notice
A month is not long enough to see whether a system drifts.
No setup fee, no exit fee
The code and credentials are already yours, so leaving costs only the notice period.
03 · What moves the price
Why one build costs three times another.
The AI is rarely the expensive part. Four things move a quote, and we can usually tell which apply after one call.
01
How many systems it touches.
Four integrations cost more than four times one, because every pair can disagree about the same customer.
02
Whether they have an API.
Xero, MYOB and ServiceM8 behave predictably. A nightly CSV export doubles the work and breaks more often after.
03
The state of your data.
The same customer in the system four times under three spellings means most of the build is cleaning. The most common reason a quote surprises.
04
Compliance review behind it.
Health records, financial advice or children’s data mean assessments and sign-offs. Real work, quoted separately so you can see it.
04 · The fine print
Asked and answered.
The first call is free.
Half an hour, no deck. If there is nothing in it, you hear that on the call and have lost thirty minutes.
Stop after the diagnostic and the report is yours.
Act on it yourself, hand it to another firm, or put it in a drawer. Nothing obliges you to build with us.
We do not bill by the hour.
No day rate, no time sheets. If procurement requires an hourly arrangement, we are the wrong firm.
What the price never includes.
Scope added after signing (re-quoted, fixed) and vendor fees — model APIs, hosting, licences — which you pay directly and can switch off without asking us.
Money you may be able to get back.
We are not tax advisers. The R&D Tax Incentive refunds at the company tax rate plus 18.5% under $20M turnover — but eligibility turns on genuinely experimental activities, and most of what we build is engineering, not experiment. business.gov.au ↗ The instant asset write-off applies to depreciating assets, which our invoice generally is not. Ask your accountant, not a consultant's website. ato.gov.au, checked 8 August 2026 ↗
We do not write grant applications and we do not take a percentage of one.
We are registering the trading entity now; no invoice goes out before the ABN and GST registration are in place. All prices exclude GST.
The next step
Tell us what's slow.
Describe the part of your week that takes too long. A person replies, usually the same day. The first call is free, runs about half an hour, and ends with a straight answer on whether anything is worth building.
Or email hello@westringia.com directly. No deck, no sales process.