I get asked this early in almost every conversation, and I think it deserves a straight, specific answer instead of "it depends" — because it mostly doesn't, for a business in the size range I work with.
What a real audit costs
My AI Opportunity Assessment runs $2,500, structured as a two-week engagement. That's not a number I picked because it sounded reasonable — I checked it against a fractional AI consultant serving businesses in the $1M-$50M revenue range who sells an "AI Readiness Assessment" at the identical price and duration, producing a 15-25 page written roadmap. When two independent people land on the same shape and price for the same problem, that's a real market signal, not a coincidence.
What you actually get for that
A real audit should end in a document, not a conversation. Specifically: a written, prioritized list of where AI would help, a rough cost and return estimate for each opportunity, and a clear recommendation on what to tackle first. If an audit doesn't produce something concrete you can hand to a partner or a board, it wasn't a real audit.
Where the number changes
Scale changes this significantly. A company-wide audit at real enterprise scale — dozens of locations, multiple business units — runs meaningfully higher, often into five figures, because the discovery work itself takes longer and touches more of the organization. If someone quotes you a number well outside these ranges for a business your actual size, it's worth asking what's driving the difference.
What it costs after the audit
The audit is diagnostic, not the build. Once you know what you're building, a real custom system typically runs a few thousand to the low tens of thousands depending on complexity, plus a modest monthly amount for hosting, monitoring, and keeping it working as things change around it. The audit exists specifically so you're not guessing at that number before you commit to it.
$2,500, two weeks, a real written roadmap at the end. If you already know you have manual processes worth fixing, this is the fastest way to find out exactly what they'd cost to fix.