Pricing, in the open
How much does
custom automation cost?
You’ve probably searched this and found nothing but “book a call.” Agencies hide prices because opacity lets them quote by what you look like you can pay. I’d rather you know my numbers before we ever talk: sprints from $6,900 fixed, retainers from $2,900 a month, and a ladder that starts free.
The ladder, with real numbers
Free systems teardown
$0I map your operation and show you your 3 biggest automation leaks, what each costs monthly, and what I’d fix first. In your inbox within 72 hours. No call required.
Systems audit
$490The full version: every manual time-sink mapped, a prioritized roadmap with effort and ROI per step, and a fixed quote for step 1. The $490 is credited toward the build if we proceed.
Build sprint
from $6,900Fixed scope, fixed price. 50% upfront, and the final invoice only goes out when the system is live in production. No hourly billing, ever.
Operator retainer
from $2,900/moI run, monitor, and extend what I built. Cancel monthly. Current engagements at full scale run to five figures monthly, and every one of them started at the bottom of this ladder.
Every step de-risks the next: the teardown proves I understand your operation, the audit proves the roadmap, the sprint proves the system. You never pay a large invoice to someone you haven’t already seen deliver.
What moves the price up or down
Four variables explain most of the spread between a $6,900 sprint and a five-figure build. Integration count: two apps talking to each other is a sprint; a platform touching 18+ external services is a program. Data volume: a few hundred records and a database of 863,484 contacts need different engineering. Legacy formats: scanned invoices, emails that must become an exact 28-column CSV, systems that only speak FTPS. Compliance: GDPR-constrained builds where data can never leave the client’s environment take more care, and should.
The math that actually matters
The price of a system is the boring number. The real question is what the manual process costs you: hours saved per week, times a loaded wage, times 12 months, plus the cost of the errors humans make on repetitive work, plus the opportunities your team doesn’t chase because they’re copy-pasting. Anchor that against the alternatives: an ops hire runs $70k+ a year, every year, before onboarding and churn. A typical agency engagement takes months to quote and longer to ship. A fixed-scope sprint from $6,900 that removes the work permanently is usually the cheapest option on the table, which is exactly why I can afford to publish the number.
Three real shapes a project takes
I won’t retro-fit exact historical prices onto past projects; those were quoted on their own terms. But the shapes repeat, and every one below is a real, shipped system.
The single sprint. One painful process, removed. My work-order pipeline is this shape: incoming work orders parsed from email, converted to the exact 28-column CSV the client’s field-service system requires, uploaded via FTPS, every order logged. Daily manual re-entry, gone. This is where the “from $6,900” pricing lives.
The data-heavy sprint. Same fixed-scope structure, priced up by volume and validation work. The contact-data engine imported and deduplicated 863,484 contacts, enriched 1.2M+ empty fields, and passed 8/8 QA checks. The engineering cost sits in the checks, not the glamour.
Multi-sprint plus retainer. The client operations platform started as a small paid test project and grew, sprint by sprint, into a platform with 229 API routes and 25 background jobs that I now operate on a retainer that has reached five figures monthly. Nobody signed up for that on day one. It grew because each phase delivered before the next was bought.
Pricing questions, answered straight
How much does a custom automation project cost?
My build sprints start at $6,900 fixed price, with 50% upfront and the final invoice only when the system is live. Most first projects are a single sprint. Larger platforms are built as multiple sprints, often followed by an operator retainer from $2,900/month.
Why do most automation agencies hide their prices?
Because "book a call" lets them price by what you look like you can pay. I publish my ladder (free teardown, $490 audit credited toward the build, sprints from $6,900, retainers from $2,900/month) because pricing surprises are where trust dies.
What makes a custom automation project more expensive?
Four things dominate: the number of external systems to integrate, the data volume involved, legacy formats that need parsing (scanned PDFs, decades-old CSV conventions), and compliance requirements like GDPR-constrained data handling. A two-integration workflow and a platform touching 18 external services are different projects.
Is custom automation cheaper than hiring an ops person?
Usually, for repetitive work: an ops hire runs $70k+ per year before onboarding and churn, every year. A system is a one-time build from $6,900 with an optional retainer, runs 24/7, and never resigns. For work that needs human judgment, hire the human.
Want the number for your operation?
Start at step one of the ladder: a free teardown of your 3 biggest automation leaks and what each costs you monthly. If the honest answer is “this isn’t worth building,” that’s what it will say. In your inbox within 72 hours.
Get your free systems teardown