Use case
Last updated: October 2026
A fixed-price AI pilot for a UK small business
A fixed-price AI pilot automates one real workflow from your business in two weeks, for a price agreed before work starts. Ours costs £9,500 to £13,500, ends with a working demo checked against criteria you agreed in writing, and gives you a clear go, change or stop decision before you spend more.
Quick DX PoC: £9,500-£13,500 · 2 weeks
Who this pilot is for
A UK business with one task that eats hours every week, and an owner who can say what a correct result looks like. Typical jobs: reading supplier invoices or order emails into a system, drafting replies to routine enquiries for a person to approve, or turning a weekly spreadsheet into a report.
- One workflow, not a list of ideas.
- A few dozen real examples of the input: documents, emails or rows.
- One person who can review a demo every week.
- A budget decision that depends on the result.
Before the build: a written definition of done
Most of the risk is removed before any code is written. We agree the workflow, the examples, the checks that decide success and what is out of scope. If that is not clear yet, the £595 teardown maps it within 3 business days of receiving your information, and its fee is credited to the pilot.
- The input and the output, shown with real examples.
- What counts as a correct result, and who decides.
- What the pilot will not do, for example send emails without approval.
- The decision the result must support.
During the two weeks: a demo every week
The senior engineer who scoped the pilot builds it, without subcontracting. You see a working demo on your own examples at the end of each week and can change priorities inside the agreed scope.
- A typical first week: the workflow runs end to end on a first set of examples.
- A typical second week: the hard cases, the review step and the acceptance checks.
- New ideas go on a list for the next phase instead of stretching the pilot.
What you receive at the end
A working prototype, the result of each agreed check and a written recommendation. The project code and setup notes are handed over, so you can continue with us, with another team or not at all.
- A working demo on your examples.
- An acceptance report: what passed, what failed and what was not tested.
- Source code and setup notes.
- Next options with fixed prices: a four-week MVP sprint at £19,000 to £26,500, a narrower pilot, or stop.
A worked example from our own product
GEO, our AI visibility checker, is a pilot-sized AI workflow we built and run ourselves. A visitor enters a website; the free check asks ChatGPT three buyer questions that do not name the brand, extracts the companies each answer names and scores the result. A real check of urbanodx.com on 9 October 2026 took 16 seconds and scored 0.
- One input, one scored output, and about seven model calls per check.
- The acceptance check that mattered most: every company it reports must appear in the answer text.
- The first live rankings built on the same extraction counted HubSpot CRM, HubSpot Sales Hub and HubSpot as three brands. The fix folds products into their parent brand and keeps the raw answers so results can be recomputed.
- That is what a pilot is for: finding the error on real data before anyone relies on the number.
Where a pilot fits, and where it does not
A custom pilot is not always the right answer. When a product already does the job, buy the product.
- Fits: the workflow is specific to your business, or joins systems that no product connects.
- Fits: you need a review step, so a person approves what the AI suggests before it is used.
- Does not fit: standard invoice capture or bookkeeping that your accounting software or an off-the-shelf tool already handles.
- Does not fit: you mainly need staff training; a course costs less than a build.
- Does not fit: you need someone on site in the UK, or a supplier on G-Cloud. We work remotely from Poland, one hour ahead of the UK, and are not on G-Cloud.
Sources
Published by Urbano DX on 17 October 2026. Prices for other firms come from their own pages, read on that date: spotdev.co.uk/blog/how-much-do-ai-agents-cost-uk and softomatesolutions.com/ai-consultancy-uk/. The GEO example comes from geo.urbanodx.com and its release notes of 9 October 2026.
Delivery examples
Inspect the deliverables before you commit
Filled-in examples show how the scope and review evidence are documented.
Who publishes a fixed price for a first AI project in the UK (read 17 October 2026)
| Criteria | Urbano DX | SpotDev | Softomate |
|---|---|---|---|
| First paid step | Teardown, £595, 3 business days | Readiness assessment, £5,000 | AI assessment and roadmap, from £1,500 |
| First build | Two-week PoC, £9,500 to £13,500 | First agent in production, £8,000 | Fixed price agreed after a free discovery call |
| Time to a first result (own claim) | Teardown in 3 business days; PoC in 2 weeks | First rollout live in two to three weeks | Discovery in one to two weeks |
| Team (own claim) | One senior engineer in Poland, no subcontracting | In-house engineering team; more than 300 technology projects | UK team in Stanmore |
| Where it is stronger | Lowest first step; the engineer who scopes it builds it | Lower price for a first build; works UK business hours | Free first call; a team you can meet in the UK |
Prices as each firm shows them on its own page on 17 October 2026. Other UK firms may publish fixed prices too; these came up when we searched for fixed-price AI pilots for UK small businesses. Large consultancies such as Faculty publish day rates instead.
Buyer FAQs
How much does an AI pilot cost a UK small business?
One published UK price for a first AI build is £8,000 (SpotDev, read 17 October 2026). Ours is a two-week PoC at £9,500 to £13,500, with an optional £595 teardown first. Large consultancies such as Faculty publish day rates rather than project prices.
How long does an AI pilot take?
Ours takes two weeks of build once the scope is agreed, with a demo at the end of each week. The optional teardown before it takes 3 business days from receiving your information. A pilot that seems to need months is usually two or three pilots, and splitting it makes each decision clearer.
What do we need to provide?
Real examples of the work, such as a few dozen documents, emails or spreadsheet rows; read access to the systems involved; and one person who can review the weekly demo and decide what counts as correct. Sensitive data can be redacted, or replaced with realistic test data, before we see it.
Who owns the code and the data?
You own the project code. It is handed over with the setup notes at the end, and the contract states which existing components stay separate. Your data stays in systems you control or approve. Where a model provider processes data, we agree the provider and region before work starts, under a UK GDPR-aligned DPA.
What if the pilot shows it will not work?
Then you have paid a fixed amount to learn it, and the acceptance report says why: the data, the accuracy or the cost. Stopping is a valid result. You keep the code and the findings, and nothing obliges you to continue to a larger build with us.
Name the workflow you want to test
Tell us the task, how often it happens and what a correct result looks like. We confirm the scope, the checks and the start date in writing before you pay.
Scope a 2-week PoC