An AI audit should tell you exactly which jobs in your business AI can take on, what each would cost to build and run, and how quickly it pays for itself. If you finish an audit with a list of tools and no numbers, you didn’t get an audit. You got a demo.
In the UK, fixed-fee AI audits typically start at between £1,500 and £5,000 before VAT. This guide shows you what yours should include, how to judge the price, and the warning signs to look out for.
Full disclosure: AI Business Systems sells an AI audit. Use this guide to judge anyone’s, ours included.
What is an AI audit?
An AI audit is a structured look at how your business runs, to find where AI could save you time or money and what it would take to get there. It sits between a free sales call and paying for a build.
You’ll also see it called an AI readiness assessment, an AI opportunity audit or AI discovery. The name doesn’t matter. What matters is whether it leaves you knowing what to do next.
Finding the uses is usually the hard part. Among UK businesses with no plans to use AI, 81% said they hadn’t identified a use for it (DSIT, AI Adoption Research). That’s the problem an audit exists to solve.
What a good AI audit should include
You should get seven things. If any are missing, ask why.
- Time with the people who do the work. Your view of a process and your team’s view are rarely the same. If the only person interviewed is you, the audit will miss half the problems.
- Your core processes mapped step by step. For example: enquiry → quote → job → invoice → follow-up. You can’t fix what you haven’t drawn out.
- A check of what you already pay for. You may already have AI features in Microsoft 365, Google Workspace or your CRM that nobody uses. A good audit finds those before suggesting anything new.
- A data and risk check. If AI will touch customer or staff data, this isn’t optional. The ICO says that “in the vast majority of cases, the use of AI will involve a type of processing likely to result in a high risk to individuals’ rights and freedoms”, which means you’re legally required to carry out a data protection impact assessment, and it must be done before the processing starts (ICO, Guidance on AI and data protection). An audit that skips this leaves you to discover it later.
- Costed opportunities. For each one: hours saved per month, build cost, monthly running cost, and how long it takes to pay back.
- A ranking. Which opportunities give you the most for the least effort, so you know what to do first.
- Quick wins and a roadmap. Things you can do yourself this week, plus a 90-day plan for the rest.
The best audits add an eighth item: a list of things not to do. If a task only happens a few times a week, automating it usually costs more than it saves. You want someone who’ll say so.
What should an AI audit cost?
Expect to pay roughly £1,500 to £5,000 plus VAT for a fixed-fee AI audit from a UK consultancy. Organisation-wide audits can reach £10,000 or more.
We checked the published prices of seven UK AI consultancies in October 2026. Their fixed-fee audits started at between £1,500 and £10,000 before VAT, and six of the seven started at £5,000 or less.
What moves the price:
- How many people and teams are involved. More departments means more processes to map.
- How deep it goes. Interviews and workshops cost more than a questionnaire, and they find more.
- Whether the opportunities are costed. Hours saved and payback figures take real work. Lists of ideas don’t.
- Data and risk work. A proper data protection check adds time.
- Meeting in person. On-site workshops cost more than video calls, but you’ll often get better answers.
The cheaper products we found were narrower, such as a review of a single app. That can be exactly what you need, as long as you know you’re not getting a full audit.
For comparison, the AI Business Systems AI Opportunity Audit costs £995 for businesses with up to 10 staff, £1,750 for 11–20 staff and from £2,950 for 21–50 staff, with no VAT charged. That’s at the lower end of what we found, because it’s fixed in scope.
Is an AI audit worth it?
An AI audit is worth it if you have several processes that eat time and you want to avoid building the wrong thing. It’s probably not worth it if you already know the one job you want automated. In that case, ask for a fixed quote instead.
Run the numbers on your own business. If an audit costs £995 and finds one automation that saves you 3 hours a week, at £25 an hour that’s about £3,900 a year (3 × 52 × £25). One good find pays for the audit several times over. If you can’t picture even one job like that, start with something smaller.
Red flags to watch for
- Every recommendation is the consultancy’s own product. An audit should be free to recommend a £20-a-month tool, or nothing at all.
- No numbers. “AI could transform your customer service” isn’t a finding. “Answering out-of-hours enquiries could save 6 hours a week, costing £X to build and £Y a month to run” is.
- Nobody talks to your team.
- No mention of data protection, even though your customer data is involved.
- The price isn’t fixed, or the scope grows once you’ve started.
- You can’t use the report without them. A good audit stands on its own, even if you never work with that firm again.
Questions to ask before you book
Copy these into your email:
- Who in my business will you talk to?
- Will each opportunity come with a build cost, a running cost and a payback figure?
- Do you check data protection and what the ICO expects?
- Is the price fixed, and what exactly is included?
- Can I act on the report without you?
- If I go ahead with a build, does any of the fee come off it?
How to get the most from your audit
The better your preparation, the more your audit finds. Before it starts:
- List your software and subscriptions, including the ones nobody uses any more.
- Collect examples of repetitive work, such as the emails you send every week, the forms you fill in, and the reports you build by hand.
- Pick one or two people to involve, ideally whoever does the most admin.
- Know your numbers, roughly what an hour of your time and your team’s time costs. Payback figures need them.
Next steps
If you want this done for your business, see the AI Opportunity Audit. If you’d rather start with one problem, the £197 AI Quick Start gives you a one-page plan with your top three opportunities, and the £197 comes off the audit if you book it within 30 days.