Two price bands cover nearly everything Australian small businesses bring us, and the distance between the top and the bottom of each band is not random.
Ask three suppliers what an AI project costs and you will get three shrugs and a discovery workshop. That is not much help when you are trying to work out whether to spend the money at all.
So here are the numbers Penny uses. They are published in the site's own engine, they show on your verdict screen, and they are the same numbers every AI Builder sees when they quote.
Penny sorts every buildable job into one of two shapes, and each one carries its own range and its own running cost.
Rules are steady, the data is already on a screen, and the work is moving it from one place to another on time.
There is reading, writing or judgement in the middle of the job, and it has to run inside the systems you already use.
These are guides built from published Australian rates. Builders set their own prices and you set your own budget.
The gap between A$8,000 and A$30,000 looks like guesswork. It is not. Four questions move a job up or down, and you can answer all four yourself before you talk to anyone.
If you answered "one system, barely any exceptions, no approval needed, nothing about people", you are at the bottom of your range. Answer the other way on all four and you are at the top, or above it.
A build is not a one-off purchase. Something has to host it, something has to watch it, and if there is a language model in the middle, every run costs a few cents that add up.
That is what the monthly figures are for. A$80 to A$300 a month on an automation, A$180 to A$600 a month on a real build. Add the annual version of that to your sums before you decide anything, because a build that pays for itself on the sticker price and then quietly loses on running costs is still a bad build.
Example only
This is the worked example we show on the home page. It is an illustration of the arithmetic, not a customer and not a promise.
Notice what the example does not claim. It does not take the job to zero hours, because exceptions never go to zero. And time freed up is not the same thing as cash in the bank. If nobody is let go and nothing new gets sold with the hours, the saving is capacity, not profit. Say that out loud before you sign anything.
Penny can give eight answers and five of them cost you nothing to act on. Leave it alone for now. Fix the process first. Use what you already pay for. A general AI tool is enough. Buy the tool, do not build it.
If the job only takes back a few thousand dollars a year, the build costs more than the problem does. That is a real verdict, it comes up often, and it is the one that saves people the most money.
Separate from the build itself, here is our side of it, in full.
That last point matters for the number at the top of this article. We earn the same whether Penny tells you to build or tells you to go away, which is why she is willing to tell you to go away.
Written by the AI Builds team. AI Builds is operated by Media Mantra, ABN 89 594 851 152.
She checks the job, writes the scope, and never sells you a build.