Type "AI agent" into Google and look at the related questions: the first one is about price. That makes sense, it is the first reflex of anyone considering a service. What makes less sense is that almost no agency answers it: everywhere, the same invitation to "book a call for a personalized quote".
At Merlin, our ranges are published on every page. This article goes further: it explains what those amounts cover, what moves them, and the recurring costs a serious quote should mention.
The short answer: from €4,000 to €20,000
A custom AI agent, that is, software that performs tasks with supervised autonomy inside your tools, costs between €4,000 and €20,000. Here is our full price list, the same as on our home page:
| 30-min diagnostic | Free |
|---|---|
| Process audit | from €1,500 |
| First automation | €1,500 – €8,000 |
| Custom AI agent | €4,000 – €20,000 |
| Chatbot / AI assistant (RAG) | €4,000 – €20,000 |
| AI training (in-company) | €1,000 / day |
| Production support | from €300 / month |
Every project is quoted as a fixed price after the audit: no time-based billing, no surprises along the way. The range is wide because two agents doing the same job can be very different projects. That is what the next section covers.
What moves the price of an AI agent
Four factors explain most of the gap between the low and high end of the range.
- The number of connected tools. An agent that reads a mailbox and writes to a spreadsheet is a small project. An agent plugged into the CRM, the ERP, the mailbox and a signature tool is another one: every connection adds design, testing and error cases to handle.
- Volume. Handling a hundred requests a month or ten thousand does not raise the same questions of robustness, queues and execution cost.
- How critical the process is. An agent that prepares drafts can tolerate an approximation; an agent that touches invoicing or contractual commitments requires guardrails, reinforced supervision and more testing.
- Hosting and compliance. Our standard offers rely on the best models on the market. If your constraints require hosting on your servers or open-source models, the infrastructure adds to the project.
What the price includes
A fixed-price agent project with us covers the four steps of the method: the audit of the process, the design (scope, connected tools, supervision rules, confidence thresholds), the build in your environment with a weekly demo, and the production launch with its indicators. You approve at every step; nothing goes live without your green light.
The price also includes what does not show: error handling, logging, tests on your real data. That is the difference between an agent that runs for months and a demo that impresses then collapses on the first unexpected case.
The recurring costs nobody mentions
An agent in production generates three recurring costs, and an honest quote announces them from the start.
- Support. Monitoring, fixes, evolutions: from €300 per month with us. An unsupervised agent is an agent degrading in silence.
- Model usage. AI providers bill per use. For most business agents this means tens of euros per month, not thousands; the audit's volume estimates let you project it before committing.
- Hosting. Negligible on shared infrastructure, it becomes a budget line if your constraints require a dedicated server.
How to think about return on investment
The right calculation does not start from the agent's price but from the time it recovers. A repetitive task that takes a few hours a week across several people represents, over a year, a cost well above that of an agent taking it over. That is exactly what our audit costs out before any commitment: the recoverable time, case by case, with the setup cost next to it. Cases that would pay back too slowly are set aside, with the reason.
Three ways to start small
You do not need to commit €20,000 to form an opinion. The 30-minute diagnostic is free and identifies 2-3 leads. A first automation, between €1,500 and €8,000, delivers a measurable gain within weeks and builds trust. Finally, French public schemes such as Bpifrance and France Num fund part of SME digitalization: schemes change regularly, we review them with you during the diagnostic.
And if you simply want an order of magnitude for your specific case, the answer takes half an hour of video call: book a free diagnostic, and you will leave with an honest estimate, including if it is "do not automate that".