# What business automation actually costs in Australia Real ranges for diagnosis, builds and ongoing work, the running costs most quotes omit, and a simple way to work out whether a given automation pays for itself. ============================================================================== Author: Daniellle Bhatt (https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniellle-bhatt-821998152) Publisher: AI Ready Marketing, https://aireadymarketing.com Published: 13 August 2026 Updated: 13 August 2026 Canonical: https://aireadymarketing.com/resources/business-automation-cost-australia Reading: 7 minutes Topic: AI app development (https://aireadymarketing.com/services/ai-app-development) Concepts: Automation cost, ROI, Pricing, Total cost of ownership ============================================================================== ## Where this comes from These are the ranges we quote and see quoted in the Australian market. We publish them because almost nobody in this category does, and "contact us for pricing" wastes the time of buyers who simply need to know whether they are in the right order of magnitude. ## Key points - Diagnosis: $4,000 to $9,000. A single build: $8,000 to $30,000. Ongoing partnership: $2,500 to $5,000 a month. - Running costs of $50 to $400 a month are real and are the line most often missing from a quote. - The break-even test is simple: hours saved per month times fully loaded hourly cost, against build cost. Under twelve months is a good deal. - Cheap builds are usually expensive. The cost is rarely the build, it is the integration and the maintenance nobody scoped. ## Introduction Almost every agency in this category answers this question with "it depends" and a contact form. It does depend, but the ranges are knowable, and knowing them saves everyone a call that was never going to go anywhere. ## The ranges What | Range (AUD, ex GST) | Notes --- | --- | --- Diagnosis and roadmap | $4,000 to $9,000 | Process map, ranked opportunities, expected value. Should be yours to take elsewhere. Simple automation | $3,000 to $8,000 | Two or three systems connected, no custom interface. Internal tool or agent | $8,000 to $30,000 | Custom interface, several integrations, documentation and training. Multi-agent system | $25,000 to $60,000 | Several agents, approval gates, monitoring. Ongoing partnership | $2,500 to $5,000 a month | Continuous build across processes. Platform subscriptions | $30 to $200 a month | Make, n8n, Zapier, database hosting. Model usage | $20 to $300 a month | Varies with volume. Ask for an estimate at your actual throughput. ## The costs quotes leave out - Integration. Almost always the largest line item and the one most often underestimated, because it depends on how cooperative your existing systems are. - Data preparation. If the data is messy, that gets fixed before anything is automated, and it is real work. - Change management. Training, documentation, and the fortnight where people do it both ways. - Maintenance. APIs change. Budget ten to twenty per cent of build cost annually, or accept it will degrade. > A quote with no line for running costs and no line for maintenance is not a > cheaper quote. It is an incomplete one. ## Working out whether it pays Hours saved per month, times fully loaded hourly cost, gives monthly saving. Build cost divided by monthly saving gives payback in months. Under twelve is good, under six is excellent, over eighteen needs a reason beyond cost, such as capacity you cannot hire for. Use fully loaded cost, not salary divided by hours. Add roughly thirty per cent for superannuation, leave, equipment and overhead. A $90,000 salary is closer to $60 an hour than $45. A worked example. Quoting takes two people six hours a week between them. At $60 an hour that is $1,560 a month. A $15,000 build that removes eighty per cent of it saves $1,248 a month and pays back in about twelve months, then keeps paying. ## Why the cheapest quote usually is not The build is rarely the expensive part. The expensive parts are integration, the edge cases nobody scoped, and maintenance. A quote that comes in dramatically low has usually either not understood the integration surface or has not included the parts that are not fun to build. The question worth asking is not "why is yours more" but "what is in yours that is not in theirs". If the answer is documentation, handover, error handling and a maintenance plan, that is the difference between a system and a demo. ## What we charge Diagnosis $4,000 to $9,000. Builds $8,000 to $30,000. Ongoing $2,500 to $5,000 a month. Published on our services pages with the scope attached, because a number without a scope is not information. If the numbers do not work for your situation, we will say so on the first call rather than after a proposal. That is genuinely cheaper for both of us. ## Sources 1. Make, Make.com. https://www.make.com 2. Pay and wages, Fair Work Ombudsman. https://www.fairwork.gov.au/pay-and-wages ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ AI Ready Marketing is an AI transformation partner based in Melbourne, Australia, building AI systems across marketing, sales and operations. This article is published in full at https://aireadymarketing.com/resources/business-automation-cost-australia and may be quoted with attribution to Daniellle Bhatt, AI Ready Marketing. Contact: hello@raamaimarketing.com ยท Book a call: https://aireadymarketing.com/book