Pricing  ·  2026 / Q3

Find the engagement that fits where you are.

Every engagement is a fixed price agreed in writing before kickoff — and structured, where eligible, to qualify for federal productivity funding. The bands below are real: the bottom of each is a well-scoped project, the top is a mid-market client with more integrations and stakeholders. No hourly. No “contact us” games.

All amounts CAD  ·  HST extra  ·  Wire / e-transfer / cheque

Path 01
Not sure which AI project is worth building
Start with an Assessment ↓
Path 02
Ready to build a specific system
Jump to Build services ↓
Path 03
Team needs AI fluency before we build
Jump to Training ↓
Path 04
We’ve built it. No one’s using it.
Jump to Enablement ↓
§ 00Built to be funded

Engineered to qualify for federal funding.

The published prices below don’t change. What changes is how the engagement is structured: we itemize and sequence the work so that, where a client is eligible, it can be put toward federal productivity offsets. We architect for funding eligibility — the application stays with you and your advisors. Programs and figures are illustrative and subject to current terms.

0x01 · Assess
The grant-ready roadmap
ROI projections & risk outlines structured for funding applications

The Assessment is built to double as the evidence base for a funding case — prioritized ROI projections and risk-mitigation outlines that may support applications to programs such as BDC LIFT or a Global Innovation Cluster . Zero code, zero liability, the on-ramp that feeds everything else.

Grant-ready

0x02 · Automate
The Productivity Super-Deduction
Itemized invoicing your CPA can take to accelerated expensing

Bounded workflow automation is delivered with line-itemized invoicing so your accountant can assess it against the Productivity Super-Deduction — accelerated expensing for qualifying productivity assets . We structure the deliverable; your CPA confirms the treatment.

Written off via Super-Deduction

0x05 · Train
The Canada-Ontario Job Grant
Upskilling that may be eligible for training-cost subsidy

AI-literacy workshops are delivered so that eligible employers may pursue the Canada-Ontario Job Grant (COJG), which may cover up to ~83% of training cost — up to roughly CA$10,000 per employee, subject to current program terms . We provide the documentation; the application is filed by you.

Subsidized via COJG

On funding

Applied AI North is not a grant administrator or tax advisor. We architect engagements for funding eligibility and supply the documentation a funder or CPA needs — eligibility, amounts, and program availability depend on your circumstances and current government terms, and are confirmed by you and your advisors. Every figure on this page is illustrative and flagged for verification.


§ 01Start here ← Most clients start here
0x01   Assess  ·  1 week

AI Assessment

Grant-ready roadmap

The right answer before you build the wrong thing — and the grant-ready roadmap that can anchor a funding case. One week with your team tells you which AI projects will pay you back, which ones to skip, and how the work is sequenced so it can be financed.

  • Three to five candidate workflows scored on payoff, effort, risk, and adoption likelihood
  • Written 90-day roadmap your team can hand to a builder — or to us
  • A second opinion from someone with no incentive to oversell the scope or push a specific tool
  • Four working sessions on-site in the GTA, or fully remote
Best for
Teams who’ve heard the AI pitch from a dozen vendors and want a real answer before spending anything meaningful
Primary outcome
A prioritized plan you can act on. Not another deck. Not a discovery invoice with no deliverable.

14-day out clause. If it’s not the right fit in the first two weeks, you can cancel for a full refund minus the time already worked at standard rates. We’ve used it twice in three years.

Fixed price · all in
From
CA$5,500
1 week  ·  4 working sessions
  • Written deliverable delivered on day five
  • No follow-on engagement required
  • The written plan is yours to keep — with us or anyone else
  • 50/50 billing — half on contract, half on delivery
  • On-site GTA or remote
  • DPA signed before any data moves
Book an assessment

No follow-up email loops. A 30-minute call, then a scope and price by the next morning.


§ 02Build

Five ways to ship a working system.

Pick the shape that fits your problem. We build bounded, deterministic, human-in-the-loop systems — Level 1–2 assistive by design, not by default. Bounded workflow automation is the execution centerpiece. Every build ends with code in your repo, a runbook your team can edit, and 30 days of post-handoff support. No proprietary glue. No vendor lock-in.

Full service details

0x02

Bounded Workflow Automation

Execution centerpiece

Best for: Operations teams with a recurring task that eats 2–3 hours a day

Written off via Super-Deduction

CA$12,000–26,000
2–4 weeks
  • n8n, Make, or custom code — LLM steps only where they earn it
  • Level 1–2 assistive, human-in-the-loop, read-only by default
  • Working automation in production, not a Notion doc
  • Monitoring dashboard, runbook, and 30 days of post-handoff support
  • Line-itemized for Productivity Super-Deduction review
Discuss a workflow
0x03

Bounded Assistants

Level 1–2

Best for: Teams that need a large share of inbound triaged and drafted with a human in the loop, or internal Q&A over your documents

CA$28,000–72,000
4–8 weeks
  • Three shapes: Concierge (customer-facing draft & triage), Reference (internal Q&A), Assistive Operator (multi-step, human-approved)
  • Bounded autonomy: read-only by default, restricted to Level 1–2 per the federal Guide on the Use of Agentic AI
  • Human approval gate on edge cases; recoverable, with an audit trail — no black-box autonomy
  • Evals written before the build, code in your repo, named owner on your side
Scope an agent
0x04

AI-Ready Foundations

Best for: Companies building a sovereign-hosted product surface architected to integrate bounded automations later — concierge chat, semantic search

CA$18,000–55,000
3–6 weeks
  • Design system, build, CMS, deployment, analytics — all included
  • Built to target WCAG 2.1 AA, architected to host bounded automations later
  • Deployable on Canadian cloud regions for data residency
  • Next.js or Astro  ·  your domain, your repo — no lock-in
Discuss a website
0x05

Internal Knowledge Base & Company OS

Compounding asset

Best for: Teams losing hours a week hunting through scattered, permission-sensitive docs across many systems

Built for data residency & access control

CA$15,000–40,000+
4–8 weeks  ·  + managed retainer
  • One permission-aware index over docs, contracts, tickets, scanned PDFs, and line-of-business systems
  • Honours your existing access rules at query time — never surfaces a file a user couldn’t open
  • Read-only, cites its sources; sovereign-hosted vector store in your cloud
  • If your docs are tidy and single-system, we’ll point you to an off-the-shelf tool instead
  • Managed retainer: re-indexing, new sources, retrieval tuned against the questions people ask
Scope a knowledge base
0x07

Rapid AI-Ready Build

Fastest launch

Best for: Operators who need a real, custom site without a four-month agency cycle — sovereign-hosted, ready for bounded automations later

CA$6,500–18,000
2–3 weeks
  • Brand-aligned design, hand-written copy, responsive build in your repo
  • Built to target WCAG 2.1 AA, deployable on Canadian cloud regions
  • Basic SEO, deployment, analytics, 30 days of post-launch changes
  • No templates. No page builders. No lock-in to our hosting.
Quote a website
0x08

AIDA Compliance Audit

Add-on

Best for: Teams layering governance onto an existing or planned system — built for AIDA readiness, not certification

CA$8,000–18,000
2–4 weeks  ·  modular
  • Algorithmic Impact Assessment (AIA) screening and red-teaming
  • Audit-log and kill-switch design, data-residency review
  • Engineered to align with Canada’s Voluntary Code of Conduct — not a certification
  • Runs as an add-on to any build, or standalone
See the compliance audit
Note

API and infrastructure costs (Anthropic, OpenAI, Supabase, Vercel) are billed to your accounts in your name — not marked up through us. We estimate and cap them in every proposal.


§ 03Train

Build AI fluency in your team.

Defensive AI literacy for the people doing the work, not the people writing the policy — pro-worker, PIPEDA-safe prompting, and where to distrust the model. We bring a laptop, your team brings their actual tasks, and everyone leaves with three things they can use on Monday. Delivered so eligible employers can pursue COJG training-cost subsidy.

05A  ·  Half-day workshop

AI Literacy — Half Day

Subsidized via COJG

Best for: Teams with no hands-on AI experience who need a practical introduction to the tools they already have

CA$3,500
3 hours  ·  up to 20 people  ·  on-site GTA
  • Hands-on session with your team’s actual tasks — not a generic vendor demo
  • Where AI fails, and how to catch it before a client does
  • Field guide and three workflow templates to take home
  • Privacy and data handling: what to do with client information
Book this workshop
05B  ·  Full-day workshop
Better value

AI Literacy — Full Day

Subsidized via COJG

Best for: Teams ready to build 2–3 working workflows together in the room — not just learn, but ship something by 5 pm

CA$6,000
6 hours  ·  up to 20 people  ·  on-site GTA
  • Everything in the half-day, plus a session recording
  • Custom prompts written for your team’s specific roles and workflows
  • Afternoon build session — the team ships something together before we leave
  • Custom cohorts for larger or specialized groups from CA$9,000
Book this workshop

§ 04Enable

Drive adoption that sticks.

0x06   AI Enablement Retainer

AI Enablement

The work that decides whether AI sits idle next to a Slack channel of complaints or becomes the way work gets done. A six to twelve week retainer focused on adoption, not implementation.

Best for
Companies that already built something with AI but no one is using it — and you have a sense of why
What we do
Adoption interviews, rollout playbook, training cadence, weekly office hours, metrics dashboard
Outcome
A measurable shift in daily active use, not slide-deck testimonials about “AI maturity”
Three failure modes we fix:
01 Pilot purgatory — something works on day one and nobody touches it on day thirty
02 Leadership-vs-line gap — executives think it’s adopted; the people doing the work disagree
03 Trust deficit — the model is correct but the team doesn’t believe it
Retainer pricing
From CA$9,500/month
6–12 week minimum engagement
  • Adoption interviews and friction mapping in week one
  • Weekly office hours your team can book directly
  • Written rollout playbook, updated fortnightly
  • Metrics dashboard tracking daily active use
Start an enablement engagement

Typically follows an Agent Build or Workflow Automation. Can also run standalone.


§ 05Common paths

How these combine in practice.

Most clients chain two or three engagements over six to nine months. These are the sequences we see most often, with approximate total investment. Every path starts with an Assessment — it’s the cheapest way to avoid building the wrong thing.

Path A

Curious, no major budget yet

Assessment  →  Workflow Automation  →  quarterly Training
For teams who need to prove internal ROI before committing to a bigger build
~CA$25k  ·  6 weeks
Path B

Mid-market, real opportunity identified

Assessment  →  Agent Build  →  Enablement retainer
For teams with high-volume knowledge work who want a system that earns its rent — and gets used
~CA$85k  ·  16 weeks
Path C

Building a product with AI inside

Digital Presence + Agent Build, run in parallel
For founders and operators who need a web surface and an AI system designed to work together from day one
~CA$60k  ·  8 weeks

How we bill

A 50/50 split. No hourly.

Half on the day the contract is signed, half on the day of handoff. We don’t bill hourly because the goal isn’t to spend hours — it’s to ship the thing. If a project goes over scope, that’s our problem. If you want to expand scope, we write a new fixed-price addendum.

Day 0
50%

Deposit on signed contract. Kickoff within 7 days. Scope is locked.

During the engagement
0%

No interim invoices. No surprise change orders. Written status every Friday.

Handoff day
50%

Final invoice on the day we hand off and sign the runbook. Net 14 days.

Every engagement includes

All of this. None of it costs extra.

  • Calendar published before contract is signed
  • One named owner on our side throughout
  • 30 days of post-handoff support
  • DPA signed before any data moves
  • Handoff doc your team can read and edit
  • Code in your repo, on your accounts
  • Written status update every Friday
  • One round of on-site training, included
Common questions

The questions we get every week.

Plain answers. If yours isn’t here, just ask on the intro call.

Why no hourly rate? +

Hourly aligns our incentives with billing more hours, not finishing the work. Fixed price aligns us with shipping. If we’re slow, that’s our problem — not yours.

What if the project grows mid-engagement? +

We write an addendum: new scope, new price, new dates. You sign it or we deliver the original scope. No surprise invoices, ever.

Are API and infrastructure costs included? +

No. Anthropic, OpenAI, Supabase, Vercel, and similar costs are billed to your accounts, in your name. We estimate them in the proposal and set hard ceilings inside the agent so you don’t get a surprise invoice from a cloud provider.

Do you work with companies outside Toronto? +

Yes. Most builds run remote. On-site visits for assessments and training workshops are GTA by default; travel outside GTA is discussed at scoping and billed separately at cost.

Do you take equity? +

No. We charge cash for cash work. If you’d like to discuss an advisor relationship after the engagement closes, that’s a separate conversation.

Can these engagements really qualify for federal funding? +

We architect engagements to be eligible and supply the documentation a funder or CPA needs — itemized invoicing, ROI projections, training records. Whether you qualify depends on your circumstances and current program terms. Eligible training may, for example, be supported by the Canada-Ontario Job Grant (COJG, up to ~83% of cost, subject to terms), and qualifying automation may be assessed against the Productivity Super-Deduction. We are not a grant administrator or tax advisor; the application is filed by you and your advisors.

Where does our data live? +

We architect for Canadian data residency. Systems are deployable on Canadian cloud regions (e.g. AWS Canada Central) and Canadian foundation models (e.g. Cohere), so proprietary data and IP can stay onshore — aligned with PIPEDA, Quebec Law 25, and AIDA readiness. A DPA is signed before any data moves, on every engagement.

What if we don’t like the result? +

Within the first 14 days of any engagement, you can cancel for any reason and receive the deposit back, minus the time already worked at standard rates. After that, we’re building the agreed scope. That clause has been used twice in three years.

Ready to start

Tell us the thing that’s taking too long.

A thirty-minute call. We read your brief before we meet. If it’s not the right fit, we’ll say so and point you toward someone better. If it is, you’ll have a scope and a price by the next morning.

Book an intro call Start with an Assessment

hello@appliedainorth.com  ·  Toronto, ON