Short answer: in Lithuania in 2026 a simple artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot costs roughly €200 to €1,500, an AI agent that completes tasks on its own €1,500 to €5,000, and complex multi-process solutions €5,000 and up. On top of that there is almost always a monthly maintenance fee, usually €50 to €500 a month. Specialist hourly rates range between €35 and €80 an hour.
Below: what those numbers are made of, where extra costs like to hide in proposals, and why I answer "how much will it cost?" differently: not with a fixed price for a promise, but with payment for the hours the AI actually worked. I'll also show you the case where automation doesn't pay off, because that's worth knowing before you run the numbers too.
Market prices in 2026: what you'll find in Lithuania
AI prices in Lithuania range from a couple hundred euros to tens of thousands - the table shows typical market ranges. They're wide, and that's no accident: to one vendor "chatbot" means an FAQ answerer, to another it means an agent that checks orders in your system on its own. Those are completely different jobs - I wrote up the difference separately: how an AI agent differs from a chatbot.
| Solution | Typical price | Time to deploy |
|---|---|---|
| Simple chatbot (answers FAQs) | €200–€1,500 | 1–2 weeks |
| Single-process automation (e.g. entering invoices) | €500–€3,000 | 1–3 weeks |
| AI agent (does the job end to end) | €1,500–€5,000 | 2–4 weeks |
| Complex multi-process solution | €5,000–€15,000 | 1–2 months |
| Monthly maintenance | €50–€500/mo | ongoing |
| DIY SaaS tools | €29–€74/mo | you build it |
Enterprise-tier vendors (global consultancies, big IT firms) start at €10,000 and usually aren't aimed at small or mid-sized businesses. At the cheapest end sit the SaaS platforms, which work, but only cover standard scenarios: once you need an integration with your CRM, accounting system or online store, they run out of road.
What actually drives the price
When two proposals differ by a factor of three, the difference is usually not greed but four things:
- Number of integrations. A chatbot that only talks is cheap. An agent that talks and checks the order in your system, updates the CRM or issues an invoice costs more, because every integration is a separate piece of work.
- Number of exceptions. A process that's "always done this way" is quick to automate. A process that's "done this way, unless it's Friday, unless the client is from Latvia, unless the amount is over a thousand" - every exception costs money.
- How organized your data is. If prices, procedures and answers live in your employees' heads rather than in documents, part of the budget goes not on technology but on collecting your know-how in one place.
- How much of the process is covered. Automating 80% of the repetitive cases is one price. Trying to cover 100% with every rare exception is double or triple. The first option almost always wins: leave the remaining 20% to a person.
Before you ask for a proposal, pick the right process - I wrote about that separately: which work is worth automating with AI agents (and which isn't).
The hidden cost proposals keep quiet about
The build price is only half the story. Processes change: prices move, a new service appears, you migrate to a different system. An agent nobody maintains quietly starts making mistakes - and you find out not from your vendor but from an angry customer.
Before comparing proposals, it's worth answering the cheapest question first: is a ChatGPT subscription enough for you. For some companies it is.
So when comparing proposals, always ask: what's included in the monthly fee? Servers, monitoring, backups, updates, bug fixes - are they included, or will every change be a new invoice at an hourly rate? I've seen more than one case where €50/month maintenance, with every fix costing €60 an hour, ends the year eating up more than €200/month "all-inclusive". What that maintenance really includes and how many hours it takes, I covered separately.
Fixed price or paying for work actually done?
Almost the whole market works the same way: a fixed price for the build, then a monthly fee. The model is simple, but it has a flaw - all the risk stays with you. You pay up front, and whether the system actually saves anything only becomes clear a few months later.
We work differently, and here it is exactly the way I tell clients:
- 1. Pilot: 2 weeks on your real data. The price is 20% of the solution's value. It's not a demo, it's a real launch: we measure the agreed number, and if we don't hit it, I refund all of it. If it works, the payment is credited toward the full build.
- 2. The work: up to $10 an hour. We don't count our own costs, we count how long each action would take a person. The system writes every action it performs to a log in your own system, so you can recompute the bill yourself rather than take my word for it. Servers, monitoring, updates and backup models (so the system keeps running when one provider is down) are all included. The monthly minimum is $300.
For comparison: the same hour of work done by a person costs a US employer $46.89 on average, wages plus benefits (BLS, June 2026). If the AI does 40 hours of work a month, you pay up to $400. A person doing the same costs about $1,876. Here's how that looks at different volumes:
| Automated / month | Cost with a person ($46.89/h) | You pay (up to $10/h) | You save |
|---|---|---|---|
| ~40 h | $1,876 | up to $400 | $1,476 |
| ~160 h | $7,502 | up to $1,600 | $5,902 |
| ~300 h | $14,067 | up to $3,000 | $11,067 |
And now the part I'll say before you ask. This model doesn't pay off for everyone. If the automatable work only adds up to about 10 hours a month, a person costs you about $469 for it and you'd pay our $300 monthly minimum, so you save roughly $170 a month - while the build is a fixed cost, so it would take well over a year to pay back. In that case an off-the-shelf SaaS tool is often cheaper, or simply changing nothing. Automation starts paying off clearly from about 20 hours a month.
The detailed breakdown is on the offer page.
The key question isn't "how much does automation cost?" but "how much does every month without it cost me?"
If an employee spends 15 hours a week moving data by hand from PDFs into your accounting system, that's about 65 hours a month, or roughly $3,050 in wages and benefits. Every month. Forever. An AI agent does the same hours at up to $10 an hour, about $650: the manual work never stops costing you, while the automated version costs more than four times less. What that looks like in bookkeeping, with real document volumes: AI for accounting and bookkeeping, and in a transport company: AI for logistics.
Want your own numbers, not sample ones? A separate article has an ROI calculator: enter your hours and see how fast it would pay back. And if you're weighing a new hire rather than automation, the comparison in numbers is here: AI agent or a new employee.
How to compare proposals without overpaying
Five questions worth asking every vendor:
- What exactly is included in the price? How many integrations, how many scenarios, and what's "out of scope" and will cost extra.
- What's included in the monthly fee? Are changes and fixes included, or billed by the hour?
- How will we measure the result? If the vendor can't name a specific number the system has to hit, it's not a solution, it's an experiment on your dime.
- What happens if it doesn't work? A guarantee, a refund, free fixes - or is all the risk on your side?
- Can we start with a small trial? A serious vendor will let you test it on one process before asking for the whole budget.
The full list, with red flags and who owns the system when the contract ends, is here: how to choose an AI automation agency.
Questions about AI automation pricing
How much does an AI chatbot for business cost in 2026?
In Lithuania a simple chatbot that answers FAQs costs roughly €200 to €1,500. An AI agent that completes tasks on its own starts at about €1,500. DIY SaaS tools start at around €29 a month, but they only cover standard scenarios, without integrations with your systems.
Are there monthly fees after AI is deployed?
Almost always. On the market, maintenance runs roughly €50 to €500 a month and covers servers, monitoring, updates and bug fixes. Our model: up to $10 for every hour of AI work, with servers, monitoring and updates included and a $300 monthly minimum. You only pay for what the system actually gets done.
How long does AI automation take to pay off?
A well-chosen process usually pays for itself in 2 to 6 months. We check the payback before the full build: in a 2-week pilot on your real data. If we don't hit the agreed target, you get your money back. How to run the numbers with your own figures is in the ROI article.
Can I get EU funding for AI implementation?
Yes. Through EU programs, Lithuania awards grants for AI and digitalization projects (INVEGA and EIMIN calls) - the e-commerce digitalization call alone approved more than 500 small and mid-sized companies. Funding can cover a significant share of the implementation cost.