Choosing an AI consultancy, answered in full.

Four, and they are different trades, not better and worse. Another global consultancy, if what you need is scale, multi-domain regulatory depth and a name your board already accepts. A boutique or specialist firm, if you need senior people building inside your teams rather than the top of a pyramid. An offshore or nearshore delivery partner, if the requirement can be written down and cost per head is the binding constraint. Or your own people, through a permanent hire, contractors or an internal taskforce, if you have the management capacity to direct them. On price, do not assume the boutique route is automatically cheaper. Accenture's own published G-Cloud 14 rate card lists strategy and architecture at £2,240 a day at SFIA Level 7, £1,040 at Level 4 and £760 at Level 3. The first is 1.4 times our £1,560 partner rate, not the four times usually assumed, the second sits inside our own band, and the third is below our £950 associate rate. Where a small firm actually costs less is people-days to reach the same answer, not day rate.

At the top grade yes, and by less than the folklore suggests. On the G-Cloud 14 framework Deloitte publishes £2,740 a day at SFIA Level 7 on its specialist card and £2,450 on its standard card, against Tenhaw's published £1,560 partner rate, which is 1.6 to 1.8 times rather than the four times commonly assumed. Deloitte's lowest figure on either card is £1,425 at Level 3, above our £1,250 senior practitioner rate, so it publishes no grade inside our associate-to-senior band. Not every large firm prices that way. Accenture publishes £1,040 at Level 4 and £760 at Level 3, and TCS £1,070 and £680, all four at or below our senior rate and two of them below our £950 associate rate. If day rate alone is your criterion, some of the large firms win that comparison. Day rate is the wrong unit anyway. Team size times duration is the comparable number, which is why our fixed-price AI Readiness Audit is £44,000 against the £150,000 to £500,000 a large firm typically prices an equivalent assessment at, our estimate rather than a published figure.

Team shape, and what you can check before you sign. On the G-Cloud 14 framework EY publishes £2,600 a day at SFIA Level 7 and £1,300 at Level 4, against our published £1,560 partner and £1,250 senior practitioner rates, and its card counts a working day as 7 hours where the other cards use 8. What Tenhaw sells is a forward-deployed squad of three senior people on published prices: a £44,000 audit, fixed, four weeks, ending in working prototypes, an exit date agreed at kickoff, 30 days' notice either way, and the code and documentation yours as they are written. If the programme also spans audit, tax or regulatory remediation under one contract, EY is the better buy.

Three groups, and they win different work. Global firms: Accenture, Deloitte, EY, KPMG, PwC and PA Consulting publish G-Cloud 14 Level 7 rates from £2,240 to £3,625 a day, and one of them is the right buy when you need scale across countries, or depth across tax, legal and regulatory work under one contract. UK boutiques: Faculty, Mind Foundry, Aiimi, Advancing Analytics, Kortical and Datasparq, described on this site only from their own published material, three of them selling a platform of their own. Offshore partners, once the specification is settled and cost per head decides it. Tenhaw is priced for the case where the operating model, the engineering and the adoption move together.

Compare people-days rather than day rates, and make the first step small enough to be reversible. A partner-led pyramid and a squad of three price differently by design, so team size times weeks is the comparable number and rate cards settle little on their own. Ask both to scope the same problem and price against that. Ours is fixed at £44,000 for four weeks, standalone, ending in working prototypes, with no obligation to continue, and the monthly work that can follow runs on 30 days' notice either way, so a shortlist of two need not become a single bet. If the roll-out needs hundreds of people across countries, award it to the global firm.

It turns on whether you are buying an opinion or a working control set. Tenhaw designs governance inside the delivery: the decision trail, the evaluation set, the human review points and a named internal owner, built into the workflow while the workflow is built. KPMG sits in the global audit and advisory category, and where the requirement reaches into regulatory remediation, tax or a formal assurance opinion, that category is the better buy. Its published G-Cloud 14 card lists £2,855 a day at SFIA Level 7, dated April 2024 and re-verified on 21 August 2026, against our £1,560 partner rate. What stays open is whether your risk function will accept controls designed by whoever built the system.

Set the quote beside our published three. Tenhaw charges £1,560 partner, £1,250 senior practitioner and £950 associate, excluding VAT, and they do not move by category. PwC's own G-Cloud 14 card does move, and sharply, from £2,750 at Level 7 under Strategy and architecture down to £1,000 at the same level under Delivery and operation, on a document uploaded in May 2024 that carries no publication date of its own. Two further traps. SFIA levels are not job titles, so mapping them onto anyone's grades is guesswork. And a rate multiplied by a team size you have assumed is not a cost. Ask for people-days by grade, because only the supplier knows the mix it intends to staff.

Not on the published evidence, and Tenhaw's pricing page carries every card so you can check it yourself. PA Consulting is not a Big Four firm, but its own G-Cloud 14 rate card lists £3,625 a day at SFIA Level 7 on the UK co-located version, dated September 2024, which is the highest published Level 7 figure we found anywhere on that framework. The four Big Four cards top out between £2,600 and £2,855. Our partner rate is £1,560. So the label a firm carries is a poor proxy for what it costs, and the number that decides the total is people-days, which nobody can price before the scope is agreed.

Split it by whether the requirement can be written down yet. Tenhaw is the firm that sits in the room while that is worked out, and our Agentic Proof of Concept is £20,000 to £55,000 fixed over two to four weeks, built in your estate with your engineers paired on it. TCS belongs to the global IT services category, and its onshore G-Cloud 14 card, uploaded March 2025, lists £2,050 a day at SFIA Level 7 and £680 at Level 3, below our £950 associate rate. Once the specification is settled and what you need is volume held for years, that category wins. What decides it is how much of the workflow still lives in exceptions nobody has written down.

You can start with a build, and Tenhaw's AI Readiness Audit is designed to be exactly that start: £44,000 fixed over four weeks, ending in working prototypes against your own data inside your tenancy, an estimated run cost per candidate workflow and a board readout. A recommendation to stop is a valid outcome. A global strategy house answers a different question: which markets to compete in, what the portfolio should look like, a case for change that has to convince a board. Which of the two you need depends on whether your uncertainty is about direction or about whether agents can do the work at all.

Tenhaw is the specialist end: a squad of three, an Agentic Lead, an engineer and an adoption lead, with James Rooney personally accountable, code written in your estate from the first weeks and yours as it is written, an exit date agreed at kickoff and 30 days' notice either way. The first step is published too, £20,000 to £55,000 fixed for a proof of concept over two to four weeks. A build unit inside a global strategy house is the buy when the strategy relationship and the engineering sit under one contract, or when the roll-out needs hundreds of people across countries. What neither settles is whether this workflow is differentiated enough to be worth building at all.

It depends how far the pilot has to travel. Tenhaw sells an Agentic Build Team at £70,000 to £85,000 a month, three practitioners under partner oversight, working in your repositories with your engineers paired on the build, and recruiting your permanent team is a stated deliverable. That shape suits one workflow taken properly into production and then run by you, which is the shape of the work running now inside a regulated insurer, where month three is productionising a two-week proof of concept against the client's security standards. A global systems integrator is the buy where productionising means rolling one pattern across many countries and staffing the support rota afterwards.

Tenhaw will not rank two firms it has never delivered alongside, and a supplier who does it for you is guessing. What is checkable is what each publishes. On the G-Cloud 14 framework Accenture lists £2,240 a day at SFIA Level 7 and £1,040 at Level 4, and Deloitte lists £2,740 at Level 7 on its specialist card and £2,450 on its standard one, both re-verified against their source documents on 21 August 2026. Every card is linked from our pricing page beside our own £1,560, £1,250 and £950. Then ask both the same three questions: who is actually in the room, what the first paid engagement ends in, and whose repositories the code lands in.

On the headline yes, and by less than it looks, which is why Tenhaw prints both cards with the caveats attached. On G-Cloud 14 EY publishes £2,600 a day at SFIA Level 7 against KPMG's £2,855, both dated 2024 and re-verified against their source documents on 21 August 2026. EY's card also defines a working day as 7 hours where the other cards use 8, roughly a 14% difference the headline never shows and wider than the gap between the two headlines. Our partner rate is £1,560, and our own engagement prices derive from that rate card at twenty billable days a month. Day length, category column and grade mix all move the real number.

That is your audit committee's call rather than a capability question, and it does not arise with Tenhaw, because we provide no statutory audit or assurance services. We sell delivery, from the £44,000 AI Readiness Audit over four weeks, ending in working prototypes, through to an Agentic Build Team at £70,000 to £85,000 a month, with the code, documentation and work product yours from day one. Where a firm you already retain knows your controls estate well, that familiarity is genuine value and worth using wherever your own rules allow it. The point your committee has to settle first is whether designing the controls an agent will run under counts as a non-audit service it can approve.

Different trades, so the brief decides it rather than the logo. Tenhaw is a London firm that puts a forward deployed squad of three, an agentic lead, an engineer and an adoption lead, inside your teams. The prices are published, £44,000 fixed for a four week audit ending in working prototypes, then £70,000 to £85,000 a month for a build team. Faculty, from its own published material read in July 2026, positions itself around applied AI across sectors including defence, national security, health and financial services. Where the hard part is the model itself, a specialist AI firm leads and we partner for that work. What settles it is whether roles and decision rights have to move alongside the software.

Judge it on what you can read before signing. Tenhaw builds inside your own repositories against an open source engineering standard of 72 rules with RFC 2119 severities, paired with your engineers, and the code and documentation are yours from day one rather than on final payment. The team is three senior people at £70,000 to £85,000 a month, with an exit date agreed at kickoff and 30 days' notice either way. A global software engineering consultancy is the better award when the programme needs several teams running for years across countries. How many teams your first workflow needs is the number to settle before either of us quotes.

Whether anyone can write the specification yet. Tenhaw's AI Readiness Audit is £44,000 fixed over four weeks and ends in working prototypes built against your own data inside your tenancy, with an estimated run cost per candidate workflow, because the exception cases and the data quality are the part nobody can write down in advance. For a platform migration or a data platform build, where the work is engineering volume against a written requirement, a UK systems integrator is the better fit. Both can be true in sequence. Neither website tells you which half your programme is in today.

Whether you intend to own this capability in house afterwards. Tenhaw sells monthly work built to end: £70,000 to £85,000 a month for three senior people, an exit date agreed at kickoff, 30 days' notice either side, and recruiting your permanent team written into the scope as a deliverable. Every month carries a value target, and a month that delivers none is reported to you as a failed month. If what you want instead is a supplier holding a standing team for three years, an enterprise delivery firm is shaped for that and we are not. Nobody outside your organisation can tell you which of the two you are buying.

Not necessarily for a single workflow, and Tenhaw's terms are the part to check. The AI Readiness Audit is £44,000 fixed over four weeks, ending in working prototypes built inside your own infrastructure under your own policies, with UK data residency by default and EU available. The public-sector record behind it is the Tecknuovo portfolio office, built from nothing and run across 19 projects including delivery for HMRC, the MOD and Thames Water. What the audit cannot settle up front is whether the Algorithmic Transparency Recording Standard reaches this workflow at all, which the standard's own scope and exemptions policy decides.

Who owns the operating model, the build and the adoption. Tenhaw keeps all three in one team, whether that is an Agentic Design Team of two senior people at £35,000 to £55,000 a month or an Agentic Build Team of three under partner oversight at £70,000 to £85,000. We sell no product and resell no models, platforms or licences, so no part of your run cost is revenue for us. Where you need several disciplines mobilised at once, or people across several countries in a quarter, a large consulting firm is the better award. Whether those three things have to move together in your organisation is a judgement only you hold.

Not on day rates, because only half the arithmetic is public. Tenhaw publishes its own side in full: £1,560 partner, £1,250 senior practitioner, £950 associate, and a £44,000 fixed four week audit. The competitor cards this site quotes are G-Cloud 14 documents seven suppliers published themselves, PA Consulting, KPMG, PwC, Deloitte, EY, Accenture and TCS, each re-verified against its source on 21 August 2026, and Capgemini is not among them, so we will not quote a figure we have not read. What decides it is the team size and duration each supplier proposes against your scope, and neither number exists until they have seen it.

No, because it is a different unit of purchase. Tenhaw's £70,000 to £85,000 a month buys three senior people under partner oversight, with James Rooney personally accountable, pairing with your engineers so the capability lands with them. Recruiting your permanent team is a stated deliverable, the exit date is agreed at kickoff, and a month that moves no number you agreed is reported to you as a failed month. Once the requirement is settled and what you need is volume, a global delivery partner is the right buy and we are the expensive way to write the code. Whether your engineers end up able to change the system without us is the test either way.