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What goes into the cost of a business document assistant?
Short answer
At Syntalith, an AI assistant that answers employees from company documents and names the source costs from €3,000 net, usually up to €7,000. The build takes 4 to 10 weeks. The number of sources, employees' permissions and sorting out versions raise the price. When the documents sit in one place, ChatGPT or Claude for the team from €1,150 is sometimes enough.
How we workDetails ↓
- 01Call30 minutes with an engineer, free
- 02PrototypeA working system on your process and data, free
- 03ImplementationTarget and fixed price in the contract; 50% at signing
- 04Acceptance50% once the agreed target is met
- net per application, fixed price before contract
- from €3,000
- from signing the contract to acceptance
- 4–10 weeks
- free prototype on your documents
- €0
We belong to the OpenAI and Anthropic partner programmes and learn through their official courses. What this means ↓
Author: Syntalith · 3 min read
Statistics
AI assistants in companies: statistics 2026
from €3,000
net for an AI assistant for company documents, usually up to €7,000. Paid once, half after acceptance.
49%
According to Anthropic (2024), combining contextual embeddings with BM25 search cut the number of failed retrievals by 49%.
67%
According to Anthropic (2024), adding reranking to contextual retrieval cut the number of failed retrievals by 67%.
15.1%
According to Eurostat (2025), 15.1% of people aged 16 to 74 in the EU used generative AI tools for work.
32.7%
According to Eurostat (2025), 32.7% of people aged 16 to 74 in the EU used generative AI tools in the previous 3 months.
48%
According to the European Commission (2026), 48% of EU SMEs and mid-caps name a lack of expertise as a barrier to AI.
Source: European Commission, Flash Eurobarometer 578 (2026) ↗
Figures checked: 22 October 2026
What price to put in the budget
At Syntalith an AI assistant for documents is an AI app. It costs from €3,000 net, usually up to €7,000, and takes 4 to 10 weeks to build. The simpler option is setting up ChatGPT or Claude for the team.
ChatGPT or Claude for the team
from €1,150
The files and connections the ready tool gives. Good when the documents are in one place and the permissions work.
AI assistant for documents
€3,000–7,000
Your own app: several sources, employees' permissions, the source with every answer.
An assistant that also acts
from €3,000
Submits a request or changes data in other systems. That is already an agent, priced separately.
In a yearly comparison, write down separately the start-up cost, twelve months of running and the work of the people who maintain the documents. An unknown maintenance price is a question for the supplier. Entering zero understates the budget.
A demo from one file and work on the whole body of knowledge
An employee asks how to request a purchase. In the demo the assistant answers from one uploaded file. Someone did important work beforehand, though: they picked the right document.
In daily work the company's set has older versions of the procedure, and the form sits in a separate library. The employee wants an answer after which they open the right form. If they still have to ask a colleague which version applies, the problem remains.
| In the demo | In the team's work |
|---|---|
| One file uploaded by hand | Several libraries, older versions, forms in other places |
| An administrator's account | Employees' accounts with different access |
| A document current by definition | Procedures change every quarter |
| Questions prepared for the demo | Questions the documents do not answer |
Putting a link in a procedure does not mean the tool will read the target document. In its documentation of SharePoint sources in Copilot Studio, Microsoft describes search as covering the registered location and its subfolders. Other folders and sites need separate registration.
What raises the price of an AI assistant
Documents in one place, one group of users
configuring a ready tool
from €1,150
Several libraries and formats, scans and tables included
your own app
from €3,000
Departments with different access to documents
permissions checked on accounts
included in the app price
Conflicting versions of procedures
sorting out sources with an owner
settled in the test
The assistant should submit requests in systems
an AI agent
from €3,000
Search quality can be measured. According to Anthropic (2024), combining contextual embeddings with BM25 search cut failed retrievals by 49%, and with reranking by 67%. That is a test result on sets of code and publications. On your documents, a test on the team's questions is what counts.
Employees' access is part of the scope
Two people can open the same assistant and have different access to documents. In SharePoint agents, Microsoft separates access to the agent from access to its sources. Opening the assistant gives an employee no content they have no permission for.
That is why we test on the accounts of future users. If the current permissions are unclear, sorting them out is sometimes a separate task, which we price before the build.
What you pay for after launch
- Models and search, depending on the number of questions
- Hosting and infrastructure
- Support after launch, priced by scope
- The time of the document owner who publishes new versions
- Reviewing answers that employees flagged as wrong
Ask the supplier when a changed procedure will show up in the answers and how you will check it. An outside supplier cannot decide on its own which company procedure applies. We describe this split of work in the article on keeping company AI knowledge current.
How to compare two offers
Give both suppliers the same task: an employee asks how to request a purchase and gets the current procedure with the form. One offer may cover files uploaded for the demo. The other a connection to the libraries, users' access and handling of changes. You cannot see that difference from how the chat looks.
Compare offers for the same period and the same group of employees. The choice between a ready tool and your own app is described in the comparison of an off-the-shelf platform and your own knowledge base. If the assistant should also take actions, see how much an AI agent costs.
Worked example · Scenario
How we count the payback: the team's questions to documents
We run the same count in the free analysis: how many questions the team asks colleagues and administration today, how long it takes and what an hour of work costs.
€3,723
a month for finding answers to 800 questions in documents
Payback: 1 mo.
Our assumptions are 8 minutes to find an answer in documents or ask a colleague, and checking in 15% of the old time. €34.90 an hour is the EU average hourly labour cost for 2025 according to Eurostat, for companies with 10 or more employees. Model cost: Claude Sonnet 5.5, about 6,000 + 500 tokens per answer from documents, at the ECB rate of 1.1205 USD per euro on 22 October 2026.
See the full calculation →
