What Does AI Governance Cost in New Zealand?
All OxygenIT prices in one place. This page covers one service. Every price we publish, and what is never included in any of them, is on our pricing page.
The Real Cost Range for AI Governance
We charge $3997 to $9997 a month for AI Governance. Most businesses land at $4997 a month for what we call the 90 Day AI Governance Project. That’s not a teaser rate designed to get you on the phone. It’s genuinely what most SMBs pay for this scope of work, start to finish.
What pushes a business towards the top of that range is size and structure, not how fast you want it done. Larger organisations with more complex approval gateways and their own internal governance layers simply take more work to get through. We’re mapping approvals, existing policy, and several stakeholder groups instead of one decision maker. A 20 person business with one owner calling the shots is a very different job to a 150 person business with a board, a compliance manager, and three departments each running their own tools.
The fee covers the work needed to get an AI use case live and properly governed. That means the risk mapping, the policy, the approval trail, and the paperwork an auditor or insurer would want to see. It does not cover building the AI tool or model itself. If you need someone to build the thing, that’s separate work, and we say so upfront so there’s no confusion about what the invoice is paying for.
- Monthly range: $3997 to $9997
- Common project: 90 Day AI Governance Project at $4997 per month
- Included: the steps and paperwork to get an AI use case live and governed
- Excluded: building the AI tool or model itself
- Call out fee: $0
- Financing: not offered
There’s no call out fee to get a quote, and we don’t offer financing on this work, so the monthly figure is the full picture. If you want the detail on what the 90 day project involves week to week, our AI Governance service page walks through the stages in order.
What Drives Your Price Up or Down
The $3,997 to $9,997 range isn’t a vague spread we quote to sound flexible. It comes down to one thing: how complex your organisation’s decision-making already is. Our most common engagement, the 90 Day AI Governance Project, sits at $4,997 a month, and that’s where most 20 to 100 staff organisations land. If you’re smaller and approvals run through one or two people, you’ll likely sit near the bottom of the range. If you’re larger, with several departments each needing sign-off on how AI gets used, the price climbs.
The biggest single driver is approval gateways. A business with one decision-maker and one use case moves through governance quickly. A business with legal, IT, HR and operations all needing separate review points takes longer to document properly, and costs more. We’re not charging more because the work is harder to do well. We’re charging more because there’s more of it, and more people who need walking through it.
- Number of internal approval gateways your organisation requires before an AI use case can go live
- How many departments or business units need separate governance sign-off
- Whether existing policies (data handling, procurement, risk) need to be mapped into the governance documentation
- Size of the organisation and number of AI use cases being brought into scope at once
What’s included stays the same regardless of where you land in the range: the work needed to get an AI use case live inside your organisation, built around your existing structure. What’s excluded, at every price point, is building the AI itself. This is governance work, not development work. We’re not writing your models or your prompts. We’re making sure whatever gets used inside your business has a paper trail, an approval process, and a defensible answer if a client, auditor or regulator asks how you decided to use it.
There’s no call-out fee attached to this work and no financing option on it. It’s billed monthly for the term of the engagement. If your organisation is still working out whether it needs a formal use case gateway at all, that conversation is worth having before you settle on a number. You can read more on our AI Governance page about how the discovery process determines scope.
What’s Included and What’s Not Included
Our AI 90 Day Governance Project covers the framework and paperwork needed to get one AI use case live in your organisation. That means working through the risk controls, the sign-off process, and the documentation an auditor or board would expect to see. What we don’t do is build the AI model or application itself. If your project needs custom development, that sits with your developers or a separate vendor. We stay focused on the governance layer around it.
This split matters because a lot of organisations conflate the two. They assume hiring someone for AI governance means someone is also going to write the code or configure the tool. It doesn’t. Our job is to make sure whatever AI use case you’re deploying has proper oversight, a documented risk assessment, clear accountability, and a paper trail that holds up if a regulator, insurer or client asks questions. Building the actual AI system is a different job with a different skill set.
- Included: full governance framework build-out for one AI use case, through to go-live
- Included: documentation covering risk assessment, controls and sign-off steps
- Not included: development or configuration of the AI model or application itself
- Not included: financing options, we don’t offer payment plans on this engagement
- Call-out fee for this engagement: $0
The $4997 per month figure is our common job. It sits inside a wider range of $3997 to $9997 per month depending on complexity. Larger organisations with more approval layers, multiple stakeholders, or several internal governance gateways to work through push the price towards the top of that range. A simpler structure with fewer sign-offs sits nearer the bottom. We work this out during the Cyber Risk Assessment stage of our process, once we can see how many gateways your organisation has.
If you’re weighing this up against building an AI governance approach with in-house resource, it’s worth knowing our ISO 42001 certification for AI management is one held by very few managed IT providers in New Zealand. That’s the credential this scope of work draws on.
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The Most Common Project and What It Runs
Most businesses that come to us for AI Governance end up on what we call the 90 Day Governance Project. It runs at $4997 per month, toward the lower end of our $3997 to $9997 monthly range. That range reflects the size of the job, not a sliding scale we negotiate on the spot.
What pushes a project towards the upper end is organisation size and complexity. A business with several departments wanting to run AI, multiple approval layers, or existing governance structures that need to be worked into ours will cost more than a single team running one clear use case. Larger organisations with more approval gateways and internal sign-off steps take more of our time, and the price reflects that.
The 90 day project covers the risk assessment work, the governance framework, the policies, and the paperwork an auditor or client would want to see if they asked how you’re managing AI, all aimed at taking one AI use case live inside your business.
- Documentation and governance steps to take an approved AI use case live
- Risk assessment work tied to that specific use case
- Policy and process documentation your business can show to auditors, insurers, or clients
What it doesn’t cover is building the AI tool itself. We’re not writing the model, configuring the software, or doing the technical build. That’s a separate piece of work. If a business assumes the governance project includes the build, that’s the biggest mismatch we see between what people expect and what they’re paying for. We’d rather say that upfront than have someone find out three weeks in.
There’s no call-out fee attached to this work and no financing option on offer. You pay the monthly rate for the length of the project. If you want to see how this fits against the wider security work we do, our AI Governance page lays out how it connects to the rest of what we run for clients.
Can You Exit This, or Are You Locked In
You’re not locked in past 90 days. If the AI Governance work isn’t landing in the first 90 days, we refund it. That’s a 90 day money back guarantee: no test to pass, no reason required and nothing to argue about. The only exclusion is third party product we buy on your behalf, Microsoft licences, hardware and subscriptions.
Past that window, you’re on a monthly arrangement, typically $4,997 a month for the 90 Day Governance Project, running until the use case is live with the documentation and gateways behind it. At the 9 month mark, whether the project is finished or still running, you can exit the agreement with no extra fees. We don’t chase a cancellation charge or hold you to a fixed term past that point.
Larger organisations with more internal approval steps or multiple business units usually take longer to move through governance, which is why some engagements sit closer to the top of our $3,997 to $9,997 monthly range rather than the standard project fee. That’s a scope difference, not a penalty for slow progress on our part.
This is a governance project, not a build. We map the use case, the risk gates, and the documentation needed to get it live inside your organisation. We don’t write the AI model or the application itself. If what you need is someone to build the tool, this engagement won’t cover that, and we’d tell you so on the discovery call rather than let the invoices run.
We also don’t take this on for businesses under 5 employees. The governance structure we build assumes there’s a team and some internal process to govern. Below that size, the overheads don’t make sense for you, and we’ll say so rather than sign the paperwork.
Before any of this starts, we run a 15 minute founder call, then a 45 minute discovery call, then a Cyber Risk Assessment to find the gaps. You’ll have a customised proposal with the monthly figure attached before you commit to anything.
AI Governance: Frequently Asked Questions
Will you also build our AI tool as part of the monthly price?
No. Our $3997 to $9997 monthly fee covers the governance work: risk mapping, policy, approval steps, and the paperwork an auditor would want to see. It does not cover building the AI model or tool itself. If your project needs that kind of development, it’s separate work done by your own developers or another vendor. We say this upfront so the invoice matches what you’re paying for.
Is there a call-out fee to get a quote for AI Governance?
No, there’s no call-out fee. We charge $0 to look at your organisation and put a number to the project, so finding out where you’d land in the $3997 to $9997 range costs nothing. Once we quote, the monthly figure is the full cost of the engagement, with no separate fee added on top for the initial look.
Do you offer financing for the 90 Day AI Governance Project?
No, we don’t offer financing on this work. It’s billed monthly for the length of the project, so the $3997 to $9997 monthly figure is the whole cost. There’s no finance charge or interest added on top, and no payment plan option beyond the standard monthly billing for the term of the engagement.
Why do quotes for AI Governance vary so much between businesses?
The price moves with how complex your organisation’s approvals already are, not how fast you want the work done. A business with one owner making decisions moves through governance quickly and sits near $3997. A business with legal, IT, HR and operations each needing sign-off takes more documentation to get right, which pushes the price toward $9997. Number of departments, existing policies to map, and how many use cases you’re bringing into scope all factor in too.
What happens if our organisation turns out to need more governance work than expected?
Your price moves within the $3997 to $9997 range to match the actual structure we find, rather than staying fixed at the $4997 common rate. If your approval gateways or number of departments needing sign-off turn out bigger than first thought, that’s reflected in the monthly figure. We’d rather quote against what’s really there than hold you to a number that doesn’t fit the work.
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