Choosing help
What a consultant actually costs, with real numbers
Most consultancy pricing is 'it depends' followed by a discovery call. Mine is published on every engagement page, so this page can use real figures instead of coy ranges, and explain what moves them.
The short answer
My scoped engagements run from £1,495 for a focused review (a Wireframe Review) to £7,995 for the largest strategic piece (a Transformation Roadmap). Most single-concern reviews sit at £1,995–£3,995, research programmes at £2,495–£6,995. Ongoing fractional work is £600 a day; mentoring and design critique are £75 an hour. Scoped prices exclude VAT.
The honest comparator isn't the day rate. It's cost per decision. A £1,995 review that stops a six-figure rebuild heading the wrong way is the cheapest line on the whole project.
Fixed-price independent vs typical agency engagement: structure, not guesswork
| Independent consultant | Typical agency | |
|---|---|---|
| How you're charged | A published fixed price per engagement, or £600 a day for embedded work. The price is on the page before we speak. | A proposal priced per project against a blended day rate. You rarely see the rate card, and juniors cost you the same as seniors. |
| What the fee funds | Delivery. Every hour billed is the senior person doing the work. | Delivery plus account management, new business, premises and bench time: structural overhead the fee has to carry. |
| Scope changes | A new engagement, priced the same transparent way as the first. | A change request, priced after you're already committed. |
| Comparing quotes | Same published price for every buyer. You can check this site against any quote. | Prices vary by client and by how the budget conversation went. |
| Cheapest way to start | A £75-an-hour critique session or a £1,495 review: commit small, judge the work, then scale. | Minimum engagements tend to be sized to justify the team assembled around them. |
Day rate or fixed price?
I price almost everything fixed, because scoped problems deserve scoped prices. A Design Review is £1,995, a UX Audit £3,995, a Usability Testing Sprint £5,995, all with defined deliverables, a defined timescale, and the risk of an underestimate sits with me rather than you.
Day rates exist where the work is genuinely open-ended: fractional research and pitch or tender support at £600 a day, mentoring and design critique at £75 an hour. If a consultant quotes a day rate for a clearly scoped problem, notice what just happened: the estimation risk moved onto your side of the table.
What actually drives the price
Evidence is the main driver. A £1,995 Design Review is expert judgement applied to what already exists. A £5,995 Usability Testing Sprint costs three times as much because it includes recruiting real users, running the sessions and analysing what people actually did. Gathering evidence is labour, and labour is most of the cost in any honest quote.
Scope is the second driver. Work that spans a whole service or organisation, such as a Service Blueprint at £5,995 or a Transformation Roadmap at £7,995, costs more than a single journey, form or page, because it touches more people, systems and decisions. What shouldn't drive the price is your budget: if a number only appeared after a question about yours, be careful.
The cost of the cheap option
The cheap audit is usually a checklist run by whoever was free: pattern-matched findings you could have found yourself, no contact with your users, and a report that changes nothing. You pay twice: once for the document, and again for the problem it was supposed to catch.
The genuinely cheap options are the small honest ones: a £75 critique hour, a £1,495 Wireframe Review, a £2,495 Second Opinion Review before a big commitment. Small and senior beats large and diluted for almost every diagnostic question. Spend the difference once you know where it should go.
Every engagement page publishes its prices
Reviews, audits, research sprints, workshops and roadmaps: each discipline lists its fixed-price engagements with deliverables and timescales. Compare them before we ever speak.
No 'contact us for pricing' here
Every engagement page lists deliverables, timescale and the fixed price up front. Browse them, compare them against any other quote you're holding, and then talk to me if one fits.
Still deciding?
Frequently asked questions
Why fixed prices rather than a day rate?
Because a scoped problem has a knowable size, and whoever scopes it should carry the estimation risk. A fixed price forces me to define the deliverable precisely before we start, which is exactly the discipline you want from a consultant anyway. Day rates are reserved for genuinely open-ended work like fractional leadership, tender support and mentoring, where fixing a price would just mean padding one.
How do these prices compare with an agency quote?
Agencies rarely publish rates, so an honest page can't give you their numbers, but you can make any quote comparable by asking two questions: who exactly does the work, and what does their time cost within the blended rate? An agency fee funds account management, new business and bench time as well as delivery. My prices fund one senior person doing the work, and they're published, so the comparison only needs their half of the data.
What if my budget doesn't stretch to a full engagement?
Start smaller rather than negotiating a bigger thing down. A hollowed-out audit helps nobody. A Design Critique Session at £75 an hour or a focused review at £1,495–£1,995 buys real senior judgement at the smallest honest size, and it usually identifies where any further spend would actually earn its keep. Some of my longest client relationships started with a single critique hour.
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Previous feedback
I had a fantastic experience working with Andy. One of his most impressive achievements during our time at NHS HEE was masterminding a deeply complex information architecture for a new platform that brought together a large number of legacy websites.
Will Parkhouse
Senior Content Designer