A monthly AI Partnership is a no-commitment arrangement where an AI expert comes back to your SME every month to embed AI usage for the long term. It costs 399 €/mo excl. VAT at Codito Ergo Sum and includes a monthly review, an actionable report and a direct channel — where a one-off AI consultant costs around 6,000 €/month.
In 2026, the leader of an SME who is serious about integrating AI into the business appears to have three options: hire an in-house AI expert (Head of AI, Chief AI Officer, senior AI developer), bring in a one-off consultant (daily rates between 800 € and 1,500 €), or do nothing and hope the teams figure things out with ChatGPT.
All three options are dead ends for 80% of French SMEs. Too expensive, too unstable, too risky — or simply not enough. There is a fourth path that emerged in 2024-2025 and is establishing itself as the standard for companies with 5 to 200 employees: the monthly AI Partnership, a fractional AI partner who returns every month, at a clear, predictable cost (399 €/mo excl. VAT at Codito Ergo Sum), with no commitment.
This article runs the honest numbers on the three classic options, explains why the monthly AI Partnership took off in 2025-2026, and gives you the criteria to know whether it is truly the right solution for you.
The real cost of an AI consultant in 2026
First classic option: call an AI consultant. Market rates in France in 2026: between 800 € and 1,500 € per day for a senior profile, depending on location and specialization. The average sits around 1,000-1,200 € per day excl. VAT.
The "6,000 €/month consultant" in this title is no fiction — it is what an AI consultant costs when engaged 5 to 6 days per month on your account, at 1,000 € per day. It is also, give or take, the order of magnitude of a dense one-off assignment (POC + integration over 2-3 months).
The problem is not so much the rate as the structure of the engagement. A one-off AI consultant arrives with a specific objective (an audit, a POC, an integration), works intensely for 2-12 weeks, delivers, invoices, and leaves. And there you are, in exactly the situation that sinks 7 out of 10 AI transformations: alone with a deliverable your teams never take ownership of.
Three hidden costs inflate the real invoice of an AI consultant:
- The onboarding cost: 2 to 5 billed days spent understanding your business, your tools, your culture. Before producing any value at all.
- The post-delivery follow-up cost: 3 to 6 weeks after the assignment ends, the questions start coming, but the consultant has already moved on to other projects. You pay for additional work, or you give up.
- The cost of erosion: without a regular presence, the practices that were put in place fade away. At 6 months, you have lost 40 to 60% of the initial adoption.
The one-off consultant remains relevant for specific, time-boxed assignments (an audit, a POC, a targeted integration). But to durably embed AI in an SME, it is a structurally ill-suited format.
The real cost of an in-house AI expert
Second option: recruit an in-house AI expert. On paper, this is the premium option — you have someone in residence, learning your company over time. In practice, it is almost always a bad idea for an SME with fewer than 200 employees.
Here is the real math.
Salary of a Head of AI / Chief AI Officer in France in 2026: the market range, for a credible senior profile, sits between 80 and 120 k€ gross/year, according to public sources (tech compensation studies, LinkedIn observations, conversations with recruitment firms). For a junior AI profile fresh out of school, it drops to 50-65 k€ gross/year — but it will take time before they become autonomous.
Once fully loaded (employer contributions, health coverage, meal vouchers, equipment, training), an SME actually pays 1.4 to 1.5 times gross salary. A Head of AI at 90 k€ gross therefore costs the company around 130-135 k€/year, all charges included.
And that is only part of the total cost. Add to it:
- Onboarding: 3 to 6 months before an external AI expert becomes productive in your context (your business, your tools, your regulatory constraints).
- Staying current: an AI expert must dedicate 15 to 20% of their time to keeping up to date — the market shifts every 3 months. Otherwise they are obsolete.
- Management: someone has to steer them, give them business context, prioritize their projects. In an SME where nobody else is an AI expert, that falls to the CEO — time they generally do not have.
- Turnover risk: AI profiles are relentlessly headhunted. If your expert leaves after 18 months, you start from scratch — onboarding included.
More structurally: the multidisciplinary AI expert you would want practically does not exist in the candidate pool accessible to an SME. To properly transform a 50-person company, you would need someone who simultaneously masters business strategy, change management, prompt engineering, tool integration, data security, and the ecosystem (Anthropic, OpenAI, Mistral, local providers). That rare gem has already launched their own agency or joined a scale-up.
For an SME, the cost / risk / value ratio of an in-house AI hire only makes sense from 200-300 employees upward, with a genuinely structured AI roadmap already in place. Below that, the math is almost always unfavorable.
Why the monthly AI Partnership solves this dilemma
Between the one-off consultant who delivers and leaves, and the disproportionate in-house hire, there is a format that emerged in 2024-2025 and is establishing itself as the standard for SMEs: the monthly AI Partnership. The idea is simple — you get a dedicated AI partner, shared across several SMEs, who returns every month with a course to hold, a report, and concrete actions.
Concretely, at Codito Ergo Sum, the monthly AI Partnership is priced at 399 €/mo excl. VAT for the Essential plan and 699 €/mo excl. VAT for the Premium plan (which adds monthly training for your teams). No commitment, cancel with a simple email. Start within 7 days.
What it includes every month, without exception:
- A monthly 1.5-hour session with a dedicated Codito consultant — a single point of contact for the entire duration of the AI Partnership, who gets to know your company, your stakes, your teams.
- An actionable monthly report of 8-12 pages, delivered within 72 hours of the session, with the 3-5 priority AI projects for the coming month, scored by effort × impact.
- A direct WhatsApp/Slack channel with your consultant, for day-to-day questions — response within 24 business hours.
- Monthly tracking of your AI Maturity Score (6 dimensions: data, infrastructure, skills, governance, culture, security) — you measure your progress objectively.
- Installation of AI agents you run autonomously (and your teams too, on Premium), training included.
The cost / value ratio is beyond comparison with the two previous options. 399 €/mo excl. VAT = 4,788 €/year. That is, roughly, 4 days of a one-off consultant, or 3.5% of the annual cost of an in-house Head of AI. For a regular, structured presence that lasts over time.
Bloom AI, SchoolIA, Moon IA: what changes with Codito?
The monthly AI Partnership is not a format Codito invented. Other serious players offer it — Bloom AI, SchoolIA, Moon IA, to name just a few you regularly come across in this segment. That is rather good news: it means demand is real and the format works.
What varies from one player to the next, however, can be significant. Here are the honest axes of differentiation — with no bashing:
- Contractual commitment: some players advertise "no commitment" that in reality requires 3 or 6 months' notice. At Codito, cancellation is by simple email, with no notice period and no penalty — the current month remains due, full stop.
- Price transparency: some rates are only visible after a sales call. Codito displays 399 € / 699 € publicly on its website, with no intermediate steps.
- Level of technical expertise: most "AI partnership" players lean toward no-code training (Make, Zapier, ChatGPT prompts). Codito is a certified Anthropic partner and offers, alongside the AI Partnership, Custom Development by in-house dev teams. Concretely: if an opportunity for a custom AI agent emerges during your AI Partnership, you get priority access to the dev team — separate quote, you remain free.
- The approach: pure advisory vs operational partnership. Some players mostly deliver strategic advice (reports, recommendations, road-mapping). Codito couples that with the actual installation of AI agents — meaning the monthly report is not just a document, it is also an operational delivery milestone.
No offer is universally superior — each has its use cases. If you are a services-oriented SME with essentially no-code needs (automating Gmail, structuring a Drive, deploying ChatGPT Enterprise), a player like SchoolIA can be a very good fit. If you anticipate custom technical work (a business-specific agent, an ERP integration, an AI web app) alongside the partnership, Codito has a structural advantage.
The typical ROI over 12 months
The math is mechanical. 4,788 €/year for the Essential AI Partnership. To cover the cost, AI only needs to save you:
- One hour per week of executive time (≈ 50 €/h fully loaded) — that is 2,600 €/year. Halfway amortized by month 6.
- A single bad AI decision avoided in the year (an 8 k€ tool nobody uses, a poorly scoped POC, a premature AI hire) — ROI exceeded.
- A single AI agent installed that saves your team 4 h/week — more than covers the annual cost.
Across the AI Partnerships run at Codito, the average measurable ROI sits between 5x and 15x the cost in the first year, depending on company size and how engaged the leader is. And beyond the numbers, there is a value you cannot quantify: the peace of mind of a leader who knows they are not falling behind. No panic every time a new AI tool ships, no anxiety over technical decisions. Hard to put in euros, but enormous.
Who the monthly AI Partnership is really for
Let's be precise. Our AI Partnership offer is not the right offer for everyone. Here is how to decide.
It's right for you if:
- You run an SME of 5 to 200 employees and you want to integrate AI for the long haul, not pull off a one-time stunt.
- You have already done an AI Audit (with us or elsewhere) and you are looking for the right vehicle to execute the roadmap.
- You want a no-commitment solution you can stop the day you no longer need it.
- You prefer a fractional partner who returns every month over a one-off consultant who delivers and leaves.
- You want your teams to build skills along the way, not depend forever on an external expert (Premium plan).
It's not right for you if:
- You have a very specific AI project, already scoped, that requires intensive development → go with Custom Development (specific quote).
- You want to test AI for 1 month and stop → a one-off AI Audit will serve you better.
- You are a large group with a structured AI department → the AI Partnership is not sized for you; you need dedicated in-house expertise.
- You are looking for pure training with no installation → opt for dedicated training from a specialized provider.
How to get started
The process is deliberately simple: a 30-minute scoping call to check that the AI Partnership is the right format for you. If it is not, we point you — without hesitation — toward an Audit, a Custom Development project, or even another agency if you fall outside our scope. Start within 7 days if the format is validated. First monthly report at day 30, with your initial AI Maturity Score and the roadmap for the next 90 days.
The monthly AI Partnership is not a miracle solution. It is the right intensity of presence for an SME to embed AI durably. Not too heavy, not too light. Sustainable. And it is exactly what most SME leaders need in 2026.
At 399 €/month, this is not a recurring cost you second-guess every month — it is, structurally, the most cost-effective format on the market for durably integrating AI into an SME. Explore the Codito AI Partnership in detail — plans, included services, method, ROI.
Want to see whether the AI Partnership is right for you?
Book 30 minutes with Emile to scope it together.