Need a sanity check on pricing 👀 · AI Automation Society

Need a sanity check on pricing 👀

Just had an interesting situation and want to get the community's take.

Client came to me wanting an AI personal assistant built on N8N. WhatsApp as the main interface, tasks auto-created to Google Drive, daily briefing, context memory, bilingual (Arabic/English), deployed on his own infrastructure.

I scoped it as a 5-milestone roadmap:

M1 — WhatsApp AI Co-Pilot (1 week) £2,600

M2 — Email + team task management £3,400

M3 — Unified memory / RAG layer £4,500

M4 — Data analysis + web dashboard £3,000

M5 — Multi-user team operations £4,100

Total roadmap: £17,600

His response: the quote is 10x what other developers offered him.

He said he understands it’s not a “cheap $20 workflow” but that £17k is way too far and asked if we could work something out around £1,500 for what he had in mind.

Client is a Saudi construction company owner. Technical understanding is good. Has another developer working on a separate AI project already.

My questions for the community:

1. Is my pricing fair for this scope or am I actually way off?

2. How do you handle the gap when a client is comparing you to low-cost automation developers?

3. Would you negotiate down or walk away?

Happy to share the full scope doc if useful. Genuinely want honest feedback, not validation.

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