What does on-premise AI actually cost?

This page explains how the pricing works rather than quoting figures, because the buyers we talk to are managing partners and practice managers who compare cost structures for a living, and the structure is what decides the comparison. Exact pricing depends on practice size and document volume, which is what the scoping consultation settles.

The setup fee

A one-off setup fee covers getting the unit working in your office: the hardware itself, on-site installation on your network, initial indexing of your document base, configuration around how your practice works, and onboarding your team. Ermos retains ownership of the hardware, so you are paying for deployment rather than capital equipment. The figure is confirmed at scoping, with your unit sizing.

The monthly price: what it covers

The monthly price covers the whole relationship. It includes:

• Unlimited users on the unit. Everyone in the practice, no seat counting.
• Model updates. New open models are evaluated and applied as they improve.
• ErmosIQ tuning. The unit keeps adapting to your language, documents and standards.
• 24/7 hardware monitoring of the unit, never your files.
• Support by chat, phone and email.
• Hardware refresh. Because Ermos owns the hardware, the unit is refreshed on a 24-month cycle rather than ageing on your books.

The 12-month minimum term exists because the value compounds: ErmosIQ gets materially better over the first months of real use, and a shorter horizon undersells what you are buying.

Per-unit vs per-seat: how the structures compare

Cloud AI is priced per person; a unit is priced per practice. That difference matters more than any single figure. Per-seat AI is licensed per user, per month at each vendor's published rates, so the comparison runs on headcount:

• Small teams. Per-seat licensing is usually the cheaper line item, often by half or more. At that size the case for a unit is sovereignty and the compounding knowledge asset, and we say so plainly.
• The crossover. Costs typically converge somewhere in the tens of staff, depending on your sizing and the per-seat tier being compared.
• Growing practices. Past the crossover, per-seat spend keeps climbing with every hire, commonly 40 to 90 percent above unit-based pricing at larger sizes, while a unit's price does not move when you hire.

Per-seat pricing also usually sits on top of the underlying productivity licences it requires, which the percentages above do not count.

What is not included

Power from your wall, a network port, and the same physical security you already give your file server. There are no ingestion fees, no per-query metering, no storage tiers, no support tiers.

Adding units

Larger businesses and multi-office practices add units, each priced at scoping. Sizing is agreed up front based on team size and document volume, and revisited as you grow.

Common questions