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The real components of enterprise architecture consulting cost in the UK: day rates, large firm teams, permanent hires and fixed fee engagements, with every Intelance floor published and where budgets quietly drift.
Ask what enterprise architecture consulting costs in the UK and you will meet the quietest pricing in professional services. The large firms publish nothing, day rates arrive without any promise of an end state, and a permanent hire is presented as the only alternative. This guide sets out the real numbers: what each way of buying enterprise architecture costs, what you get for it, and where budgets quietly drift. Every Intelance fee named here is published on our service pages and fixed in writing before work starts.
The short answer. Enterprise architecture is bought four ways in the UK. Independent contractors commonly quote £600 to £900 a day, and the large firms considerably more once a team lands. A permanent enterprise architect is commonly advertised between £90,000 and £130,000 before employer costs. A large firm programme runs into six figures a quarter. Fixed fee, productised engagements price the outcome instead of the time: with Intelance, an EA QuickScan runs from £18,000 + VAT in ten working days, a Virtual EA Department from £6,500 + VAT per month, and programme architecture through ProjectEA from £45,000 + VAT.
Four things move the number more than anything else. Estate size and complexity: mapping and deciding across forty systems is a different job from four hundred, which is why careful firms fix fees only after scoping. Seniority: enterprise architecture is a decision discipline, and decisions made by juniors get remade expensively later. The day rate gap between a career consultant and a senior practitioner is real, and it is still smaller than the cost of a wrong platform decision. The buying model: time and materials transfers all delivery risk to you, fixed fees transfer it to the firm. What the work must survive: a slide pack costs less than an operating model that still runs a year later, and costs far more once you pay to rebuild it.
Rates and salaries move with the market, so check any figure in this guide against live data before you budget. ITJobsWatch tracks advertised UK rates and salaries for enterprise architects and is a reasonable independent reference point.
Whichever route you choose, size the prize before you buy. Our enterprise architecture ROI calculator turns your own figures into a realistic range of what poor technology decisions cost you each year and what a properly designed capability could recover.
| Model | Typical cost | What you get | The catch |
|---|---|---|---|
| Independent contractor | Commonly £600 to £900 a day | One experienced person embedded in your team | No end state is promised, coverage stops when they leave, and quality varies widely |
| Large firm engagement | Team day rates commonly £1,500 and above per consultant | A partner, a method and a team, often weighted towards juniors | At three consultants for a quarter the arithmetic passes £300,000 before a decision is made |
| Permanent hire | Advertised salaries commonly £90,000 to £130,000, plus employer costs | A dedicated architect who knows your estate | One person cannot cover strategy, delivery and governance, and the role commonly stays vacant for months |
| Fixed fee, productised | Published floors, fixed in writing | A defined outcome with a defined price and timescale | Scope must be agreed plainly up front, which is the point |
Every fee below is a published floor, fixed in writing after scoping and delivered by senior practitioners only. Nothing is staffed with a junior pyramid and no engagement carries tool licences or vendor commissions.
| Engagement | Fee | Timescale |
|---|---|---|
| EA QuickScan: every system inventoried and scored for cost, fit and risk, with a board ready roadmap | From £18,000 + VAT | From 10 working days |
| EA operating model diagnostic: decision rights, forums and governance assessed with a build plan | From £18,000 + VAT | 3 to 4 weeks |
| EA operating model build: the full function designed, built and running | From £95,000 + VAT | Scoped from the diagnostic |
| ProjectEA: senior architects embedded in a live programme | From £45,000 + VAT, ERP and platform scale from £120,000 + VAT | Scoped to the programme |
| Virtual EA Department: the function run monthly with a named senior lead | From £6,500 + VAT per month for eight senior days, from £11,000 for twelve and from £22,000 for twenty or more | Monthly, no lock-in |
| EA for cloud and ERP: the buyer’s side of a migration or ERP replacement, baselined before the business case | From £18,000 + VAT | Baseline in 10 working days |
| EA for data and AI platforms: the platform decision made vendor neutral | From £14,500 + VAT | 10 working days |
| EA tool selection: independent selection with trials on your own data, repository design from £28,000 + VAT | From £12,500 + VAT | 3 to 4 weeks |
Intelance fees include senior delivery, every deliverable named in the scope, and the readout with the people who asked for the work. Three things sit outside any properly scoped EA fee and belong in your wider budget. EA tool licences: repository platforms carry their own subscriptions, which is one reason selection should be independent of anyone selling them. Delivery itself: architecture steers programmes, and the programmes carry their own build costs. Your own people’s time: owners must attend decisions, and any consultancy that promises architecture without your involvement is describing a slide pack.
The drift patterns repeat across the market. Day rate engagements without a defined end state simply continue, because nobody is paid to finish. Junior pyramids bill partner decisions at team sizes. Tool licences get bought before the operating model exists, so the repository becomes expensive shelfware. And architecture that dies at handover gets paid for twice: once to produce it and once to rebuild it when the next programme cannot use it. The common thread is buying time instead of outcomes, which is why every Intelance engagement carries a published floor and a defined output.
Start with a fixed fee diagnostic rather than a team: the QuickScan from £18,000 + VAT settles where the money should go before anyone commits six figures. Buy outcomes with fees fixed in writing, and treat any refusal to name a price as information. Run the function monthly through a Virtual EA Department from £6,500 + VAT per month until the estate genuinely justifies permanent headcount, because the monthly model covers holidays, leavers and the breadth one hire cannot. And keep the architecture register in your own tools, so nothing is hostage to a licence or a leaver. The wider practice is described on our enterprise architecture consulting page, and our CIO guide to enterprise architecture covers how the discipline earns its keep.
It depends on the buying model. Independent contractors commonly quote £600 to £900 a day, large firm teams considerably more per consultant, and a permanent architect is commonly advertised between £90,000 and £130,000 before employer costs. Fixed fee engagements price the outcome: with Intelance, assessments run from £18,000 + VAT, programme architecture from £45,000 + VAT and a monthly EA function from £6,500 + VAT per month.
Independent enterprise architects commonly quote £600 to £900 a day depending on sector and depth, and large consultancies commonly charge £1,500 and above per consultant per day once a team is engaged. Day rates buy time rather than outcomes, so the real question is what the engagement is contracted to finish.
Only at scale. A permanent hire carries salary, employer costs, tooling and training, covers one person’s breadth, and stops covering anything during holidays, notice periods and vacancies. Most organisations below enterprise scale get broader coverage from a monthly function such as the Virtual EA Department from £6,500 + VAT per month, and hire permanently when the estate justifies a team.
With Intelance, the EA QuickScan runs from £18,000 + VAT and takes from ten working days: every system inventoried and scored for cost, fit and risk, with findings costed and a board ready roadmap. It is designed to be the first cheque, because it decides where every later cheque should go.
Repository platforms carry their own licence subscriptions on top of any consulting fee, and they become shelfware where the operating model does not exist to feed them. Independent selection from £12,500 + VAT, run by a firm selling no licences, keeps the tool decision honest and the repository design from £28,000 + VAT keeps updates cheap.
Every engagement has a published floor, the exact fee is fixed in writing after scoping, and delivery is senior only. There are no junior pyramids, no tool licences and no vendor commissions, and the published floors are on every service page so the arithmetic can be checked before anyone calls us.
Emmanuel Olatunji
Chief Enterprise Architecture Partner
Emmanuel founded Intelance in 2017 and has led architecture, AI governance, cyber and deal engagements across the UK, Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Every Intelance engagement runs under his direction, and every guide he publishes comes from that work.
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