The numbers
The fractional seat is $10,000 to $15,000 per month. The range is not a negotiating posture — it tracks the time the work requires, which is one to two days a week, or 50 to 70 hours a month, depending on how much of the AI function already exists and how much has to be built. Six-month initial term, then month to month.
The advisory tier below it is $5,000 to $8,000 per month at 20 to 30 hours a month, and it is the right purchase for a company that has a capable team and needs a senior second opinion rather than an owner. Both usually begin with the AI Adoption Assessment at $6,000, one time.
A published price is a filter, not a discount. It means the first call can be about the problem rather than about whether you can afford the conversation.
What moves the number
- Days per month. The single largest driver. A seat that has to be in three standing leadership meetings costs more than one that has to be in one.
- Whether implementation is in scope. Decisions plus hands-on build from the same person is a different engagement from decisions alone.
- Regulatory exposure. Healthcare, financial services, and government work carry documentation and evaluation burdens that are real work, not overhead.
- The state of the data. A company whose data environment has never been surveyed will spend part of the first quarter finding out what it actually has.
- How many vendors are already in flight. Untangling and evaluating existing commitments is slower than choosing from a clean slate.
Comparing against a full-time hire
This comparison is usually done badly, because people compare a retainer against a base salary. Those are not the same kind of number. Run it properly with your own compensation data — you have better figures for your market and stage than any published survey will give you.
The arithmetic
Take the base salary you would actually have to offer to attract a credible AI executive in your market. Add employer taxes and benefits, which is commonly 25 to 35 percent of base depending on where you are. Add the annualized value of the equity grant the role would require. Add recruiting cost, which for a first-time executive search is frequently a quarter of first-year cash. Then divide the total by twelve.
Compare that monthly figure against the retainer above. For most mid-market companies the fractional seat lands somewhere between a third and two thirds of the fully loaded full-time cost, but the ratio depends entirely on your inputs, which is why the method matters more than any number published here.
What the arithmetic leaves out
Two things, both of which favor the full-time hire and should be said out loud. A full-time executive is available every day, and there is real value in the unscheduled conversation that happens because someone is in the building. And a permanent hire builds institutional knowledge that stays when they leave the role, in a way a fractional engagement only partially replicates through documentation.
One thing favors the fractional arrangement and is rarely priced: time to start. An executive search for this role is commonly four to eight months from opening the req to the person's first day. A fractional seat starts in weeks. If the pressure that created the requirement is real, the cost of eight months of nobody owning the problem belongs in the comparison too.
What the retainer should include
Ask specifically. A rate that covers decisions but bills separately for implementation is a different product from one that covers both, and the difference will not show up until the first thing needs building. The same is true of the report to the board, the vendor contract reviews, and the hiring support — all of which are either in the retainer or are change orders waiting to happen.