AISDP preparation requires seven roles over 20 to 28 weeks, with initial staffing costs ranging from EUR 100,000 to EUR 350,000 per system. Marginal costs drop to 40 to 50% by the fifth system through shared infrastructure. Annual maintenance runs EUR 55,000 to EUR 130,000 per system. Tooling budgets range from EUR 20,000 (OSS) to EUR 345,000 (commercial).
EU AI Act compliance staffing requires seven roles for AISDP preparation over a 20 to 28 week period: AI Governance Lead, Technical SME, AI System Assessor, Legal and Regulatory Advisor, Conformity Assessment Coordinator, data or ML engineer, and security engineer. Total FTE per system ranges from approximately 1.35 for large organisations with internal teams to 1.65 for small organisations relying heavily on external consultants. Initial preparation costs range from EUR 100,000 for large organisations to EUR 350,000 for small organisations with external-heavy staffing models across a six-month engagement. The marginal cost of additional systems decreases significantly through reusable shared artefacts including the quality management system, governance pipeline, monitoring infrastructure, role definitions, and template library. The second system costs approximately 60 to 70 percent of the first, and by the fifth system the marginal cost drops to approximately 40 to 50 percent. Annual maintenance requires 0.34 to 0.48 FTE per system covering quarterly AISDP review, post-market monitoring operation, operator training and certification, regulatory horizon scanning, annual conformity assessment refresh, and governance meetings. The compliance tooling stack ranges from EUR 20,000 to EUR 60,000 for OSS-maximised to EUR 80,000 to EUR 345,000 for full commercial stacks.
AISDP preparation is a multi-disciplinary effort spanning approximately twenty to twenty-eight weeks for a medium-complexity system.
aisdp preparation is a multi-disciplinary effort spanning approximately twenty to twenty-eight weeks for a medium-complexity system. Seven roles contribute to the initial preparation phase, with FTE allocations varying by organisational profile.
Annual maintenance per system requires approximately 0.
Annual maintenance per system requires approximately 0.34 FTE for small organisations, 0.48 FTE for medium, and 0.36 FTE for large. Six activities comprise the ongoing maintenance workload.
Quarterly AISDP review and update requires 0.05 to 0.08 FTE, ensuring the documentation reflects the current state of the system after each change cycle. operation and analysis is the largest single activity at 0.10 to 0.12 FTE, covering the continuous monitoring of performance, fairness, drift, and human oversight metrics. Operator training and certification requires 0.05 to 0.08 FTE for initial certification of new operators and annual refresher training for existing ones.
The recommended tooling stack spans fifteen categories, with annual licence costs for a medium organisation ranging from EUR 80,000 to 345,000 for a fully commercial stack or EUR 20,000 to 60,000 for an open-source-maximised stack.
The recommended tooling stack spans fifteen categories, with annual licence costs for a medium organisation ranging from EUR 80,000 to 345,000 for a fully commercial stack or EUR 20,000 to 60,000 for an open-source-maximised stack.
Pipeline orchestration tools such as Dagster Cloud or Prefect Cloud cost EUR 5,000 to 25,000 annually, with Dagster OSS, Apache Airflow, or Prefect OSS as free alternatives. Experiment tracking through managed MLflow or Weights and Biases costs EUR 6,000 to 30,000, with the model registry included. Data validation via Great Expectations Cloud costs EUR 5,000 to 15,000. Data versioning through DVC or LakeFS costs up to EUR 10,000 with free community editions available. Policy engines such as Styra DAS for managed OPA cost EUR 8,000 to 30,000, with Open Policy Agent open-source as the free alternative.
Because the first system requires building shared infrastructure: the quality management system, governance pipeline, monitoring infrastructure, role definitions, and template library. All subsequent systems reuse these artefacts.
The Legal and Regulatory Advisor at EUR 1,500 to EUR 2,500 per day, though this role typically requires the smallest FTE allocation at 0.15 to 0.20.
Small organisations typically benefit most from an OSS-maximised stack with a managed hosting layer. This approach costs EUR 20,000 to EUR 60,000 annually versus EUR 80,000 to EUR 345,000 for commercial tools.
Staffing costs range from EUR 100,000 to EUR 350,000 for a 20 to 28 week preparation period, depending on organisation size and reliance on external consultants.
The second system costs approximately 60 to 70% of the first through shared infrastructure. By the fifth system, marginal cost drops to 40 to 50%.
EUR 55,000 to EUR 130,000 per system annually, requiring 0.34 to 0.48 FTE for monitoring, reviews, training, and conformity assessment refresh.
EUR 20,000 to EUR 60,000 annually for an OSS-maximised stack, or EUR 80,000 to EUR 345,000 for a full commercial stack.
The AI Governance Lead requires 0.3 FTE as an external consultant for small organisations, 0.5 FTE internal and shared across systems for medium organisations, and 0.25 FTE internal within a dedicated function for large organisations, at day rates of EUR 1,200 to 1,800. The Technical SME requires 0.5, 0.4, and 0.3 FTE respectively at EUR 800 to 1,200 per day. The AI System Assessor requires 0.2 to 0.3 FTE at EUR 1,000 to 1,500. The Legal and Regulatory Advisor requires 0.15 to 0.2 FTE at EUR 1,500 to 2,500, typically sourced from an external law firm for small organisations and from a blend of in-house counsel and external specialist for medium organisations. The Conformity Assessment Coordinator requires 0.1 to 0.2 FTE at EUR 1,000 to 1,400, with the AI Governance Lead doubling in this role for small organisations. Data and ML engineers contribute 0.2 to 0.3 FTE at EUR 700 to 1,000, and security engineers contribute 0.1 to 0.15 FTE at EUR 800 to 1,200.
Total FTE per system for initial preparation is approximately 1.65 for small organisations which rely heavily on external consultants, 2.05 for medium organisations with a blended internal and external model, and 1.35 for large organisations that leverage internal shared services. Estimated staffing cost per system for the six-month preparation engagement ranges from EUR 180,000 to 350,000 for small organisations, EUR 150,000 to 310,000 for medium organisations, and EUR 100,000 to 240,000 for large organisations.
The per-system cost decreases significantly for subsequent systems because shared artefacts including the QMS, the governance pipeline, the monitoring infrastructure, the role definitions, and the template library are reusable across the portfolio. The marginal cost of the second system is approximately 60 to 70 per cent of the first. By the fifth system, marginal cost drops to approximately 40 to 50 per cent of the first.
Regulatory horizon scanning and AISDP impact assessment requires 0.03 to 0.05 FTE for the Legal and Regulatory Advisor to monitor guidance from the AI Office, enforcement actions, and harmonised standards developments. Annual conformity assessment refresh requires 0.08 to 0.10 FTE, repeating the Annex VI assessment against the updated AISDP and evidence pack. Governance meetings and reporting requires 0.03 to 0.05 FTE for quarterly PMM review meetings and the associated documentation.
Estimated annual maintenance cost per system ranges from EUR 55,000 to 110,000 for small organisations, EUR 65,000 to 130,000 for medium, and EUR 50,000 to 105,000 for large. Staffing is consistently the dominant cost category across all organisational profiles, accounting for 60 to 75 per cent of total expenditure, making automation of manual compliance tasks the highest-leverage cost reduction strategy.
Security scanning through Snyk or Semgrep Team costs EUR 5,000 to 20,000, with Semgrep OSS and Trivy OSS providing free alternatives. Secret detection via GitGuardian costs EUR 3,000 to 10,000, with detect-secrets and git-secrets as free alternatives. Monitoring and observability through Datadog or Grafana Cloud costs EUR 10,000 to 50,000, the largest tooling line item, with Grafana plus Prometheus open-source providing the free stack. Feature flags through LaunchDarkly cost EUR 6,000 to 25,000, with Unleash OSS and Flagsmith OSS as free alternatives. Progressive delivery through Argo Rollouts and GitOps through ArgoCD are both open-source at zero licence cost.
AI governance platforms such as Credo AI or Holistic AI, which have no equivalent open-source alternatives at comparable maturity, cost EUR 20,000 to 80,000. Learning management systems for AI literacy cost EUR 5,000 to 20,000, with Moodle as the open-source alternative. Evidence management through Confluence, SharePoint, or custom solutions costs EUR 2,000 to 10,000.
The cost differential between the commercial and open-source stacks is substantial. The trade-off is operational: open-source tools require internal hosting, maintenance, and integration effort that commercial tools provide as managed services. For small organisations, the open-source stack with a managed hosting layer is typically the most cost-effective approach. For large organisations, the commercial stack reduces operational burden and provides enterprise support that justifies the higher licence cost.
CTO of Standard Intelligence. Leads platform engineering and contributes to the PIG series technical content.
