Cost mostly comes down to scope. A single workflow, say automated lot description drafting from consignment photos and details, is a smaller build than a system that spans consignment intake, cataloguing, bidder registration, and post-sale invoicing together. A multi-part operations system costs more because it has more handoffs to manage: intake needs to feed cataloguing, registration needs to feed invoicing, and each step has its own exceptions a human used to catch by hand. If the auction house also needs a real product, a bidder portal with payments, logins for multiple staff, and a searchable catalogue, that is closer to full software development and priced accordingly.
The other factor is whether the engagement is build-only or build-and-operate. A build-only project hands you a working system and stops there; you own it and you are responsible for keeping it running, updating it when your process changes, and noticing when it breaks. Build-and-operate means Precipitate keeps running the system afterward: monitoring it, fixing failures, and escalating to a person only when a decision genuinely needs one, like a disputed consignment or a bidder flagged for review. Operating a system long-term costs more than a one-time build but removes the ongoing maintenance work from your plate. We run this way ourselves, 110+ scheduled jobs across 40+ integrations, 88 systems in production, content in 7 languages, all without daily hands-on management. That is the same operating model an auction house would be paying for.
Precipitate does not publish a price list because the right price depends on your volume of lots, how many staff currently do this work by hand, and which of these four tasks matter most to you. Pricing is quoted per engagement on the value the system creates, so the way to get a real number is a short conversation about your actual sale volume and current process. To judge whether it is worth it, look at how much staff time consignment intake, cataloguing, registration, and invoicing take today, how often mistakes or delays cost you a bidder or a consignor, and whether that work could run unattended between sales instead of piling up before each one.