Ask what a private AI assistant costs and you will be handed a number. Ask which one, and the number moves. Iternal sells several products through several routes, each with its own published figure, and a figure that arrives without its scope attached is a rumor. The useful answer names the product, the route and the unit — then says what no published figure covers.
Private AI Pricing
What Does a Private, Locally Run
AI Assistant Cost?
Every published figure, the product and buying route each one belongs to, what the number includes, and the two things that sit outside all of them.
Built from real buyer questions in our sales meetings
Direct Answer
The figure depends on which product you buy and how you buy it. AirgapAI is a one-time perpetual license per device, upgrades included, with no annual maintenance fee. On iternal.ai it is published at $697 per device — also stated as just under $700 — or $35 per month as a subscription, and the Enterprise + Blockify tier at $1,499 one-time. AI Assist, the packaged deployment, carries a $799 MSRP one-time. AI Academy is $199 per user per year. Through a partner the number moves again: the do-it-yourself channel MSRP was published at $96 per device.
The limit: none of these is a quote, and none includes the machine. Iternal prices the solution rather than the hardware, so the AI PC or the server sits outside every figure here. Channel pricing has moved since $96 was published. And all of it is commercial pricing — the government route costs more. A written quote replaces the lot.
Three answers settle your number. Which unit the license counts for your SKU, whether enterprise-scale data preparation sits inside the figure or arrives as a separate Blockify license, and which route you buy through. The questions below are written for that conversation.
The published figures, and what each one includes. For more information on how the license is owned and counted, visit the licensing-models page; on paying for it when nothing has been set aside, visit the no-budget page.
The Published Figures, and Which Product Each One Belongs To
One number cannot carry four products and three buying routes. The table ties every published figure to the product it prices, the route it was published for, and the unit it is counted in.
| What you are buying | How it is bought | Published figure | Unit and term |
|---|---|---|---|
| AirgapAI (do-it-yourself) | Through a partner | $96 MSRP | Per device, one-time perpetual. Channel list at publication; partner pricing has since changed. |
| AirgapAI | Direct on iternal.ai | $697 | Per device, one-time perpetual, upgrades included. |
| AirgapAI Chat | Direct on iternal.ai | $35 / month | Subscription, bought at list with no channel discount. |
| AI Assist (packaged deployment) | Through the channel, delivered with Dell | $799 MSRP | One-time perpetual. No minimum purchase quantity. |
| AirgapAI Enterprise + Blockify | Direct on iternal.ai | $1,499 | Per seat, one-time. Bundles Blockify data ingestion, tier one through tier three support, white-glove installation and a year of AI Academy. |
| Blockify | Enterprise sale | $1,350 | One-time, licensed per one human user or one AI agent. Carries a 20% annual maintenance fee. |
| AI Academy | Direct or through a partner | $199 / year | Per user, annual. A $7-a-week plan is also asked about by name. |
Two of those are what a buyer pays on iternal.ai today: $697 per device one-time for AirgapAI, or $35 per month on the subscription route. The $96 figure is channel list, and list is rarely what anyone pays. Partners buy below list and set their own resale price, so the number reaching you through a partner is theirs to name.
An Enterprise tier sits above the perpetual license at $1,499 one-time per seat, bundling Blockify data ingestion, tier one through tier three phone and chat support, white-glove installation and a year of AI Academy into one figure. It is published alongside the others on the AirgapAI pricing page.
What Is Included at That Price
A price with no scope attached is a number, not an offer. Finance asks the same three things every time: what is inside the fee, what is a separate line, and what the support commitment is. Three packages answer it, and they differ mostly in how much human help travels with the software.
Base perpetual license
The application, the bundled workflows at no extra charge, a lightweight Blockify utility for building data sets by drag and drop, and every published upgrade for the life of the device. No annual maintenance fee, no token fees.
Enterprise tier
Everything in the base license, plus Blockify data ingestion for higher retrieval accuracy, tier one, tier two and tier three phone and chat support, white-glove installation and configuration, and a year of AI Academy access.
AI Assist
AirgapAI wrapped with implementation, onboarding, training and tier one through tier three support in one perpetual fee, delivered with Dell as service partner. It also carries the local meeting note taker and a year of AI Academy access. No minimum purchase quantity.
One distinction belongs in the quote: phone-based support and white-glove installation arrive with the packaged premium version, not with the base license. If your help desk plans to escalate, escalate to the right SKU. Two things sit outside all three packages — the device, and preparing your data at volumes a laptop cannot work through.
What Moves the Number: Quantity, and Whether Data Preparation Is In Scope
Two variables move a published figure further than any negotiation. The first is quantity: AirgapAI Chat is available below MSRP in volume, and AI Assist carries no minimum purchase quantity, so a single desk and a whole fleet are both real orders. Amortized across a device refresh of about four years, a perpetual license lands near $8 to $10 for each person each month — usually the shape finance wants to see.
The second variable is scope, and it is the one that surprises people. AirgapAI includes a lightweight Blockify utility at no additional cost: drag text files in, build a data set, add more later. Iternal is direct about where that utility stops — Word documents and PDFs, roughly a page of text a minute on a laptop, built for proving a concept rather than for production libraries. Create data sets routinely, or hold volumes a laptop cannot chew through, and you need the server-side Blockify license and a server to run it on.
Leaving enterprise-scale data preparation out of the first quote is the most common way a private AI budget lands short.
Everything else has a written answer. Ask these four before the purchase order:
Pin it down: questions for your evaluation
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Which unit does the license count for the SKU we are buying — the physical device, or the named user?Which multiplier applies to your fleet. Figures exist against both units, and the unit changes the total more than the discount does.
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What is the current partner list price, and what does our quantity earn against it?The channel figure in force today rather than the one published earlier, plus the discount your volume actually reaches.
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Is enterprise-scale data preparation inside this figure, or a separate Blockify license and server?Whether the included on-device utility covers your corpus, or a second line item arrives after the license is signed.
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Does this quote price the commercial route or the government route, and does any hardware sit inside it?The two exclusions outside every published figure, confirmed before the number reaches your board.
When the Number Is a Non-Starter: The Smallest Configuration That Works
Buyers say it plainly and often: that is too much, we cannot do that. A $200,000 infrastructure price tag stops a mid-sized business before the pilot starts, and a $300,000 program with real savings behind it still does not happen when the money was never allocated. Sticker shock in private AI rarely comes from the assistant license — it comes from the servers, integration and services stacked around it.
Which is why the smallest configuration deserves naming. One perpetual license, on a device the organization already owns, using the included data-set utility, with no server anywhere in the picture. Iternal recommends that motion openly: start small, take a low-cost win, prove it, then scale. A 30-day trial license comes from a form on iternal.ai, and buying an Intel-based AI PC can earn an extended trial on top.
One caution. A trial license switches itself off on its own schedule whether or not anyone uninstalls the software, so put the conversion date in the calendar.
Answered elsewhere
- How the license is owned, counted and moved between machines — see the licensing-models page.
- Paying for a purchase when nothing has been set aside — see the no-budget page.
- Weighing a device purchase against a monthly hosted subscription — see the AI PC comparison page.
- What it costs to run the models once they are in production — see the inference-cost page.
- Payment terms, contract clauses and government buying rules — see the procurement page.
- Recovering value from licenses bought and never adopted — see the stalled-adoption page.
- How a partner packages and marks up the product — see the partner packaging page.
FAQ
FAQ: What a Private AI Assistant Costs
On iternal.ai, AirgapAI is published at $697 per device as a one-time perpetual license, or $35 per month as a subscription. Through a partner, the do-it-yourself channel MSRP was published at $96 per device, and partners set their own resale price from there. Amortized over a device refresh of about four years, a perpetual license lands near $8 to $10 for each person each month.
The base perpetual license covers the application, the bundled workflows, a lightweight Blockify utility for building data sets, and every published upgrade for the life of the device, with no annual maintenance fee. The Enterprise tier adds Blockify data ingestion, tier one, tier two and tier three phone and chat support, white-glove installation and a year of AI Academy access. AI Assist adds implementation, onboarding and training, the local meeting note taker and a year of AI Academy access. Hardware sits outside all three.
They are two routes to the same software. The iternal.ai figure is list, with no channel discount applied. The partner route starts from a channel MSRP, and partners buy below list and set their own resale price, so the number they name is theirs. Published channel pricing has also changed over time, which is why a quote governs rather than any page.
One perpetual license on a device the organization already owns, using the data-set utility included with the software, and no server at all. Iternal recommends exactly that start: prove a low-cost win, then scale. A 30-day trial license comes from a form on the website, and an Intel-based AI PC can earn an extended trial. Trial licenses expire on their own schedule, so put the conversion date in the calendar.
No. Iternal prices the solution rather than the hardware, so the laptop, the AI PC or the server sits outside every published software figure. Budget the device separately, and if your volumes call for the server-side Blockify license, budget the machine that runs it separately too.
AI Academy is published at $199 per user per year, and buyers regularly ask about the $7-a-week plan by name. It is the steadiest figure in the range, because it prices a person on an annual subscription rather than a license tied to a device.
Get the Figure That Governs, in Writing
Published prices orient a budget. A quote decides one. Ask for the unit, the route, the data-preparation scope and the hardware line to be stated on the document itself, and the number your board sees will be the number you pay.