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Scoping and pricing SAP AI engagements

As of 2026-09-25

Edited by Cédric-Olivier Mâry, sole editor and publication director — 27 years in the SAP ecosystem. How these pages are produced, and where automation is used.

What is Scoping and pricing SAP AI engagements?

SAP's 2026 commercial model splits AI into two prices a consultant has to translate into a SOW: Base AI (included free in eligible cloud subscriptions, no AI Units) and Premium AI, now refocused on metered agent actions at 0.02 AI Units each rather than per-user access — Joule for Consultants is the one per-user exception left, at 35 AI Units per assigned user per month. Scoping an SAP AI engagement means pricing the delivery effort against this consumption model, not against a flat per-user software fee.

The commercial model a proposal has to translate

SAP's Business AI commercial model splits into two tiers, and getting a proposal's cost structure wrong starts with conflating them. Base AI is included at no extra cost with eligible SAP cloud subscriptions: no AI Units required, no separate activation, available to every user from day one, and it covers everyday Joule tasks — finding information, navigating applications, in-context guidance. Premium AI is the metered tier, and SAP's 2026 restructuring moved its center of gravity from per-user access to per-agent-action consumption: every SAP-delivered autonomous agent action consumes 0.02 AI Units in 2026, whatever the agent and whatever work it performs, reflecting SAP's own framing that pricing should track what an agent does rather than how many people have access to it. The per-user-per-month packages that used to sit in Premium AI (Joule Premium for Finance, HCM, Supply Chain, Spend Management, Customer Experience) are being retired in a phased Q3 2026 rollout, with their features folding into Base AI — meaning a proposal written against last year's PUPM pricing sheet is already citing a retiring model. The one per-user offering that remains in Premium AI is SAP Joule for Consultants: 35 AI Units per assigned user per month, with 22,900 requests included per user in that allowance.

Why it matters

Base AI and Premium AI are two different negotiating conversations — a Base-AI-only use case has no AI Unit line to negotiate at all, while a metered-agent use case needs a variable, volume-based cost line instead of a flat per-user quote.
AI Unit consumption is SAP's fee, not the consultant's — marking it up or bundling it into a blended day rate is the single most common scoping error, and the one a client's own finance team will eventually catch against SAP's invoice.
SAP's commercial model changed substantially through 2025-2026 (PUPM packages retiring into Base AI in Q3 2026 alone) — a SOW that hard-codes a specific rate rather than the mechanism, with no re-pricing clause, is near-certain to be wrong on any engagement longer than six months.

Key points

Base AI: included free with eligible cloud subscriptions, no AI Units, available to every user from day one.
Premium AI in 2026: refocused on metered agent actions at 0.02 AI Units each, regardless of agent or work performed.
PUPM per-user packages (Joule Premium for Finance, HCM, Supply Chain, Spend Management, CX) retiring in a phased Q3 2026 migration into Base AI.
SAP Joule for Consultants: the one remaining per-user Premium AI offering, 35 AI Units per assigned user per month, 22,900 requests included per user.
AI Unit consumption is SAP's fee (client pays SAP directly) — never mark it up or blend it into a consultant day rate.
Delivery effort (four categories: PoC-to-production C376, discovery/prioritization C374, business case C375, change management C378) does not move in lockstep with AI Unit spend — price each on its own merits.
Three-part rate card: SAP's commercial cost (pass-through) + consultant day rate (C048) + delivery effort in days (from the four categories) — presented separately, not blended.
SOW resilience: cite the commercial model's mechanism, attach current rates as a dated appendix, and include an explicit re-pricing clause given the pace of SAP's 2025-2026 commercial changes.

Terms used on this page

Base AI: SAP's no-extra-cost AI tier, included with eligible cloud subscriptions, requiring no AI Units.
Premium AI: SAP's metered AI tier; in 2026 refocused on per-agent-action consumption (0.02 AI Units each) with one remaining per-user exception (Joule for Consultants).
AI Unit: SAP's consumption unit for metered Premium AI usage — priced per agent action or, for Joule for Consultants, bundled per user per month.
PUPM (per-user-per-month): SAP's older per-user Premium AI pricing structure, being phased out into Base AI during Q3 2026 for most packages.
Pass-through cost: SAP's own AI Unit fee, paid by the client directly to SAP and never marked up in a consultant's proposal.

Sources

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