Of four COO cost questions, one had enough comparable answers to compare AI assistants. On “What is the average cost of a fractional COO?”, median monthly midpoints were $8,500 (Google), $10,000 (OpenAI), and $13,000 (Perplexity), a 1.53× ratio. On “How much does a fractional COO charge?”, OpenAI led with an open-ended hourly range in all 10 answers.
Answers from four API configurations of AI assistants, collected on October 8, 2026 (11:49 to 12:06 UTC), with Google AI Overviews pulled the same day. This article reports the COO questions from a larger study of 11 executive and consulting cost questions, published as 4 AI Assistants, 11 Executive and Consulting Cost Questions.
The author sells fractional COO, fractional CMO, post-merger advisory, and strategy services. This article links to the author’s fractional COO service page, which may benefit from search traffic it earns. The author’s own domain appears among the references presented by Perplexity and Google’s AI Overviews for these questions (counts in the references section). This analysis does not test what those services cost or are worth. The question set, the calls, and the analysis rules were fixed before the main data pull. Five post-collection changes are listed under Method: a parser fix, a calibration check coded by the study’s AI producer instead of a person, one preregistered check that was not met as written, a rounding implementation difference that changed no figure, and the title confirmation.
These are AI-generated statements, not market prices. The study does not test whether any answer is accurate.
The four COO questions
Each question went to four API configurations ten times: OpenAI (openai/gpt-5.6-terra), Google (google/gemini-3.8-flash), Anthropic (anthropic/claude-sonnet-5.5), and Perplexity (perplexity/sonar-pro). Three of the questions name a fractional COO. The fourth, “How much does a COO cost?”, does not, and its answers are reported separately and never treated as fractional pricing.
A configuration was eligible on a question if at least 8 of its 10 answers led with a closed range in the question’s most common unit. A cross-configuration ratio was computed only where three or more configurations were eligible.
Results
AI-generated statements collected through an API on Oct 8, 2026; not market prices.
| ID | Question | Modal unit | OpenAI | Anthropic | Perplexity | Ratio | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Q08 | How much does a fractional COO charge? | Month | Excluded (10 of 10 hourly, all open-ended) | $5,125 | Excluded (6 of 10 hourly) | Excluded (6 of 10 closed monthly, 4 open-ended monthly) | Not computed (1 eligible) |
| Q10 | What is the average cost of a fractional COO? | Month | $10,000 | $8,500 | Excluded (8 of 10 hourly) | $13,000 | 1.53× |
| Q11 | How much does a fractional COO cost? | Month | Excluded (9 of 10 open-ended: 7 monthly, 2 hourly) | $9,250 | Excluded (6 of 10 closed monthly, 2 hourly, 2 open-ended monthly) | $12,500 | Not computed (2 eligible) |
| Q09 | How much does a COO cost? | Year | Excluded (7 of 10 valid) | Excluded (5 of 10 valid) | $160,000 | Excluded (8 of 10 open-ended) | Not computed (1 eligible) |
Figures are median midpoints of eligible configurations. Exclusion counts in the table are mutually exclusive: an answer in another unit is counted there even if it was also open-ended. Only Q10 had enough eligible configurations for a ratio. Its 1.53× falls at the lower end of the five ratios at or above 1.5× in the full study.
The unit was the first disagreement
Before any dollar figure, the configurations disagreed on the unit. These unit counts are registered lead-unit results, first reported in the full study.
- On Q08, OpenAI led with an hourly range in all 10 answers, and every one of those ranges was open-ended. Google and Perplexity led with monthly ranges in all 10.
- On Q08, Anthropic led with an hourly range in 6 answers and a monthly range in 4.
- On Q10, Anthropic led with an hourly range in 8 of 10 answers. Its hourly median midpoint across the 6 closed ranges was $325, a descriptive count added after the main results.
- On Q11, Anthropic led with a monthly range in 8 answers and an hourly range in 2.
A buyer asking “How much does a fractional COO charge?” could receive an hourly figure from one assistant and a monthly figure from another, on the same day.
Open-ended ranges
An open-ended range, such as “$10,000+ per month”, has no upper figure, so the fixed rules gave it no midpoint.
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- OpenAI’s answers to Q11 ended their first range with “+” in 9 of 10 cases: 7 monthly and 2 hourly.
- Perplexity’s answers to Q09 did so in 8 of 10.
- Perplexity’s answers to Q08 did so in 4 of 10.
A check set before the data pull counted open-ended ranges at their stated figures. Under that check, Q11 becomes computable at 1.52×. This is a sensitivity result, not a finding.
Asking the same question ten times
Repeated calls did not always return the same range.
AI-generated statements collected through an API on Oct 8, 2026; not market prices.
| Cell | Lowest midpoint | Highest midpoint | Max ÷ min |
|---|---|---|---|
| Google, Q08 | $4,000 | $10,000 | 2.50 |
| Google, Q10 | $4,500 | $10,000 | 2.22 |
| Anthropic, Q09 (annual) | $120,000 | $175,000 | 1.46 |
| Perplexity, Q10 | $11,500 | $13,000 | 1.13 |
| OpenAI, Q10 | $10,000 | $10,500 | 1.05 |
After endpoints were rounded to the nearest $10 below $1,000 and the nearest $100 at or above $1,000, Google’s ten closed Q08 ranges had no single most common range.
What Google’s AI Overviews showed
AI Overviews appeared in 7 of the 9 pulls for the three fractional COO questions. The first range and unit were recorded from each, and no AI Overview text is reproduced.
AI-generated statements collected through an API on Oct 8, 2026; not market prices.
| ID | Unit | AI Overview lead ranges (three pulls) |
|---|---|---|
| Q08 | Month | $5,000 to $15,000, $5,000 to $12,000, and $5,000 to $20,000 |
| Q10 | Month | $7,200 to $11,000 and $5,000 to $18,000, plus one pull with no AI Overview |
| Q11 | Month | One pull with no AI Overview, then $5,000 to $15,000 twice |
| Q09 (fractional not stated) | Year | $175,000 to $400,000 in the first pull, an open-ended range in the second |
These AI Overview ranges are descriptive and are not compared statistically with the API results. The third Q09 pull is not shown, because the extraction audit disagreed on its unit and range. That disagreement is listed in the full study’s Method.
References presented
Perplexity and AI Overviews list reference domains. The study counted which domains were listed and did not read or grade the pages.
On Q08, Q10, and Q11, Perplexity listed fractionus.com in every run, and gofractional.com in every run of Q08 and Q11. It also listed, in every run of all three, linkedin.com, mentorcruise.com, kore1.com, hirechore.com, and fractionalpulse.com. On Q09, it also listed crv.com and founderpath.com in every run.
The author’s domain. The domain kamyarshah.com was listed in all 10 Perplexity runs of each of Q08, Q09, Q10, and Q11, which is 40 runs. It was also listed in AI Overview pulls 1 to 3 for Q08 and pulls 2 and 3 for Q11. This is the author’s own site, as stated in the disclosure at the top. A reference count shows what was listed, not what the page said or whether the answer relied on it.
What the numbers mean (operating judgment)
An AI answer to a fractional COO cost question is a starting point for further research, not a market price or a provider quote. In this data, the unit alone varied by assistant, and the hourly answers were often open-ended.
As operating judgment, buyers should compare scope, days per month, and decision rights rather than a single figure. For example, a hypothetical $25M distributor might compare one proposal at two days a month with another at two days a week. Those are different purchases, and a single monthly number hides the difference.
What this data does not show
- These are not market prices, and they are not what any provider charges.
- The study does not test accuracy.
- The calls went to API configurations, not consumer chat apps.
- The 440 API answers in the full study came from one window, about 17 minutes on October 8, 2026. The AI Overview pulls were made the same day.
- Only four configurations were tested, all at default settings.
Questions about this analysis can be sent through the contact page.
Method
The answers come from the full study, 4 AI Assistants, 11 Executive and Consulting Cost Questions, where the complete method, audit, and exclusion tables appear.
- Collection. From 11:49 to 12:06 UTC on October 8, 2026, each of 11 People Also Ask cost questions went to four API configurations ten times, producing 440 API answers, with provider-default settings and no researcher-added system message. There were also 33 Google AI Overview pulls, three per question, made the same day.
- Extraction. A rule-based parser took the first price range, its unit, and an open-ended flag from each answer. The parser matched the AI-arbitrated coding on all fields in 100 of 100 randomly sampled answers (95% lower bound 0.963). Two auditor models from families not under test did the coding and a third model arbitrated. This was not an independent human audit.
Descriptive counts. Counts labeled as added after the main results are computed from the public normalized-records CSV. A closed median in a non-eligible cell is the median midpoint of that configuration’s closed first ranges in the stated unit for that question. The registered results in this article were first reported in the full study.
Five post-collection changes, each described in full in the study:
- Calibration coder. The 30-answer calibration was coded by the study’s AI producer (Claude, made by Anthropic, whose model is one of the four tested), not a person.
- Parser fix. A parser fix for escaped dollar signs affected 5 of 440 answers and changed no headline figure.
- Kill rule. One preregistered kill rule required auditor agreement (κ) of at least 0.60 on whether an answer contained a price range. The κ statistic could not be computed because both auditors marked every audited answer as containing a range, with raw agreement of 115 of 115. The kill rule therefore was not met as written. After seeing the data, the producer decided that the study would proceed and recorded that decision as a protocol deviation.
- Rounding. A rounding implementation difference changed no figure.
- Title. The study title was shortened to fit the site’s limit.
Data.
Related analyses:
- Business Consultant Fees: How 4 AI Assistants Answered
- Which Sites AI Tools List for Executive and Consulting Cost Questions
- The Same AI Price Question, Asked 10 Times
Google did not review or endorse this analysis. OpenAI, Google, Anthropic, and Perplexity did not review or endorse it. Model names are used only to identify the configurations tested.
The author sells fractional COO, fractional CMO, post-merger advisory, and strategy services. This analysis does not test what those services cost or are worth.
