What Does AR Really Cost a Small Furniture Store? An Honest Pricing Breakdown

Picture a furniture store owner in Leeds. Two showrooms, a website, and about two hundred SKUs that change every season. A customer asks if they can see a sofa in their own living room before buying, and the owner thinks: how much would that even cost? The answers online are vague. "Custom quote." "Contact sales." Here is the honest version.

AR for a furniture store is not one bill. It is four. When you see them listed, the pricing pages start making sense, and you can compare routes fairly. Try our live furniture catalogue demo on your phone first if you want to see what the end result feels like.

Bill 1: the 3D models

This is the big one. Every chair, sofa, and table you want in AR needs a true-to-size 3D model. A store with two hundred SKUs needs two hundred models, and they go out of date every time the range changes.

If you commission models from 3D artists, third-party roundups put the going rate at roughly $100 to $500 per product. Even at the low end, two hundred pieces means tens of thousands of dollars before a single customer ever opens the AR (Augmented Reality) view. We ran the same maths for a smaller rug catalogue in our pricing breakdown for a small rug store, and the models were the biggest number on the page. For furniture, with bigger and more detailed pieces, the number only grows.

Bill 2: the platform fee

This is the monthly subscription for the AR service itself. Viewer apps and plugins are often cheap, sometimes under fifty dollars a month. Enterprise platforms sit at the other end, with annual contracts and custom quotes. The fee itself is rarely the problem. The problem is that most platforms are viewers only. You bring your own 3D models, which sends you straight back to bill 1.

Bill 3: setup and integration

Someone has to connect the AR (Augmented Reality) views to your product pages, add the buttons, and make the mobile experience work. On platforms you run yourself, that is either your developer's time or an agency quote. On managed services, setup is part of the package. Ask every provider what day-one looks like: who uploads what, who tests it on real phones, and what happens when a product page changes.

Bill 4: the running costs

New stock arrives every season. Each new SKU needs a model, a link, and a check that it opens correctly on current phones. Ask how new models are made and what they cost, because this is where a cheap platform fee can quietly turn expensive. A per-model fee that looked small at launch becomes a standing tax on every season's new range.

What ARQR360 actually costs

Our pricing is one flat number because the model question is answered up front. Stores pay $249 one-time setup and $29 a month. Model building is included: we build the true-to-size models from your photos and real dimensions, bestsellers first, and new stock gets modelled the same way when your range changes. No per-model fees, no per-view fees. And the first test model is free, so you see your own sofa in AR on your own phone before you spend anything.

How to compare any quote

Add the four bills together for your SKU count, not just the monthly fee. Ask who makes the models, what new-season stock costs, and whether the AR (Augmented Reality) view needs an app install. The cheapest headline price usually loses this comparison, because it hides bill 1.

FAQ

Price is only half the maths. The other half is what the views do to the returns bill, which is where the money comes back. That side is covered in how furniture stores cut expensive returns with AR.