Government fees are set by the USCIS fee schedule, Form G-1055, and depend on the forms filed and the employer's size, with optional faster processing at extra cost. The larger costs are usually the preparation of specialized-knowledge evidence and, where a client site is involved, the contractual documentation showing the petitioner controls the work.
Cost the evidence, then the classification
Two expenses are easy to underestimate. The first is the internal effort required to document knowledge that has never been written down: development histories, design decisions, internal training materials and an honest assessment of how long a replacement would need. The second is legal review of the client contract, because a statement of work written for commercial purposes often reads, to an immigration reader, like a staffing arrangement, and amending it before filing is far cheaper than answering a request for evidence about it later.
Consult the current fee schedule for the government amounts. Also cost the alternative: if the placement's real purpose is to serve one client, a different commercial structure, or hiring locally and training that person in Canada, may be cheaper than the petition and its five-year clock. Hypothetical example: a microbrewery software vendor needs to demonstrate that its fermentation-control workflow is company-specific, but the manuals are scattered across old project folders.
Budget time to organise training records, version histories, customer contracts, payroll, and ownership evidence before spending on fast processing. A first review should identify the proof that carries the specialised-knowledge argument. The usual waste is commissioning polished summaries while the underlying records do not identify what the employee knows, how it was acquired, or why the US role needs it.