The honest answer is: it depends — but not on the things people expect. The model is rarely the cost. Scope, integrations, and how ready your data is decide the number. Here is how we think about it, and how we price it.
The shape of a build
Most projects fall into one of three shapes. These are indicative shapes, not a price list — every engagement is scoped and quoted at a fixed price before any build begins.
| Shape | What it is | Timeline |
|---|---|---|
| Single agent | One well-scoped agent that runs a single workflow end-to-end, with human escalation on edge cases. | Weeks |
| MVP / product | The smallest build that produces real market signal — a learning instrument, not the final product. | 30–60 days to first working version |
| Production platform | Multi-agent orchestration running at scale, wired into your systems with full observability. | Scoped per engagement |
Four things drive the number
Scope. How many workflows and how much surface area. Narrow scope ships fast and cheap; sprawling scope is where budgets go to die.
Integrations. Every external system the build touches — CRMs, ERPs, payment rails, internal APIs — adds cost. Clean, well-documented systems cost less to wire in.
Data readiness. An agent is only as good as the data it sits on. Clean, accessible data lowers cost; messy or siloed data means fixing the data before deploying the agent.
Production grade. Evals, security, accessibility, and observability on every output. Multi-agent orchestration adds cost mainly in evaluation and failure-handling, not raw model calls.
Why we price fixed, not by day rate
Day rates reward slowness. We agree the scope and the price before anything is built — no retainers, no hourly billing, no open-ended estimates that quietly double. You know the number before you commit.
That only works because the architecture comes first. A clear spec handed to an AI-native pipeline compounds quickly; a vague intent multiplies in the wrong direction just as fast. We plan, scope, and quote — then build to it.
Not sure where your project lands? The fastest way to find out is to see where your organisation actually stands today.