The Honest Answer
AI isn't free. It's also not as expensive as most people think.
But "How much does it cost?" is like asking "How much does a house cost?" There's a million-dollar house and there's a five-million-dollar house. The answer depends on what you're building.
Our Model
We charge by project, not by year. That's intentional. You should know exactly what you're paying and what you're getting.
An agent that automates a single workflow — email triage, report generation, data entry — typically costs $8,000 to $15,000 to build and deploy. That includes everything: design, development, testing, training your team on how to use it.
If you want something more complex — an agent that integrates with three of your systems, handles multiple decision trees, requires ongoing optimization — that's $20,000 to $40,000.
Ongoing maintenance and updates run 10-15% of the implementation cost per year. That's not a subscription to a vendor. That's the cost of keeping the agent working as your business changes.
The Math That Matters
Here's why we build from the "What hours do you want to replace?" question. Because now you can do math.
If your team spends 30 hours a month on something, and your fully-loaded labor cost is $50 per hour, that's $18,000 per year. If an agent costs $12,000 to build and saves you that 30 hours, you've paid for it in the first 8 months. Year two is pure savings.
That's a business conversation, not a tech conversation.
The companies I've worked with see payback in 6-18 months on first agents. By the third or fourth agent, the calculus is different — the builds are faster because we've built your infrastructure already, so the cost drops and the ROI gets better.
What You're Actually Paying For
You're not paying for AI magic. You're paying for:
- Someone who knows what's actually automatable and what isn't
- Design work to make sure the agent does what you need
- Development time to build it and test it
- Your time to clarify requirements and validate it works
- Ongoing support to keep it running
The AI itself is relatively cheap. The expensive part is the thinking and the implementation.
Red Flags
If someone is quoting you $500 a month for an AI agent that solves your core problem, that's too cheap. They're either selling you a template that won't work or they're planning to make money on ongoing customization and updates.
If someone is quoting you $100,000+, they're either solving a genuinely complex problem or they're selling you complexity you don't need.
The sweet spot for most mid-market businesses is clear projects with clear scope and clear outcomes. Not subscriptions to vague AI services. Not six-month engagements where the bill keeps growing.