Pricing
Most software firms hide pricing behind a discovery call. We publish starting bands so you can budget before the first conversation. Final price is locked after a paid discovery sprint — never on a meter.
6 engagement models · Fixed-price + T&M + retainer · 5–10 days to staff
1–2 weeks. Scope, architecture, throwaway prototype, and a fixed-price build proposal.
FROM
$8,000
typical: 1–2 weeks
Best for
Buyers evaluating whether to invest in AI, validating a build before committing budget, or scoping a complex agent workflow.
Idea → production in 4–8 weeks. Fixed scope, fixed price, real software hand-off.
FROM
$45,000
typical: 4–8 weeks
Best for
Founders and product teams shipping their first AI feature or full AI-native product.
Production AI agent in 6–10 weeks: prompt + tools + eval + guardrails + runbook.
FROM
$40,000
typical: 6–10 weeks
Best for
Teams replacing manual workflows (support triage, document processing, sales outreach) with autonomous agents.
Senior AI engineers embedded into your team. Ship code from day 1.
FROM
$95/hr
typical: 3–9 months
Best for
Teams accelerating an existing roadmap, filling a senior gap, or scaling AI engineering capacity without hiring.
Monoliths to modern stacks, AI-accelerated refactors, compliance-ready.
FROM
$80,000
typical: 12–36 weeks
Best for
Mid-market and enterprise teams replatforming legacy systems with AI-paired engineers.
We operate the eval harness, observability, and model upgrades after launch.
FROM
$5,000/mo
typical: Monthly retainer
Best for
Customers who launched an AI agent or product and want a senior team running production while their internal team ramps.
How we price
01
Every engagement model has a starting price on this page. After the discovery sprint, we lock a fixed price. No 'contact us for a custom quote' theater.
02
We don't write speculative SOWs. Most engagements start with a 1–2 week paid discovery that produces a real architecture and a fixed-price build quote.
03
Every engineer on every engagement is senior. No bench warmers, no juniors learning on your account.
04
Scope drift is expected. Small changes fold into the next sprint; medium changes get a written change order; pivots trigger a re-scope. We don't silently absorb undefined work.
Frequently asked
AISD AI MVPs typically range $45,000–$120,000 depending on scope. Drivers: number of model integrations, complexity of retrieval/data layer, custom UI surface area, and compliance requirements. We publish indicative bands on the pricing page so buyers can budget before the first call.
A production AI agent at AISD typically costs $40,000–$150,000 depending on complexity. Drivers: number of integrated systems, evaluation rigor required, compliance overhead, and ongoing operational scope. Prototypes alone are cheaper ($10k–$25k) but rarely worth it without a path to production.
Two formats. Discovery sprint: $8,000–$18,000 for 1–2 weeks, produces a written architecture, throwaway prototype, and fixed-price build quote. Strategic engagement: $25,000–$75,000 for 4–8 weeks, produces a 12-month AI roadmap, prioritized initiative list, and architecture for the top three. Both are paid up front, fixed-scope. We do not run open-ended advisory retainers with no deliverables.
Three pricing paths. AISD staff augmentation (senior, AI-native): $95–175/hour depending on seniority and engagement length. Marketplace contract (Toptal, Turing, Upwork): wide range — $40–200/hour with high variance in quality. Full-time hire (US): total comp typically $200k–$450k for a senior AI engineer. The hidden cost in hires is recruiting (3–6 months) and ramp (2–3 months). Staff augmentation pays off when you need impact in <90 days.
A paid 1–2 week engagement to scope a project with rigor before committing to a full build. Outputs: a written scope doc with success metrics, a technical architecture, a 1-week throwaway prototype that proves the riskiest assumption, and a fixed-price quote for the build. Typical price: $8,000–$18,000. Customers who run a discovery sprint with us are 3× more likely to ship on time and budget than customers who skip it.
All three. Fixed-price for AI MVPs and agent builds where scope is well-defined after a discovery sprint. Time-and-materials for staff augmentation, billed monthly with a not-to-exceed ceiling. Retainer for ongoing optimization, eval-harness operations, and managed AI services — flat monthly fee for a defined scope of capacity.
Every engagement ends with a handoff package: production deployment, architecture documentation, eval harness with golden test sets, observability dashboards with documented thresholds, on-call runbook, model upgrade procedure, and a recorded walkthrough. Plus a 30-day post-handoff window for questions and clarifications at no cost.
Success metrics are defined in writing during scoping and reviewed monthly. Project engagements measure: feature shipped on date, eval-harness pass rate, target business metric (e.g. 'auto-resolve rate ≥35% on customer-support tickets'). Staff augmentation engagements measure: PR throughput, code-review acceptance, and customer-side satisfaction. We do not measure success in hours billed, lines of code, or generic velocity points.