What $3,500 actually buys you in AI.

Most AI agencies will not tell you a price until they have your budget. We publish ours. This is the full account of what $3,500 includes, what it does not, and where the line sits — so you can decide in five minutes instead of five meetings.

What is included

• One working build — a web application, a mobile app shipped to the App Store, a voice assistant, or a chat assistant. One of those, built properly, rather than four of them half-built.
• An evaluation set from your real cases, agreed before we start, so "it works" is a number we both checked and not an opinion formed in a demo.
• Deployment in your own infrastructure — your cloud, your accounts, your App Store listing.
• The repository in your name from the first commit.
• A dated delivery: 2–3 weeks for chat, 3–4 for web and voice, 4–6 for mobile.
• A named human escalation path, written down, so it is clear who overrides the system and when.

What is deliberately excluded

Honesty here is worth more than a longer list. $3,500 does not include integration with a legacy system that has no API — that is real work and it gets scoped separately. It does not include ongoing operations; tuning and monitoring are optional and priced on their own. It does not include multi-workflow programmes, enterprise SSO rollouts, or compliance certification work for a regulated deployment at scale. Those are different engagements with different prices, all published.

If your need is genuinely in that second category, we will tell you on the first call rather than sell you a build that cannot carry it.

Why publish the price at all

Two reasons, both self-interested. First, it filters. People who need a $200,000 platform stop reading, and people who want a working AI product for a defined number get in touch — which means the calls we take are with people we can actually help. Second, a published price is a commitment. It is much harder to inflate a number that is already on a public page.

There is also the simple fact that most buyers now prefer to get most of the way to a decision without talking to anyone. Recent B2B research puts the share who prefer a rep-free buying experience at around 61%. Hiding the price does not create a conversation; it creates a bounce.

How to know if it is enough

Ask yourself one question: can the thing you want be described in a single sentence that names who uses it and what it does for them? If yes, $3,500 is very likely enough. If it takes a paragraph and three "and also"s, it is a bigger engagement and you should price it as one.