An agent install costs a fixed setup fee plus a monthly fee. Most of ours cost $1,500 to $5,000 to set up and $1,500 to $3,000 a month (October 2026). A custom AI build is priced on engineering time: the average AI project on Clutch costs $120,595 over 10 months. Choose a custom build when your data must stay in-house.
What does a custom AI build cost in 2026?
Most custom builds land between the low five figures and the low seven figures, and the spread depends on scope and regulation.
Clutch's AI pricing page, updated 21 September 2026 from verified client reviews, puts the average AI project at $120,595 over a typical 10 months. The most common project size on the same page is $10,000 to $49,999.
A buyer guide from Winder.ai, published 24 June 2026, gives stage prices. These figures are one firm's estimate:
- Proof of concept: £15,000 to £40,000, 2 to 4 weeks.
- Pilot or MVP: £40,000 to £120,000, 6 to 10 weeks.
- Mid-market production build: £120,000 to £400,000, 4 to 6 months.
- Enterprise or regulated production build: £400,000 to £1.5M or more, 6 to 12 months.
- Running costs after launch: 15% to 25% of the build cost each year.
UK public-sector rate cards show the day rates behind those totals. On G-Cloud 15, one MLOps supplier charges £950 a day for an engineer and £1,750 for a strategic lead (January 2026). Its worked example, an 8-week engagement of 136 days, costs £154,000. A large consultancy's card lists a senior machine learning engineer at £1,530 a day onshore and £700 offshore (January 2026).
What does an agent install cost?
A fixed price per agent team, set before you start. Our prices, confirmed 16 October 2026:
- Sales Intelligence Team: $1,500 setup, $1,500 a month.
- Content Team: $1,500 setup, $2,000 a month.
- Community Team: $2,500 setup, $1,500 a month.
- Institutional BD Team: $5,000 setup, $3,000 a month.
- SDR Team: runs as Outbound at $5,000 a month plus a fee per meeting held, with no setup fee.
The first year of a Sales Intelligence Team costs $19,500: $1,500 setup plus 12 months at $1,500. An Institutional BD Team costs $41,000 over the same year. The first figure is about a sixth of the Clutch average project, and the second about a third.
The price is lower because the engineering already exists. An install configures a built system with your inputs: your ideal customer profile, your documents, your voice samples, your Telegram group. A custom build pays engineers to scope, build, test and govern a system that did not exist before.
How do the two compare side by side?
| Agent install | Custom AI build | |
|---|---|---|
| Price to start | $1,500 to $5,000 setup (ours, October 2026) | £15,000 to £40,000 for a proof of concept (Winder.ai estimate, June 2026) |
| Typical total | $19,500 to $41,000 in year one for one agent team, SDR Team aside (ours) | $120,595 average (Clutch, September 2026); £400,000 to £1.5M+ when regulated (Winder.ai estimate) |
| Ongoing cost | Fixed monthly fee | 15% to 25% of build cost a year (Winder.ai estimate) |
| Time to first output | Sales Intelligence sends a weekly digest; outbound sends after a 14-day mailbox warmup | 2 to 4 weeks for a proof of concept; 4 to 12 months for production (Winder.ai estimate) |
| Scope | Fixed sales, marketing, community and BD jobs | Anything you can specify and fund |
| Where it runs | Hosted model APIs | Your cloud tenancy or data centre, if you require it |
| Usual buyer | Founder, CEO or sales leader at a company of 8 to 500 staff | CIO, Head of Data or Chief AI Officer, often with procurement |
When is a custom build the right choice?
When the job sits outside sales and marketing, or the data cannot leave your control. Three cases point to a custom build:
- Regulated data that must stay in-house. Patient records, card data, or bank customer data under a policy that forbids third-party model APIs. Our agents run on hosted model APIs, so they do not fit this case. A build team can deploy inside your own tenancy or data centre.
- Deep custom machine learning. Fine-tuned models, your own evaluation sets, models trained on proprietary data. This work needs ML engineers for months, and the rate cards above show what that time costs.
- Internal operations. Claims handling, document review, internal search across private systems, finance workflows. A fixed agent team built for pipeline has no version of these jobs.
If your need matches one of these, budget for the proof of concept first and ask for the running cost in writing before the build starts.
Why does the market split this way?
Services still take a large share of AI budgets, while spending on agents grows quickly. Gartner forecasts $576.5 billion of AI services spending in 2026 and $29.2 billion on AI agents and assistants (techstrong.ai, 21 September 2026). Spending on agents and assistants is forecast to grow 77.3% this year (CIO.com, 23 September 2026).
A company of 50 staff that wants more qualified meetings rarely needs a 10-month project. It needs a working agent on a known job, with a price it can approve without procurement. Larger firms with regulated data and internal processes need the custom build, and the custom build market prices for them.
For the cost lines behind a sales agent in particular, including data, sending and the hours your team still spends, see what a sales AI agent costs in 2026. To judge whether an agent can take over SDR work, read can AI agents replace SDRs.
Which one should you buy?
Answer these five questions before you ask anyone for a quote:
- Does the job sit in sales, marketing, community or BD, with a fixed output you can describe?
- Can the data pass through a hosted model API under your policies?
- Do you need results this quarter, before a 4 to 12 month build could finish?
- Is your first-year budget for this job under $50,000?
- Will someone on your team own the inputs: the ideal customer profile, the documents, the replies?
Four or five ticks point to an agent install. Two or fewer, with regulated data or an internal operations job, point to a custom build.
To find which agent fits your pipeline, with the fee credited in full toward your first month, start with The Diagnostic at $2,500.