The four options side by side
| Freelancer | Agency | In-house hire | Kortex Labs | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| How you pay | Usually by the hour or by milestone | A project quote, often after a paid discovery phase | A salary plus benefits, every month, ongoing | One fixed price, agreed before work starts |
| Who writes the code | The person you hired | A team, not always the people you met on the sales call | Your employee | Saif, the founder, directly |
| Time before work starts | Finding and vetting someone | Sales calls, proposal and discovery | Recruiting, interviews and notice periods: usually the slowest | A free call, then a fixed quote within 24 hours |
| Who owns the code | Depends on the contract; check it | Depends on the contract; ask whether anything is licensed | You do | You do: 100% of code and IP, with docs and a runbook |
| If they leave | Knowledge leaves with them unless handover is written into the deal | The agency holds the context | You rehire and start over | A deployment runbook means another engineer can run it |
| Best when | Small, clear scope you can review yourself | You need several disciplines at once and can pay for coordination | AI is core to your product for years and the problem is defined | You can write down what working means and want it shipped |
We haven't put market rates for freelancers, agencies or salaries in the table, because they vary widely by country and seniority and we'd rather not quote a figure we can't source. Get two quotes for your own project and compare the structure, not just the number.
The question that decides it
Not budget. This one: can you write down what "working" means, specifically enough that someone could test it? If yes, a fixed-scope build is usually the cheapest way to get it, because you are paying for an outcome rather than hours. If no, don't hire anyone yet. Whatever you buy while the problem is fuzzy, you'll pay for twice. More in hire an AI developer or an agency and fixed price vs hourly AI development.
What the fixed price includes
- Architecture and a tight MVP scope agreed up front
- Backend, frontend and the AI integration
- Login, billing and the core workflows your users need
- Deployment, a runbook and a handover
What we have built
Saif has shipped 20+ products over 5+ years. One example is PulseOps, an event-driven platform we built on FastAPI and Kafka, streaming into PostgreSQL and OpenSearch: engineering teams see every push, deploy and incident on a live dashboard in under a second, the moment it happens rather than minutes later. That is the kind of system an MVP build covers end to end, from architecture to deployment.
Whichever option you pick, put the AI software handover checklist into the contract, and ask the questions to ask an AI development agency on the first call.
Frequently asked questions
How much does it cost to build an AI app?
At Kortex Labs a production AI assistant starts at $8,000 and takes about four weeks. A full AI product MVP starts at $12,000. An automated data pipeline starts at $6,000 over three to six weeks. The scope and the number are agreed before work starts, with no hourly billing.
Who owns the code?
You do. 100% of the source and IP transfers on delivery, with clean repositories, documentation and a deployment runbook. No license, no lock-in, and no dependency on us to keep it running.
Will I work with the person actually building it?
Yes. Kortex Labs is founder-led by Saif Ur Rehman, a senior Python engineer with 5+ years building AI products. There are no juniors learning on your budget and no account-manager layer between you and the engineering.
Why do most AI projects fail?
They fail in the gap between the demo data and the real data. A prototype tested on a handful of clean documents performs well, then meets scanned PDFs, contradictory versions and questions phrased the way people actually phrase them. The fix is evals built before the system: real questions with verified answers, run on every change, so quality is measured instead of assumed.
How quickly can I get a quote?
A free strategy call, then a fixed-scope quote within 24 hours. Build slots usually open within one to two weeks.