AI Agent Development Cost Estimator
Price your AI agent build from hours: in-house, contractor, or an embedded engineer
1. Your scope, in hours
The hours below are placeholders, not benchmarks. Replace each one with your own team's estimate.
2. Contractor rate
Result
About 5.2 weeks for one engineer working 40 hours a week. In-house uses $71 an hour (BLS mean for software developers) plus 42.9% benefits, so $101.74 per hour worked. The AY figure counts whole months of one embedded engineer at the published "from $3K a month".
AY's price shown is the published starting price; your quote may be higher depending on scope.
The formulas
Hours = discovery + integrations x hours each + prompts and tools + evals + guardrails + deployment In-house = hours x $71.2 x (1 + 42.9%) Contractor = hours x your contractor rate AY months = round up(hours / 173.3 hours per month) AY (from) = AY months x $3,000 Weeks = hours / 40
How this works
We could not find a primary source that publishes what an AI agent costs to build, so this tool does not invent a range. It takes your estimate of the hours each part of the build needs and multiplies it by published rates.
In-house uses the US Bureau of Labor Statistics mean wage for software developers, $71.20 an hour (OEWS, May 2025), plus benefits. In the BLS Employer Costs for Employee Compensation for June 2026, private employers paid $14.07 in benefits for every $32.82 in wages, which is 42.9%. That makes $101.74 per hour worked. The contractor line uses whatever rate you enter. The AY line counts whole months of one embedded engineer, using 2,080 hours a year (the BLS full-time year) or 173.3 hours a month, at our published price of from $3K a month.
Worked example with the defaults: 16 + 3 x 24 + 40 + 32 + 24 + 24 = 208 hours. In-house is 208 x $101.74 = $21,163. A contractor at $231 is 208 x $231 = $48,048. 208 / 173.3 = 1.2, which rounds up to 2 months of an embedded engineer, from $6,000. One engineer at 40 hours a week needs about 5.2 weeks.
Sources (read November 11, 2026)
Want the hours scoped for your workflow? See AI agent development or AI engineer placement.
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