Short answer
There are four routes: build it yourself, buy a platform, hire a generalist, or have a specialist build and install it. Our own published prices are $499 a month for the do-it-yourself path, $4,995 a month for the done-with-you mastermind, and custom work starting at $5,000. The larger cost is rarely the build. It is upkeep and oversight.
Key takeaways
- The build is a one-off. Model usage, tool subscriptions, oversight and rework are monthly, and they are what the budget usually misses.
- A cheap build on undocumented processes costs more than an expensive build on documented ones, because you pay twice.
- Ask any vendor what the number depends on. A firm that cannot answer that has not scoped your work.
- Agents do not remove headcount in the businesses we work with. They move people off repeatable work.
The question I get asked on nearly every first call is what this costs. The reason the answer is awkward is that two businesses of the same size can be a factor of ten apart, and the difference is almost never the technology. It is whether anybody has written down how the work is done today.
The four routes, and what separates them
You can build it yourself with published playbooks, subscribe to a platform and configure it, hire a generalist consultant, or have a specialist design and install the system inside your business. The differences that matter are who does the thinking, who carries the risk when an agent gets something wrong, and what happens in month four.
| Route | What you pay for | What you still do yourself | Best fit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Do it yourself | Templates, prompts and a playbook. Ours is $499 a month | All the design, building, testing and upkeep | Hands-on owners with time and a technical streak |
| Platform subscription | Seats and usage on somebody’s tool | Mapping your process onto their model, and living with the gaps | A single workflow that fits a standard shape |
| Generalist consultant | Hours, usually retained | Judging whether the advice fits a business like yours | One project with a clear edge around it |
| Specialist build and install | Design, build, training and handover. Ours starts at $5,000 | Approving the work and running the cadence after handover | Owners who want the whole system handled end to end |
Our middle path sits between the last two: a live group of founders installing one workflow a month across 24 sessions in a year, at $4,995 a month. All three of our prices are published on the home page rather than held back for a call, which is worth asking of anybody you talk to.
The costs that arrive after the build
Four of them, every time. Model usage, which scales with volume rather than headcount. Tool subscriptions, which multiply quietly. Oversight, meaning the human time spent approving what agents produce. And rework, when a process changes and the agent built on the old one keeps running. Budget these monthly from day one.
- Model usage: charged per unit of work, so it grows with volume. Small for drafting, real for anything that reads long documents at scale.
- Subscriptions: the agent platform, plus whatever it connects to. Audit them quarterly or they accumulate.
- Oversight: someone approves the output. This is a real seat cost and it is the price of keeping a human in the loop.
- Rework: processes change. An agent installed on an undocumented process will need rebuilding the first time the process moves.
Why the same build quotes at wildly different numbers
Scope is downstream of documentation. If your process lives in one person’s head, the first part of the work is extracting and simplifying it, and that is the expensive part. Businesses with written procedures buy a build. Businesses without them buy a discovery project and then a build.
This is why we simplify before we automate. Installing agents on top of a process nobody has questioned in six years multiplies the mess and hands you a faster version of the wrong thing.
What to ask before you sign anything
- What does the number depend on, and which part of my business changes it most?
- What is the monthly cost after handover, including model usage and subscriptions?
- Who approves agent output, and what happens when it is wrong?
- What do I own at the end: the prompts, the workflows, the data, the documentation?
- What is the smallest first piece that proves this works in my business?
Who should not buy this yet
If your revenue depends on one process that only you can do, and you have never written it down, spend the first month documenting rather than buying. If you are pre-revenue, tooling will not fix distribution. And if your team has not been told what this is for, start there: the projects that fail in our experience fail on adoption, not on technology.
Questions people ask
What does delegAIte charge?
$499 a month for the do-it-yourself path, which is templates, prompts and the playbook. $4,995 a month for the done-with-you mastermind, 24 sessions across a year with one workflow installed each month. Done-for-you work is custom and starts at $5,000. All three are published on the home page.
Is the cost one-off or ongoing?
Both. The build is one-off, and model usage, subscriptions, oversight and periodic rework are ongoing. Plan the monthly figure before the build figure, because that is the one that decides whether the system survives its first year.
Will agents let me reduce headcount?
That is not what happens in the businesses we work with. The repeatable work moves to agents and the people move up to directing them. If the plan is to cut a team, agents are a poor instrument for it and adoption usually fails.
How long until it pays for itself?
It depends on the hours the first workflow removes and what those hours are worth. Pick a first workflow you can measure in a month: hours saved, response times, or throughput. Anything you cannot measure by week four is the wrong place to start.
Can I start small and expand?
Yes, and it is what we recommend. One single-purpose agent in one division, live, with a human approving its output, teaches you more about your own processes than any planning document. Expand once that one is boring.
Sources
- delegAIte published pricing, Paths In section of delegaite.co (read 20 September 2026): The $499, $4,995 and from-$5,000 figures quoted on this page.
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