Transparent pricing.
Three engagement models. Pilots start at $5,000; ongoing retainers start at $1,500 a month and are sized to your company. We do not sell paid audits or charge by the hour for delivery work: every engagement begins with a defined outcome, not a blank-cheque retainer.
One senior hire vs. the whole team.
A senior AI engineer's base salary alone runs about $15,800 a month for a single skillset. And salary is only the start: once you add payroll tax, benefits, recruiting, and tooling, the fully loaded cost climbs to roughly $24,300 a month. A ValueStreamAI retainer starts at $1,500 a month and covers AI, backend, ops, and infrastructure. That is the price of one employee, or a fraction of one, instead of standing up an entire technical department. No recruiting overhead. No equity. No notice period.
How the fully loaded cost reaches $24,300 a month
What it costs, by the size of your company.
Retainers are sized to the company, because a fifteen-person business and a hundred-person business need very different amounts of us. These are starting points. The exact figure comes out of scope, and we tell you the number before you commit to anything.
Your first automations running and maintained, with new work added every sprint.
Multiple departments automated in parallel, with the integrations between them owned by us.
A standing engineering capability across ops, sales, support, and finance workflows.
Multi-system transformation, embedded people, and on-prem or air-gapped deployment where required.
Every band above buys the same thing: a team that builds your systems, runs them, fixes them, and keeps them current. Not a seat. Not a support contract.
We do not charge you to be diagnosed.
Plenty of agencies sell a paid audit as the entry point: you pay a few thousand dollars, receive a report, and still have the original problem. We do not do that.
Discovery is part of the project, not a product
When you start a project with us, the first phase is the technical and business analysis: we map your workflows, find where the money is leaking, and scope what to build. That work is how the project begins, so it is inside the engagement. There is no separate invoice for looking at your business, and no charge for a report on its own.
Your first call with us is a normal 60-minute consultation, free. No fee, no deck, no obligation. If we are not the right fit, we will say so on that call.
Standalone paid advisory, where you want our time for something we are not building, starts at $150 per hour. That is a separate service from the work above: our builds, pilots, and retainers are priced as fixed scopes and monthly engagements, never billed hourly.
Choose your entry point.
Start with a fixed pilot. Verify the ROI. If the numbers justify it, and they usually do, we become your ongoing operations partner.
We identify your highest-ROI workflow, build the automation end-to-end, integrate it into your stack, and deliver a verified ROI report. Where a pilot lands in that range depends on the complexity of the workflow and how deep the integration goes. If the numbers don't clear the bar we define together on day one, you don't owe us the next phase.
- ✓ Single workflow automation
- ✓ Full integration into your stack
- ✓ Documentation & knowledge transfer
- ✓ 2–6 months of free post-launch support & maintenance
- ✓ ROI report with baseline vs. outcome metrics
Your ongoing AI operations partner. New automations each sprint, continuous improvement across your stack, and a team that treats your ops metrics as seriously as you do. Everything we have built for you stays maintained, updated, and current on the latest models at no extra charge.
- ✓ Everything in Pilot
- ✓ 2–3 new automations per month
- ✓ Maintenance, monitoring, and fixes on everything we built — included
- ✓ Model upgrades as newer AI models ship — no migration fee
- ✓ Small changes and tweaks at no development cost
- ✓ Direct line to the team, on whichever channel you use (Slack, Teams, WhatsApp, or your choice)
- ✓ Weekly progress calls
- ✓ Priority response < 4 hrs
ValueStreamAI people embedded full-time in your operation, whatever roles the outcome actually needs: a dedicated engineer, a fractional CTO, founder-level oversight, even a fractional CMO. For complex transformations and long-term infrastructure that requires sustained bandwidth beyond just engineering.
- ✓ Everything in Retainer
- ✓ Embedded team (40 hrs/wk), scoped to the roles you need
- ✓ Fractional CTO / founder-level oversight available
- ✓ Custom model training & MLOps
- ✓ On-prem / air-gap deployment
- ✓ Executive strategy sessions
- ✓ SLA with uptime guarantee
Build it once. We keep it running.
One monthly fee. No separate maintenance contract, no change-request pricing.
We run what we built
Monitoring, alerting, and fixing it when something upstream changes.
Updates are free
Small changes and tweaks carry no development fee. You ask, we do it.
Model upgrades included
We move you to newer models when they ship. No migration fee.
Fixes aren’t billable
If something we built breaks, repairing it is not a new invoice.
Support on your channel
Slack, Teams, WhatsApp, email. Priority response under four hours.
New automation every sprint
Each month adds working automation, so the return compounds.
If we built it, keeping it working and keeping it current is already paid for.
Common questions.
What is included in the Pilot engagement?
The Pilot is a fixed-scope, fixed-price engagement: we identify the highest-ROI workflow in your operation, build the automation end-to-end, integrate it into your existing stack, write the documentation, and back it with 2 to 6 months of free post-launch support and maintenance, scaled to the size of the engagement. We also deliver an ROI report that documents baseline metrics and post-implementation outcomes. You get a finished, production-grade system, not a prototype.
How much does a pilot cost?
Pilots run $5,000 to $15,000 as a fixed-scope, fixed-price engagement. Where yours lands in that range depends on how complex the workflow is and how deep the integration into your existing systems goes. We agree the exact figure and the success metric with you before any work begins.
What happens if the Pilot doesn't deliver the promised outcome?
We define success together before we start, in measurable terms: hours saved, error rate reduced, processing time cut. If the implementation doesn't clear that bar, we don't invoice for the next phase. We'd rather part ways honestly than lock you into a retainer for results that haven't materialized.
How much is the retainer, and what decides the number?
Retainers start at $1,500 a month for companies up to about fifteen people, $2,500 to $3,000 for fifteen to fifty, and from $7,000 for fifty to a hundred. Above that we scope it with you. The number is driven by company size because that is what actually determines how much of us you need. To put it in context: the smallest retainer costs less than a part-time administrator, and the largest is under half of one senior engineer, while covering AI, backend, ops, and infrastructure rather than one skillset.
What exactly does the monthly retainer cover?
Everything we have built for you, end to end. We run it, monitor it, and fix it when something breaks. Small changes and tweaks carry no development fee, so adjusting a workflow, rewording a sequence, or adding a field is simply something you ask for. When newer or cheaper AI models ship, we test them against your workflows and upgrade you across at no migration cost. Support runs on whichever channel your team already uses, with priority response under four hours. On top of all that, each month adds new automation rather than just keeping the lights on.
Do you charge for an audit or a readiness assessment?
No. We do not sell paid audits or standalone reports. When you start a project with us, the first phase is the technical and business analysis, mapping your workflows and scoping what to build, and that is part of the engagement rather than a separate line item. Your first consultation is a free 60-minute call. If you want standalone advisory time for something we are not building, that starts at $150 per hour, but that is a different service: our builds, pilots, and retainers are never billed hourly.
Will I get billed every time I need a change?
No. This is the part that surprises people, because most agencies quote every change request separately. Under our retainer, updates, tweaks, bug fixes, and model upgrades on anything we built are already paid for. We would rather you ask for the improvement than sit on it because you are worried about the invoice, since a system nobody dares to change stops earning its keep quickly.
Is there a minimum commitment on the Retainer?
No. Our retainer is month-to-month. We believe we should earn the next month every month. Most clients stay for 12–24 months because the ROI compounds as each new automation is layered onto the previous ones. But there is no penalty for stopping.
Do you work with large enterprises or only SMBs?
Both, but we work differently with each. SMBs typically start with a Pilot targeting a single high-cost workflow. Enterprises typically engage at the Retainer or Embed level, where we operate as an embedded partner across multiple departments, providing whichever roles the outcome needs, from engineering to a fractional CTO or founder-level oversight, not just one hire in one lane. The Embed model is designed specifically for large-scale, multi-system transformation.
What if the automation breaks after launch?
Every Pilot is backed by 2 to 6 months of free post-launch support and maintenance, the exact length scales with the size of the engagement, and every Retainer includes continuous monitoring with priority alerting across all live automations. Small bugs and fixes that come up after delivery are covered within that window at no additional cost. You always have full visibility into performance metrics.
Will I actually work with the founder, or get handed off to a project manager?
Our founder is on the discovery call, and stays involved through delivery, especially on the parts of a project that matter most to the outcome. We think the person who built this business is well placed to understand yours, so we don't see the value in stepping back once a contract is signed. You'll always know who you're talking to and why they're the right person for that conversation.
Thirty minutes.
We'll tell you exactly
where your ROI is.
No sales deck. No 50-page report you have to pay for before anything gets built. Just a direct conversation about which of your workflows are costing the most and whether AI can fix them. If there's no compelling answer, we'll say so. And it's a conversation with Kash, our founder, not a rep reading from a script, because the person who built this business is the one who should understand yours.