Two providers can quote a similar monthly number and still hand you very different amounts of work. Before you sign, ask what the provider is responsible for running, what else you will be billed for, and what work stays with your team.
This page gives you a worksheet for answering that about any provider, including us.
What the agreement should explain
Ask which work the provider takes responsibility for: building the worker against your process, running it after launch, fixing it when something it depends on changes, and extending it when the agreed work changes.
Responsibility for running a role is not the same thing as owning your data, your accounts or your intellectual property, and it is not an open promise to build anything you ask for later. What counts as part of the role, and what counts as new work, belongs in the written scope. Ask where that line sits before you compare prices.
Three kinds of cost, and who carries each
A monthly quote can be built in very different ways, so sort the total into three buckets rather than assuming the fee is the whole picture.
The quoted service fee is the number on the proposal. A provider can put model usage, hosting and human operation inside it, or quote the service and bill some of those items separately. Both arrangements exist, and you cannot tell which one you are reading from the headline number alone. Ask.
Separately billed costs are anything charged to accounts you own. Model usage moves with how much context each step carries, how many steps a run takes, and which model handles each step. Hosting, storage, logging and the APIs the worker touches can sit here too, as can software seats the worker needs to log into. We wrote the detail in what drives the running cost of an AI agent.
Someone on your team reviews approvals, handles exceptions the worker hands back, and answers the provider's questions. Count those hours when you compare the cost.
When a provider absorbs usage and infrastructure into the fee, you have one number to plan against. When they do not, find out which meters are now yours to read.
Seven questions that decide what a fee covers
Ask these of any provider, including us. Write the answer in their words.
| Area | Ask this |
|---|---|
| Build | Who writes the scope, connects the systems and tests the first real cases, and is that work inside the monthly fee or a separate stage? |
| Operation | After launch, who watches errors, renews credentials and handles a connected tool changing its API? |
| Changes | When the process changes, is that covered by the agreement or quoted as new work? |
| Tool access | Which software seats and API plans does the worker need, and whose account pays for them? |
| Usage | Is model usage inside the fee, or billed to accounts you own? |
| Support | How do you report a problem, who looks at it, and how is urgency decided? |
| Exit | If you cancel, what do you keep: the rules, the prompts, the logs, the connected accounts? |
A blank worksheet for two proposals
Fill this in from the two proposals in front of you. Every cell comes from their written answer or your own records. Leave an unanswered row marked unknown until it is resolved.
| Line | Provider A | Provider B |
|---|---|---|
| Quoted monthly service fee | ||
| What that fee explicitly includes | ||
| Model usage: included, or billed to you | ||
| Hosting and monitoring: included, or billed to you | ||
| Software seats or API plans you pay for | ||
| One-time build or scoping stage, if any | ||
| How changes to the agreed work are handled | ||
| Your team's hours per month, reviewing and handling exceptions | ||
| Hours multiplied by your fully loaded hourly cost | ||
| Total committed monthly cost, in your currency | ||
| What you keep if you cancel |
Two rows need your numbers rather than theirs. For hours, count the time your team will spend on approvals, exceptions and chasing, then multiply by a fully loaded hourly cost, which is salary plus employer costs divided by working hours.
Then set the total against what the manual version of the work costs you today. Our manual work cost tool calculates that baseline from five inputs. It measures your current manual workflow only. It does not estimate a build cost, a running cost or a saving, and no provider's quote comes out of it.
Where an assessment or scoping stage fits
Some providers run a scoping stage before they build: they trace the real process, find the exceptions, and write down what working means.
At Outproduce, that step is optional and depends on the engagement. If an assessment is proposed, ask what it would cover and on what terms.
If any provider proposes a scoping stage, two things are worth asking. What exactly is in the output, and what are the terms if you decide not to continue afterwards. The answers tell you what you are buying, which is more useful than a rule about which stages are worth paying for.
What you supply, whichever route you take
No provider can take all of this on, so plan for your side of it.
Access. Someone has to grant the worker accounts and permissions in your systems, and decide how wide those permissions go.
Decisions. Which actions need a person's approval before they happen, and which the worker can complete on its own. That line is yours to draw.
Knowledge. The rules, examples of good output, the terminology, and the exceptions everyone in your team knows and nobody has written down. If it only lives in someone's head, it has to come out before a worker can follow it.
A named owner. One person who answers questions during the build and reviews the output after launch.
The work itself. A process that repeats often enough, at enough volume, to be worth running continuously.
What the Outproduce fee covers
One monthly fee. As many workers and roles as the work needs, with no per-seat count. Model usage is on us, so there is no meter to watch and no surprise bill. Hosting, runtime, updates and monitoring are ours to run. Build, run, fix and extend sit under one agreement, and you can cancel any month.
The role itself, the systems the worker touches and the actions that need your approval are agreed in writing with you rather than assumed here. You can read the full role description on the managed AI employee page.
We do not publish a price.
Next step
Bring the role you want handled and the seven questions above. If you have a competing proposal, bring it, because the comparison is easier with both scopes on the table.
This article describes operating principles and public sources. It is not a client result. Build Records carry the basis for every Outproduce system claim.