Honestly? It's a fair point. So we've changed how we quote. We no longer price development by the hour. We price it by the sprint.

Here's why, and what it means if you work with us.

Hourly billing and AI don't mix

For years, agencies (us included) quoted by the hour. You estimated how long something would take, multiplied it by a rate, and that was the price.

That worked when the hours were the work. They aren't any more.

We build using a spec-driven approach with AI doing a lot of the legwork. Requirements are captured properly up front, and the build moves much faster than it used to. Quite a bit faster, in fact.

So if we kept billing by the hour, one of two things would happen. Either we'd get faster and earn less for doing a better job, which makes no sense. Or we'd quietly keep charging for hours we didn't spend, which makes even less sense, and isn't how we want to do business.

A lot of the industry is still quoting as if nothing has changed. We didn't think that was fair on anyone.

Somewhere in the middle

Right now there are two ends of the market.

At one end, you've got the vibe coding tools: Lovable, Replit and the like. They're brilliant for getting an idea in front of people quickly, and cheap with it. The catch comes later. Who's securing it? Who's hosting it properly? Who fixes it when it breaks at 2am, or when you need it to do something the tool can't?

At the other end, you've got the traditional agency. Solid, experienced, and still quoting like it's 2015. Long timelines, big estimates, lots of hours.

We sit in the middle. You get the speed and cost benefits of AI, with the specs, code review, testing, hosting and support of a proper development team behind it. Fast enough to feel modern, grown-up enough to trust with your business.

How we price now

We already work in fortnightly sprints (time boxes, if you speak agile). So we now price each sprint as a fixed amount.

Before a sprint starts, we agree what's going into it, written up as feature specs. You know what you're paying and what you're getting for it. No timesheets to pick through, no surprise invoices.

If we get through it faster, you get more done in the sprint. If priorities change, we agree the next sprint's contents with you before it starts. Simple.

It's also very much in the spirit of the Agile Manifesto, which values customer collaboration over contract negotiation. Pricing per sprint means we spend our time with clients talking about what to build next, not haggling over hours. In fact, I'd argue AI has made agile work better than it ever did. More on that here: AI has made agile work better.

AI-assisted or manual: your choice

We offer two kinds of sprint.

AI-assisted is our standard. It's how we build most things now: proper specs, AI doing the heavy lifting, and our developers reviewing, testing and owning every line that goes live. Same quality checks as always, more done per sprint, lower cost.

Manual is there for clients who need it. Some contracts don't allow AI tools anywhere near the code. Some codebases are sensitive enough that a client would rather we didn't. That's completely fine. We'll build it the traditional way, and the price reflects the extra time.

One thing worth saying: AI-assisted doesn't mean vibe coding or a junior with a chatbot. Same team, same standards, just without the slow bits.

What's in it for you

  • A price you can budget for. Each sprint costs what we agreed. Finance teams like that.
  • More done each fortnight. The time we save goes into your project, not into padding a timesheet.
  • The same quality controls. Specs, code review, testing and a team that's still here next year to support it.
  • Honesty about where the savings come from. You can see exactly what you're paying for, and why.

Fancy a chat?

We're not the only agency using AI, and we wouldn't pretend to have it all figured out. But we'd rather be upfront about how it's changed our work than pretend nothing's different.

If you've got a project in mind, or you're wondering whether you're paying too much for development elsewhere, drop us a line. Happy to talk it through, no hard sell.

Cheers, Rob