The question buyers ask first is the one most sites answer last: what does it cost? We are not going to publish a rate card either — but we will tell you why, and what you get instead.
The shape, not the sticker
Every engagement here starts the same way, deliberately: one week of discovery. We map the process, the data and the risk. The week ends with a written brief, a capability map, and a pilot scope with a price — in writing.
That is the honest alternative to a rate card. A published day-rate tells you what our time costs; it tells you nothing about what your problem costs. Scope does. So the first thing you commit to is small and fixed, and its output is the number. The conversation before it costs nothing.
What actually drives the number
Four things the discovery week examines, because they are what move the price:
- Process complexity — how many judgement points the work has, because each one becomes a designed gate, and gates are engineering.
- Data readiness — clean, findable data shortens everything; scattered data means the audit-and-connect work comes first.
- Integration surface — agents act through the systems you already run, and each system is a doorway to build.
- The measurement itself — a pilot that can’t prove its own numbers is theatre, so instrumentation is scoped in, never bolted on.
Notice what is not on the list: model API costs. They are real — but across our own five products, they were never the line that decided a budget. Engineering time was.
The timeline, honestly
Our method page publishes the phase table, and it applies to money as much as to time: Brief is week one. Build runs weeks two to five, typical — with working software every week, not a reveal at the end. The human gate sits at every phase boundary. Ship starts week six onward, typical: deploy, measure, hand over — or we keep operating it with you.
“Typical” is doing honest work in those sentences. A pilot with one system and clean data lands early; a legacy estate with scattered data does not. That is precisely what discovery week is for — so the timeline you get is yours, not an average.
The only record we can show you
We won’t publish invented client numbers — our portfolio has no logos on it, and we intend to keep it that way until the logos are real. What we will publish is our own record: five products in twelve months — four live, one in pre-launch — self-funded; the same team, the same method, our own money. That is ours, not a promise about yours: your timeline depends on your scope, which is exactly what the discovery week settles.
What we will commit to
Fixed scope, fixed cost, agreed before work begins. A named person on every gate. We scale only the parts that measured well. And if a week of discovery ends with the honest plan “don’t build this” — the plan says so, and it is still the most useful document you got that year.
The number comes out of the week, not out of a rate card. Write when you want yours — info@adhuniklabs.com.