AI Agency FAQ

An AI agency is a company that builds and runs artificial intelligence systems for other businesses. Where a traditional agency works on marketing or design, an AI agency works on machine learning models, chatbots, workflow automation, predictive analytics and generative AI applications. The clients are usually businesses that want to automate repetitive work, make decisions from data they already hold, or put an AI feature into a product they already sell.

The difference from a software vendor is the engagement rather than the technology. A vendor sells you a licence. An agency scopes the problem, integrates the result into systems you already run, and keeps tuning it after launch, which is where most of the cost of an AI project turns out to live.

A traditional agency in marketing, design or development is paid for a deliverable: a website, a campaign, an application. An AI agency is paid for a system that keeps working after it is handed over, one that reads new data, produces an output and changes its behaviour as the inputs change.

That difference shows up in the staff before it shows up in the invoice. AI agencies employ data scientists, machine learning engineers and data engineers, and a large part of what they sell is the judgement of those people about whether your data can support the thing you asked for. Traditional agencies rarely carry those roles.

Many do. Plenty of agencies serve enterprise clients only, but a large number work with small and medium businesses, usually by configuring something that already exists rather than building from nothing. A support chatbot on an existing platform, an automation between two systems you already pay for, or a document pipeline are all within reach of a small budget.

Project sizes in this market run from a few thousand dollars for a chatbot to several hundred thousand for an enterprise machine learning platform. If your budget is limited, look for firms offering modular or subscription pricing, and browse the service categories to find the ones whose work matches the size of your problem.

Pricing varies with the complexity of the work, the size of the team and what you are left owning at the end. Broadly, across this market:

Small projects such as a chatbot, a simple automation or an AI writing tool: $3,000 to $15,000.
Medium projects such as a custom machine learning model, a multi-step automation or an AI integration: $15,000 to $75,000.
Large projects such as an enterprise AI platform, a fine-tuned model or full data infrastructure: $75,000 to $500,000 and above.

Many firms also quote hourly, commonly between $100 and $400 an hour, for consulting or maintenance, and some work on a monthly retainer. Most listings here do not publish an hourly rate at all. That holds for the directory as a whole and for the subset that are not seeded placeholder entries, where fewer than one in five publishes one. Where a range does appear it is the firm's own figure and a starting point rather than a quote. Price nothing from it. Ask for a number against a written scope, and compare two proposals only once you are sure they describe the same work. The agency directory shows a range wherever a firm has given one.

Timelines group by what is being built:

Chatbots and automation flows: 2 to 8 weeks. Configuring an existing platform can take days; a custom build takes longer.
AI integrations, meaning putting AI into software you already run: 1 to 3 months.
Custom machine learning models: 3 to 6 months from kickoff to production.
Generative AI products such as custom language model applications and content pipelines: 2 to 5 months.

Add 2 to 4 weeks of discovery and scoping before any of that starts. Treat a timeline as an estimate until the discovery phase ends, because the honest answer to how long the work takes usually depends on what the discovery finds in your data. The word results is also doing work in the question: a system being live is not the same as a system being measurably better than what it replaced, and the second one takes longer.

Ask these before you sign, and write the answers down:

1. Which AI techniques do you actually work in? Some firms are strong in language models, others in computer vision or forecasting. Few are strong in all three.
2. Can I see work you have done like this? Ask for a case in your industry or your use case, and ask what went wrong in it.
3. What does my data need to look like for this to work? A firm that answers this properly will sometimes tell you the useful version of your project is smaller than the one you asked for. That is the answer worth paying for.
4. How will we know it worked? Agree the measure before the build, not after.
5. What happens after launch? Models decay as the world they describe moves on. Ask who monitors that, how often it is retrained, and what that costs.
6. Who owns the code and the model weights? Get it in writing. This is the clause that decides whether you can leave.
7. What is not in the price? Training time, infrastructure and post-launch support are the three that usually sit outside it.

There is no ranking on this site that answers that for you, so the work is yours. A process that holds up:

1. Define the problem, not the technology. "We want AI" is not a project. "We want to handle 50 percent fewer support tickets without adding headcount" is a project, and it can be priced.
2. Match it to a service category. Browse the nine service categories: chatbot development, process automation, AI strategy consulting, machine learning and data science, AI integration, generative AI, voice and conversational AI, AI search, and custom AI solutions.
3. Filter by location and budget. The agency directory filters by city, service, pricing tier and project size.
4. Use Get Matched for a shortlist. The Get Matched form takes about a minute and returns five listings, chosen by project type and budget. Read the answer below on how that order is decided before you treat it as a recommendation.
5. Check the firms yourself. No reviews have been submitted to this directory yet, and if one is, it is published automatically after 24 hours with nobody reading it first. Ask every shortlisted firm for two client references and telephone them.

They are worth something if you know what they are. A directory is an index, not a verdict. The useful parts:

Comparison: read a whole category side by side instead of cold-calling twenty firms to find the three that are relevant.
Budget filtering: narrow to the firms that have published a rate, which is fewer than one in five of the listings here that are not placeholder entries.
Shortlisting: the Get Matched form reduces the directory to five listings by project type and budget. It is a filter, not an assessment of your business.
Coverage: a category page shows firms you would not have found, including ones with no marketing budget.

Be clear about what a directory is not, including this one. Nothing here is checked for quality, rated or ranked. A submitted listing goes live immediately with no approval step and nobody reads it. The one check that does happen is on listings this directory researches itself, where the firm's own website has to answer, serve a real page and carry the firm's own name. That is a check that the company exists and the site works. It is not a judgement about the work.

The directories worth avoiding are the ones that charge agencies to suppress bad reviews, and the ones whose rankings are sold without saying so. Ask any directory you use which of its positions are paid for. On this site, paid tiers appear above free ones, and that is stated on the pricing page.

The nine service categories in this directory:

AI Chatbot Development: support bots, sales assistants and conversational agents, built on language models or rule-based engines. Common uses are e-commerce support, lead qualification and internal knowledge bases.

Process Automation: workflow automation that removes manual steps in back-office, finance and operations work. Common uses are invoice processing, CRM updates and data entry.

AI Strategy Consulting: readiness assessments, use-case selection and implementation roadmaps for organisations adopting AI across more than one team. Usually bought before any build starts.

Machine Learning and Data Science: custom models, predictive analytics and the data engineering underneath them, including training, evaluation, deployment and monitoring. Common uses are churn prediction, demand forecasting, fraud detection and recommendation.

AI Integration: putting AI into software you already run, such as adding features to a Salesforce instance or connecting a language model to an internal database.

Generative AI: content pipelines, image generation, code assistants and fine-tuned models for creative and business use.

Voice and Conversational AI: voice interfaces, phone system replacement, speech recognition and natural language understanding for telephone and embedded systems.

AI Search: getting a brand found and cited inside AI assistants and answer engines, which is a different trade from ranking a page in a search engine.

Custom AI Solutions: end-to-end development for problems that do not fit the categories above, from a research prototype through to a production system.

On AI Agency Search:

1. Go to the submit page.
2. Enter your agency name, website, contact email, city and country.
3. Choose a primary service category and add any secondary ones.
4. Upload your logo. It is required, in PNG, JPG or SVG, up to 5MB.
5. Give your team size, hourly rate range and typical project size, if you want them shown.
6. Choose a tier. Free goes live at once; a paid tier takes effect when the payment clears.
7. Create your account. The listing is live at once.

There is no moderation queue and nobody approves the listing. A Free listing carries a full profile with services, location and a link to your site, and that link is nofollow. A followed link starts at the Verified tier.

Yes. The Free tier carries a complete profile:

• Agency name, logo and contact details
• Services, with descriptions
• City and country
• A link to your website, nofollow on Free
• Profile view counts
• Client review submission

A Free listing has no time limit and nothing expires. You can move to Verified at $29 a month, Featured at $99 or Trusted at $127 whenever you want. That buys placement above free listings and a followed link, and from Featured upwards a tier badge.

The pricing page compares the four tiers line by line.

Paid tiers buy position and followed links. They do not buy a check, a badge of quality or a review.

Verified, $29 a month: placement above every Free listing in search results, inclusion on category and city pages, and one dofollow backlink to your site.

Featured, $99 a month: everything in Verified, plus a Featured badge on every listing, a weekly homepage rotation spot, top-of-category placement, a monthly newsletter mention and 2 dofollow backlinks.

Trusted, $127 a month: everything in Featured, plus a banner at the top of your category page, a Trusted badge, a mention in the AI Agency Secrets newsletter and 5 dofollow backlinks.

Full comparison on the pricing page.

No reviews have been submitted yet, so there are none to read on any profile. The form works. Here is exactly what it does, which is less than most directories imply:

1. Any client can submit a review. They do not need to be invited by the agency.
2. A review needs a name, an email address and at least 100 characters. Any email address is accepted, and nothing checks that the reviewer is who they say they are.
3. A submitted review is published automatically after 24 hours. Nobody reads it first and nothing is checked against an invoice or a contract, so a review here is one person's account rather than a confirmed engagement.
4. Each review carries 5 sub-ratings: communication, quality of deliverables, value for money, technical expertise and project management, plus an overall rating from 1 to 5.
5. There is no route for an agency to edit or delete a review on its own profile.

Read a review here, when there are any, as one client's opinion published without a check. That is worth something. It is worth less than a reference you telephone yourself.

The Get Matched form is free for businesses looking for an agency, and it does something narrower than the name suggests. Exactly what it does:

1. You answer four questions, which takes about a minute: project type, industry, budget range and timeline.
2. The directory filters to one category. Your project type maps to one of the nine service categories, and the list is reduced to the firms in it, provided at least three are listed there.
3. Paid listings come first. The five you see are ordered by tier, Trusted then Featured then Verified then Free, and alphabetically by name within a tier. If you pick the $50,000 to $100,000 band, free listings are dropped from the set. If you pick the $100,000 and above band, only Featured and Trusted listings remain.
4. You contact them yourself. No commission is taken, nothing is brokered and the firms do not pay for the introduction.

What it does not do is worth stating plainly. There is no fit score and no model reads your description. The industry and timeline you enter are recorded with your enquiry and are not used to pick the five. And buying a paid tier does move a listing up these results, which is part of what the tier is sold for.

So treat the five as a shortlist produced by two filters, which is useful, and not as a recommendation, which it is not. Then do the checking in the answer above.