Hire a CTO when technology is your core product and you need someone owning it every day. Use a dev agency when you know exactly what you want built and can manage the project and the ownership terms yourself. A co-owned bespoke build (what we do) fits the middle case most owner-led service businesses are in: a handful of expensive jobs worth automating, no internal tech team, and a need to own the result without carrying a six-figure salary. Typical build: around £10,000 per project.
The three routes at a glance
This is the same comparison we walk clients through on a call. The last column is ours, and we've kept it honest: a CTO beats us on some rows, and we say so.
| What matters | Hiring a CTO | A dev agency | Co-owned bespoke build |
|---|---|---|---|
| Built around your business | Yes | Sort of | Yes |
| You know the return up front | Sometimes | Rarely | Yes, mapping phase first |
| You co-own it, no lock-in | Yes | Rare | Yes |
| Your data stays in your systems | Yes | Rare | Yes |
| Senior, exit-grade judgement on the build | Maybe, depends who you hire | No | Yes |
| Working version in weeks | No, hiring takes months | Sometimes | Yes |
| Will tell you what NOT to build | Yes, a good one will | Rarely | Yes |
| Typical cost | £100,000-plus a year | Six figures per project | Around £10,000 per project |
The rows where a CTO ties or beats us are real. The difference is that you carry a CTO's salary every year, whether the work needs doing or not. Most owner-led service businesses have a short list of expensive jobs to automate, not a permanent engineering department to run.
Hiring a CTO: when it's right, when it's overkill
A CTO is the right hire when technology is the product. If you're building software you sell, or your whole operation lives or dies on a platform, you need someone senior owning that every single day, setting the technical direction and answering for it. Nothing here argues against that.
It becomes overkill when you have two or three jobs eating your team's week and no software product to run. A good CTO in the UK costs well over £100,000 a year once you add employer's national insurance, pension and usually equity. That is a large fixed cost for work with a clear start and end. You're also concentrating the risk: one person's judgement, one person's availability, one person's notice period. For a defined set of AI jobs, you're buying a full-time seat to do part-time work.
Where a CTO genuinely wins: they're in every meeting, they hold the whole picture, and a good one will absolutely tell you what not to build. We rate that. It's why our model puts that same seniority on your build without the salary attached.
A dev agency: the good and the trap
A capable development agency has the hands to build almost anything and can move fast once a spec is agreed. If you know precisely what you want, you're comfortable writing and defending a spec, and you'll read the ownership terms carefully, an agency can be a solid choice.
The trap is the incentive. An agency is usually paid for hours or for scope, so the pull is towards building more, not building the right thing. Few will tell you a job isn't worth doing, because that's a smaller invoice. Ownership is the other watch-out: plenty of agency contracts leave the intellectual property, or the platform it runs on, with the agency, so you're renting your own tool. And the numbers climb. Published UK guides put custom AI development at roughly £21,000 to £400,000, and a lot of that spread is scope that was never challenged.
Our answer to both problems is structural. We scope with a paid mapping phase before anyone commits to a build, so the return is proven first. We quote per project rather than by the hour, so there's no reward for padding. And you co-own the result, so you're never renting your own system.
A co-owned bespoke build: where we fit
We're the middle path for the business that isn't a software company but has real, expensive jobs worth automating. You get senior judgement on the build without hiring for it, a fixed price you agree before work starts, and something you own at the end.
How it works: a fixed-fee mapping phase where we get inside the job, count the hours it eats, find the rules and the exceptions, and come back with a plan and a firm quote. If that quote doesn't make sense against the hours saved, you walk away with the plan and owe nothing more. Then a build delivered in two-week sprints, so you see working software every fortnight rather than a slide deck at the end. Then optional monthly support you can cancel any time.
Three things hold on every engagement. You co-own what we build and can see inside it. Your data stays in your own systems, handled to the same UK GDPR standard you already work to, nothing sold on. And we work alongside the paid tools you already use rather than replacing them. A payroll checking system we shipped runs in the client's own cloud, flags exceptions for a person and keeps a full audit trail, and it's owned by the client, not us.
The judgement on your build is mine. I've had three exits (Just Eat and Time Out both to IPO, @Leisure sold to OYO) and spent 18 months inside a private-equity-backed business rebuilding its operating model around AI: engineering headcount from 80 to 25, more than £6M saved a year, delivery cycles halved. That's the experience deciding what to build and, just as often, what to leave alone.
When we're the wrong choice
We'd rather lose the work than sell you the wrong thing, so here's where one of the other routes beats us.
- Technology is your actual product. If you sell software, hire a CTO. You need that ownership in the building every day, not a project partner.
- You have a big, fully-specified programme and an in-house team to manage it. That's an agency job, or your own hires. Our sweet spot is a handful of high-value jobs, not a hundred-person delivery.
- A £30-a-month tool already does 90% of it. Then buy the tool. We'll say so on the call, and we've written about where off-the-shelf tools genuinely help.
- The job eats two hours a month. No build price pays that back. We'll tell you to leave it.
What each route costs
Rough shape, so you can sanity-check any quote you're holding:
| Route | Typical cost | What you're paying for |
|---|---|---|
| Hiring a CTO | £100,000-plus a year | A permanent senior seat, whether or not the work is permanent |
| A dev agency | Six figures per project is common | Hands to build, but check who owns the result |
| Co-owned bespoke build | Around £10,000 per project | Senior judgement, a fixed price, a system you own |
Our full breakdown of what moves a build price is in the guide to how much custom AI costs, and the plain numbers are on our pricing page. What ownership actually means in a contract is in who owns the AI you pay for.
Common questions
Isn't a full-time CTO better because they're always there?
A CTO is the right call when technology is your core product and you need someone owning it every day. For one or two AI jobs in a service business, a full-time hire at well over £100,000 a year is a lot of fixed cost for work that has a start and an end, and you're betting the lot on one person's judgement. A co-owned bespoke build gives you the same senior judgement on the jobs that matter, for a fraction of the cost, and you own the result.
Why not just use a development agency?
A good agency will build what you ask for. The risk is that they build what you ask for even when it's the wrong thing, because the incentive is billable hours, not your return. Ownership is often blurred and the work can run to six figures. We scope with a paid mapping phase, quote per project at around £10,000, tell you when not to build, and hand you something you own outright.
After you build it, am I locked in to you?
No. You co-own what we build and can see inside it. Your data stays in your own systems. Ongoing support is optional and you can cancel any time, because the system is yours, not ours.
Is my data safe if an outside firm builds this?
Your data stays in your own systems, handled to the same UK GDPR standard you already work to, nothing sold on and nothing used to train anything outside your business. A payroll checking system we shipped runs in the client's own cloud with a full audit trail.
How much does a bespoke AI build cost?
Most builds land at around £10,000 per project, with a fast return. Simpler jobs cost less, bigger or regulated ones cost more, and we tell you before you commit. Every engagement starts with a fixed-fee mapping phase that ends in a firm quote. Full detail on the pricing page.