Compare · Fixed price vs hourly
Every AI consultancy is priced one of two ways: a fixed price for a defined scope, or an hourly rate for as long as the work takes. J Labs works fixed-price, and this page explains why, what it costs the buyer in flexibility, and the situations where hourly is genuinely the right way to buy.
Summary
Fixed-price and hourly AI consulting allocate the same risk to different parties. Under time-and-materials, the client pays for every hour worked and carries the risk that the estimate was wrong; the consultancy carries none, which is why hourly work drifts so easily. Under a fixed price, the consultancy commits to a scope, a timeline and a number and carries the risk of getting it wrong; the client gives up some flexibility in return. J Labs works fixed-price for every engagement. A 20 or 45-minute discovery call ends with a one-page summary within 24 hours. Where the scope needs defining first, a four-day Spec from €5,000 produces a written brief with acceptance criteria and a cost estimate that you own outright. The proposal then fixes scope, timeline and price, from €5,000 to €200,000+; if the work expands, a change order with its own scope, timeline and price is issued and you decide whether to commission it. Delivery runs on weekly 30-minute check-ins, the average build ships in eight weeks and 95% of projects reach production. The trade-off is real: fixed price requires a definable scope, and where the scope genuinely cannot be defined yet, hourly is the honest way to buy. The Spec exists to turn the second case into the first.
Side by side
| Fixed price (how J Labs works) | Hourly / time-and-materials | |
|---|---|---|
| Who carries the estimate risk | The consultancy: the price is committed before work starts and does not move with hours worked. | The client: every hour is billed whether or not the estimate was right. |
| Cost model | One price per engagement, from €5,000 to €200,000+, with change orders for anything beyond scope. | A day or hour rate multiplied by however long the work takes. |
| Scope discipline | Scope, timeline and acceptance criteria are written into the proposal and agreed before work starts. | Scope can shift daily, which is flexible and is also how projects drift. |
| Time to first production system | An average of eight weeks, with a four-day Spec first where scope needs defining. | Depends on how the hours are directed; there is no committed end date unless you set one. |
| Who owns the outcome | J Labs commits to the acceptance criteria, and 95% of projects ship. | The client owns the outcome; the consultant owns the hours. |
| What a change costs | A change order with its own scope, timeline and price, which you decide whether to commission. | More hours, usually noticed at the invoice rather than at the decision. |
| Knowledge transfer | Built into the engagement: weekly 30-minute check-ins, open staging and documentation written as we go. | Available, but every hour of documentation is an hour billed, so it is the first thing cut. |
| Best for | A workflow you can describe in a paragraph, with a budget holder who needs the number first. | Research, discovery-stage work and staff augmentation where the scope cannot yet be written down. |
The honest call
Choose fixed price (how j labs works) when
The budget holder needs the number before saying yes. A fixed price is a decision a COO or a finance director can actually make. J Labs quotes every engagement as a fixed scope, timeline and price, from a €5,000 Spec to multi-phase builds above €200,000, agreed before any work starts.
You want the estimate risk on the vendor, not on you. If the work takes longer than we thought, that is our problem, not yours. Acceptance criteria are written into the proposal, and if the scope expands we issue a change order you are free to decline.
You can describe the workflow in a paragraph. A predictable trigger, an identifiable owner, data that already lives somewhere in your stack and a budget holder who can say yes. That is the shape J Labs scopes in four days and ships in an average of eight weeks.
Choose hourly / time-and-materials when
The scope genuinely cannot be defined yet. If nobody can say what the trigger is, who owns it or what good looks like, a fixed price would be a guess dressed as a commitment. Buy hourly for the exploration, or buy a four-day Spec, which is fixed-price precisely because its output is a definition.
The work is open-ended research. Evaluating models, running experiments on your data, finding out whether a problem is tractable at all. Research has no acceptance criteria by nature, and paying honestly for the time is better than paying for a deliverable that cannot be specified.
You want to direct a person day by day inside your team. Staff augmentation is a legitimate way to buy: a senior engineer on your stand-ups, taking your priorities each morning. That is a time-based product, and a fixed price would only add friction to it.
Frequently asked
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