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AI DevelopmentJune 11, 2026·5 min read
The Hidden Costs of AI Features Nobody Quotes
Evaluation harnesses, prompt versioning, and monitoring — the line items that separate demos from production AI.
Vikram Singh Rathore
Founder & Principal Engineer
A working demo is $5k of work. Production AI is the other $15k–40k: evals, guardrails, cost controls, and the UI for humans to disagree with the model.
Budget for these explicitly
- Golden test sets (20–50 cases) with expected behavior
- Prompt and model version pinning — not 'latest' in production
- Token/cost dashboards and per-tenant limits
- Fallback when the model is down or refuses
Our AI App Cost Guide breaks this into tiers. Pilots from $9,500 include a minimal eval harness by design.
Building something in this space?
Every engagement starts with a free strategy call — scope, honest feasibility, and a fixed quote.