Honest comparison
Alian AI vs hiring in-house
When it makes sense to hire your own AI engineers — and when it costs more than it should.
Hiring in-house is the right answer for some companies. It's also the most expensive way to ship your first AI feature. Here's how in house versus outsourcing software development actually plays out.
| Dimension | Alian AI | Hiring an in-house AI team |
|---|---|---|
| Time to first shipped AI feature | 4–8 weeks | 6–9 months (hire → onboard → ramp → ship) |
| Loaded cost — first 12 months | Fixed-fee Sprint + Retainer · $60–$200K | 2 senior engineers · $400K+ loaded (US market) |
| Production AI experience | Multiple shipped systems · pattern library | Depends on who you hire · 1–3 projects each |
| Stays after the project | No · we hand off and you own everything | Yes — that's the point of hiring |
| Tooling + infra setup | We bring our stack and SOPs | Team has to build / adopt / tune from scratch |
| Renewal flexibility | Sprint ends · or retainer · or hourly | Payroll. You can't 'pause' a hire. |
Pick in-house team when
- You're going to ship 5+ AI features in the next 24 months
- The work is deeply embedded in your product, not a separable layer
- You can wait 6+ months for v1
- You have a strong AI engineering leader to hire under
Pick Alian AI when
- You're shipping your first or second AI feature
- You want to validate ROI before committing to headcount
- You need v1 in production in under 2 months
- You'd rather scale your hires after seeing what 'production AI' actually means in your org
Our honest take
Many of our clients eventually hire in-house — and we help them transition. The hand-off is part of the engagement. We'd rather lose the renewal to a thriving in-house team than keep it on inertia.
Talk it through with a human.
20 min. We'll tell you which of these is actually the right answer for your situation — even if it's not us.
