Core
$4,500license fee, per month
build fee
$35,000
- One operating lane
- Up to four connected systems
- One approval chain, one named approver
- Base generation envelope, set at scoping
Pricing
Two fees. Both on this page.
You pay once to build the system, and that build fee ends the day it is proven live against the accounts you already run. Then you pay a license fee each month to run it. Your own figure is fixed in writing before you sign, and it does not move after. The first conversation costs nothing, and you leave it holding that figure whether you hire us or not.
build fee, once. license fee, monthly. consultation, free.
01What each fee buys
A build you pay for once. A license you pay for monthly.
Think about the work in your week that never quite gets done. The message that arrived on Saturday and was answered on Tuesday. The follow up that was going to happen once things calmed down. The report you keep meaning to write. None of it is hard. It just has no owner, so it lands on whoever is closest. Often that is you.
The build fee, once.
Everything from signature to proven go live. The build scoping that follows signature, a written delivery plan, your instance configured, your systems connected, your approval chain with your named approvers, the audit trail, and testing against your live accounts. The build ends when the system is proven working on your live surface, not when the code is finished. That is not a wording choice. It is where the last payment sits.
The license fee, monthly.
The recurring charge is a license fee. It buys a configured instance of the engine and the running of it. Each time it runs, it prepares, drafts and queues across your connected systems, and every generalized improvement to the engine lands in your instance while you license it.
It also carries a generation envelope, a monthly volume of prepared work set at scoping, with infrastructure and model cost inside it. Volume above the envelope moves the engagement up a tier. There are no overage invoices.
The consultation, free.
The first conversation costs nothing, and neither does what you take out of it: a straight read on what you run, where the work between your tools leaks, which lanes are worth an engine, and a fixed build quote in writing. If the honest answer is that this is not for you, that is the answer you will get. It happens, and we would rather it happened before you paid us.
02The tiers
Three tiers. Four measures of scale.
A lane is one whole body of work the engine runs. Your marketing is a lane. Your inbox is another. Your front desk is a third. The tiers differ on lanes, connected systems, how deep the approval chain runs, and the size of the envelope. They differ on nothing else.
Extended
$8,500license fee, per month
build fee
$65,000
- Two operating lanes
- Up to eight connected systems
- Approval chains with up to three named approvers
- Larger generation envelope, set at scoping
Full Operation
from$15,000license fee, per month, scoped
build fee
from $120,000, scoped
- Three or more operating lanes
- Connected systems scoped to the engagement
- Approval chains scoped, including compliance lanes
- Generation envelope scoped
Every tier runs the full engine, the full approval gate, the full audit trail, and the full ownership split. None of it is gated by price. The cheapest tier does not get a weaker gate or a thinner record. Gating safety or ownership behind a higher price would contradict every other line on this site.
The build fee varies with the build. The figure on each tier is the starting figure for that tier's standard shape. Your own figure is fixed in writing in your quote, before you sign, and it does not move after you sign. Not if the build turns out harder than we thought. That risk is ours to carry.
03The work behind the figure
The figure, divided by the work behind it.
A price with nothing beside it is just a large number. So here is the effort a build is expected to take, the arithmetic that turns the fee into an hourly rate, and the published market figures that rate sits against. Every number below is one of three things: a figure from the tiers above, arithmetic on one, or a market comparable with its source named beside it. None of it is a result, because we have not measured one.
An operator hour is an hour of the owner's own attention.
The whole estimate is built on that unit, so it is worth being exact about it. An operator hour is an hour of Edwin Grant's own attention: scoping your work, directing the build, reading back what came out of it, correcting it, and proving the result on your live accounts. It is not a junior's hour and it is not machine time. Software does a large share of the keystrokes here and almost none of the supervision, and supervision is the part that cannot be handed to a second person.
These are estimates, and no build has been measured yet.
The uncomfortable part goes first. No Marrow Technologies build has completed, so there is no measured build in existence and every hour figure below is an estimate. Each one was built up phase by phase from the delivery process we actually run, nine phases from scoping to handoff, with a contingency on top. The first build to run gets its hours logged against those same phase names while it runs, and then these figures get replaced by what happened rather than by what we expected.
| Tier | Estimated operator hours | Build fee | Per operator hour |
|---|---|---|---|
| Core | 150 to 240 | $35,000 | $146 to $233 |
| Extended | 250 to 380 | $65,000 | $171 to $260 |
| Full Operation | from 480 | from $120,000 | not divided |
The last column is arithmetic and not an offer. It is the published build fee divided by each end of the estimated effort band, and nothing else. Core at $35,000 over 150 hours is $233 an hour, and the same $35,000 over 240 hours is $146. Extended at $65,000 is $260 over 250 hours and $171 over 380. The band runs the other way from the hours, because a build that takes longer costs you the same and costs us more.
Full Operation is not divided, and that is a refusal rather than an omission. Both of its figures are floors, from $120,000 against an effort band that starts at roughly 480 hours and is scoped per engagement. A floor divided by a floor is not a rate, so we are not going to print one and call it arithmetic.
This is effort. It is not a schedule.
There is no delivery date on this page, and there is not one anywhere else on this site. That is deliberate and it is worth saying plainly instead of leaving you to notice the gap. Our effort model records hours against phases of the build rather than against calendar days, and we have never fixed how many of those hours land in a working week. Turning hours into weeks would mean inventing the figure in between, and you would then be holding a date we made up. Timing is set in your statement of work at build scoping, after signature, against a plan we can stand behind. What you get before you sign is the size of the effort, which is the table above.
Where that rate sits in the market.
Four hourly figures, each with its source, so you can check every one of them. The single most common hourly rate charged by a digital agency is $175 to $199, at 29 percent of agencies, from the Promethean Research 2026 Digital Agency Industry Report, a sample of 1,452 agency leaders. US AI firms whose published project minimums run $25,000 to $100,000, which is this deal size, charge $100 to $199 an hour, from Clutch first party review data across 62 firms, read on 25 August 2026. US senior custom software rates run $125 to $250 and above, from the Keyhole Software cost guide of 14 January 2026. Senior US based talent in AI and automation is quoted at $100 to $300 an hour, from the Layer3 Labs cost guide updated on 2 July 2026, which is written by a seller in the category and so describes what the category asks rather than what it settles at.
Put the two together. Core's arithmetic band, $146 to $233, straddles the most common agency rate: above it at the fast end of the estimate, below it at the slow end. Extended's band, $171 to $260, straddles it the same way. All four of those figures fall inside the $100 to $300 quoted for senior US talent in this category. So the hour is not the thing that separates this from an agency engagement, and we would rather say that than pretend otherwise. What separates it is the three short blocks below, and what a long build costs you, which under the terms in the next section is nothing.
And the same check on the total.
Two figures for the whole build rather than the hour. The average AI development project is $120,594.55, from Clutch first party review data read on 25 August 2026. A reported band for a mid market AI program is $35,000 to $150,000, from a single commercially interested consulting cost guide dated May 2026, which is weak evidence and we would rather label it than lean on it. Core's build fee is the floor of that weak band and well under that average. For the monthly line, the general agency retainer band is $3,000 to $20,000, from the Layer3 Labs guide of 2 July 2026, with the same seller caveat.
The hour buys an asset, not an onboarding.
This is the first of three things the arithmetic does not show on its own. You keep the instance, with a perpetual license to operate it for your own internal business use. When an agency engagement ends it takes the accounts, the logins and the leverage with it and you start over. When ours ends you are still running your own instance. That is the same position stated in the section on what you keep, with its two exceptions named there rather than buried.
Year two does not cost what year one cost.
There is no rebuild fee, ever, and none at renewal. The build fee is paid once because the instance is already yours after it. That is the structural opposite of a model where the setup fee buys somebody's onboarding and the dependence compounds every year after it. Divide the build fee across a second year and the arithmetic above halves. We are not going to print that number, because the term you are being asked to sign is twelve months and a figure spread over a term nobody has committed to is a sales device rather than a fact.
You are reading a figure at all.
In August 2026 we went looking for a published rate card in this category, opening each vendor's own pricing page rather than reading a guide about them. Across seven AI agent companies we found no dollar figure at all. We found no AI agency publishing a real rate card on its own site. One of the cost guides in the category says why, in its own words: most agencies hide their pricing behind a sales call. We are not going to name anyone, and you do not need us to. Go and try to get a number out of anyone else in this category before you take a sales call, and then come back to this page.
None of the above is a promise about what the system will do for your business. It is the work behind the figure, the arithmetic on the figure, and the market the figure sits in, and it is everything we can put in front of you that we have not made up. The first conversation is where you find out whether the figure is right for you, and it costs nothing.
04The terms
Four terms that sit on our side of the table.
These are not favours and they are not on a clock. They are terms of the engagement, written on the public page so you never have to ask for them.
There is no rebuild fee. Ever.
You pay to build the system once. There is no second build fee at renewal and none at any other point. Renewal is annual. The instance is already yours.
The quote is fixed before you sign.
Your figure is set in writing in your quote, before signature, and it does not move after signature. The detailed build scoping happens after you sign, inside the build fee, and it cannot change the figure. If the work turns out to be bigger than it looked, that is our problem to solve and not your invoice to absorb.
The twelve months start at go live.
The license fee starts when the system is proven live, not when you sign. The minimum term is twelve months from that day.
A slow build never burns your paid term.
If the build runs longer than we planned, that time comes off our clock and not off yours. You paid for twelve months of a running system, and twelve months of a running system is what you get.
Read those four again. Each one moves a risk off your side of the table and onto ours. That is the point of them. We are asking you to hand a system real work inside your own accounts, and that only makes sense if the money is the least frightening part of the decision.
05How the build is billed
Milestones, never a lump.
The build fee is billed in milestones. The last one is due at proven go live, on your live surface, not at code complete. It is the milestone we have to earn.
| Tier | At signature | Mid build | At verified go live |
|---|---|---|---|
| Core | $14,000 | $14,000 | $7,000 |
| Extended | $24,000 | $24,000 | $17,000 |
| Full Operation | Scheduled at scoping, on the same shape | ||
The license fee starts at go live, and the minimum term is twelve months from go live, not from signature. A slow build never burns your paid term.
06If you leave
What you keep is the point.
This is the section that decides what you are actually buying. Read it before you read the prices again.
You keep
- The instance, with a perpetual license to operate it for your own internal business use
- Your configuration
- Everything the engine generated for you
- Your analytics
- Your accounts and credentials, with one exception named below
- Your audit records
What stops
- Our operation of the instance
- The generation envelope
- Engine improvements as they land
- From then on you run it, and you pay your own infrastructure and model costs
That is the structural difference from an agency. When an agency leaves, it takes the accounts, the logins, and the leverage with it, and you start over. When we leave, you are still running your own instance.
Two exceptions belong on this page rather than only on the home page, because this is the page about what you keep. The first is the stored copy of a connected login, which is encrypted with a key Marrow Technologies holds, so on the day you leave that one thing needs us to hand it over. The second is social posting, which runs through a posting vendor we hold the relationship with, under a profile that is yours inside our account, so that account is not ours to give you. We are telling you both here, unprompted, because you would find them later and you would be right to ask why we had not.
Renewal is annual, and there is no rebuild fee, ever. The instance is already yours.
07The questions
Five things people say before they sign.
Answered here so you are not the one who has to raise them.
"This is expensive."
It is, and we are not going to talk you out of that. What the figure buys is a system built against your live accounts, run for you, and proven working before the last payment falls due. If the figure is wrong for your business, the first conversation will tell you that, and finding out costs you nothing.
"We could just hire someone."
You could, and sometimes you should. These are not the same purchase. A person has to be found, trained and kept, and what they know walks out with them. A system is read and released, and what it did is written down in a record that is added to rather than rewritten. Plenty of businesses want both.
"There is a tool that does this."
There are many, and you would be the one running them. That is the whole difference. We do not hand you software to learn. We build your instance against the accounts you already have, connect them, set your approval chain and your named approvers, and then run it for you. The work arrives drafted. Your job is to read it and say yes.
"What if it does not work."
Then the last milestone has not been paid, because that one falls due at proven go live and not at code complete. And your twelve months has not started, because the term runs from go live. The build carries its own risk that way, on purpose.
"What if you disappear."
You keep the instance, with a perpetual license to operate it for your own internal business use. You keep your configuration, everything the engine made for you, your analytics, your accounts and your audit records. There are two exceptions, and both are named rather than buried. The first is the stored copy of a connected login, named in the section above. The second is social posting, which runs through a posting vendor we hold the relationship with, under a profile that is yours inside our account, so that account is not ours to hand you. What we can do instead is export what is there, help you open your own, and delete ours on request. Marrow Technologies is built and run by Edwin Grant, who is the sole owner and the person you talk to first.
08Start
The first conversation is free.
Tell us who you are, what you run, and where the work leaks. You will get a straight read on whether this fits, and a fixed quote in writing if it does. If it does not fit, we will say so. Nothing on this page obligates either side.