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 the trade-off 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.
