How much does AI agent development cost?

Discovery is free. After it you get a plan and a fixed price before any work starts. An agent that needs custom software or many connected systems is quoted as Custom after discovery. The packages and prices are on our services page.

An AI agent is software that uses AI tools to read something, decide what it is and take the next step, such as sorting an email, drafting a reply or routing a request. It handles work that rules alone cannot, because the input is messy or varies each time.

Send the contact form and describe the pile of work your team handles by hand. We reply within 24 hours and set up a free discovery. We look at real examples of the work, decide whether an agent fits, and come back with a plan and a price.

Will the agent act without anyone checking?

Only where you decide it should. Drafts, decisions that touch money and anything sent to a customer can wait for a person to approve. As trust grows you can let the agent handle more on its own, and the approvals you keep are your choice.

What if the agent gets something wrong?

We test it on your real examples before it goes live, show you where it is unsure and send those cases to a person. Mistakes are expected in any system, which is why the review step exists and why a retainer includes tuning as your work changes.

Where does our data go?

We agree this in discovery before we build, including which information the agent may see and which AI tools it uses. We keep access to what the task needs and nothing more.

Services

AI Agent Development for Business | 21Labs

2026-11-10

AI agents for the work that needs a judgement call

Plenty of work in a business cannot be automated with rules, because nobody can write the rule. An email arrives and someone has to work out what the customer wants. A supplier sends an invoice in a layout nobody has seen. A form comes back half-filled with a note in the margin. A person reads it, decides and acts. That reading step is where an AI agent helps.

An AI agent uses AI tools to read incoming work, work out what it is, draft the next step and route it to the right person or system. A person stays in charge of the decisions that matter. 21Labs is an agency in Sydney that serves businesses across Australia. We build agents as part of our workflow automation service, for owners and team leads whose people spend hours reading, sorting and drafting.

The problem, in your words

"Our inbox is a sorting job. Half the day is working out who should deal with what."
"Every request is a little different, so we cannot just automate it."
"We tried a chatbot and it made things up."
"I want AI to do the first pass and my team to make the call."
"We have documents coming in every day and someone has to read them all."

Rules suit repeatable work. When the input is free text, a scan or a voice note, the job needs something that can read. The risk is an agent that acts when it should ask. Our designs put the question first.

What 21Labs does

Decide whether an agent is the right tool

Many jobs do not need an agent, and a simpler workflow is cheaper and more reliable. In discovery we sort your list into rule-based steps, steps that need reading and steps that need a person. Only the middle group gets an agent.

Design the agent around the decision

We define what the agent reads, what it may decide, what it must send to a person and what it must never do. This design is written down and agreed with you, because the boundaries matter more than the cleverness.

Build the first pass

The agent reads the inbox, the document or the request. It classifies, extracts the details, drafts the reply or summary and puts the result in front of a person with its reasoning shown. Typical jobs include triaging a shared inbox, summarising long threads, pulling fields from documents and drafting responses to common requests.

Put a person in the loop

Approval is built into the workflow. The reviewer sees the draft, the source and the agent's confidence, and approves, edits or rejects with one action. Rejections feed back so the agent improves.

Test on your real work

Before launch the agent runs on past examples from your business, and we compare its answers with what your team did. We share the misses and fix them.

Measure and tune

We track how often drafts are approved unchanged, how long the review takes and where the agent is unsure. Your approval rate shows how far you can safely let it go.

How the engagement runs

Agents follow the same cycle as every 21Labs engagement. See how we work.

1. Discovery

Free. We study real examples of the work, decide whether an agent fits and return with a plan and a price.

2. Agreed price

You agree the price before we start. Instalments are available and the total stays fixed.

3. Delivery

We build the agent, test it on your examples and hand it over with a walkthrough of how to review its work.

4. Measured results

We measure the numbers agreed up front and report what changed.

5. Renewal

An agent keeps learning your work. On a monthly retainer we tune it, add new request types and take on the next job.

Who owns what we build

By default, you own what we build for you.

Where to start

Every engagement begins with a free discovery. Not sure which package suits you? Get in touch and we will work out the right fit together. You can see the packages and prices on the services page.

Who it is not for

Work that follows fixed rules. If every step is predictable, plain workflow automation is simpler and cheaper.
Anyone wanting an agent to run unsupervised from day one. We add autonomy as the results earn it.
Teams that want AI inside their own software. That is AI software development.
A business that has not yet chosen where to start. Begin with AI strategy.

If you can point to a pile of work that someone reads and decides on every day, you are ready for discovery. Use the contact form to tell us about it.

good questions, straight answers

Frequently asked questions

How much does AI agent development cost?: Discovery is free. After it you get a plan and a fixed price before any work starts. An agent that needs custom software or many connected systems is quoted as Custom after discovery. The packages and prices are on our services page.
What is an AI agent?: An AI agent is software that uses AI tools to read something, decide what it is and take the next step, such as sorting an email, drafting a reply or routing a request. It handles work that rules alone cannot, because the input is messy or varies each time.
How does it start?: Send the contact form and describe the pile of work your team handles by hand. We reply within 24 hours and set up a free discovery. We look at real examples of the work, decide whether an agent fits, and come back with a plan and a price.
Will the agent act without anyone checking?: Only where you decide it should. Drafts, decisions that touch money and anything sent to a customer can wait for a person to approve. As trust grows you can let the agent handle more on its own, and the approvals you keep are your choice.
What if the agent gets something wrong?: We test it on your real examples before it goes live, show you where it is unsure and send those cases to a person. Mistakes are expected in any system, which is why the review step exists and why a retainer includes tuning as your work changes.
Who owns what you build?: By default, you own what we build for you.
Where does our data go?: We agree this in discovery before we build, including which information the agent may see and which AI tools it uses. We keep access to what the task needs and nothing more.

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