SN Software Solutions
Guide

AI Development Cost: Models Are Cheap, Production Is Not

The expensive part of AI is usually data, evaluation, and product integration — not the first prototype prompt.

Prototype vs production

A weekend GPT wrapper is not an AI product. Production needs retrieval, permissions, logging, fallbacks, and a way to measure whether answers are any good.

Using a hosted LLM is often cheaper than training. Training or fine-tuning only pays when your data is proprietary and the job is stable.

What changes the estimate

Can we access clean documents? Is the model allowed to see them? Do you need human approval in the loop?

We estimate after that conversation. Token spend is an operating cost you should budget separately from build cost.

This guide is educational. It is not a price quote or a promise of search rankings.

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