AI development costs a fraction of 2020 prices because the expensive part of building custom software, months of a team hand-writing code, is now the part AI does the heavy lifting on. The judgement of what to build and how to architect it remains, and that is what you pay for. Bamco passes that structural saving on: engagements typically start around $50k for capability a legacy build would have quoted in six figures.
Information current as at 4 July 2026
In 2020, a custom system meant a team building it by hand: analysts, designers, developers, testers, project managers, working for months. Every hour of that was a salary, and an agency margin sat on top. The quote was high because the labour was high, not because anyone was gouging. So most businesses looked at a six-figure number for the system they needed and made do with a spreadsheet and a manual process instead. The cost was real, and it was mostly the cost of people typing code that a machine can now assist with.
The single most expensive input, hand-writing the code, is exactly where AI now does the heavy lifting. That collapses the labour that used to dominate the price. This is not a temporary discount or a sale: the underlying cost of building has genuinely fallen, so the fair price fell with it. What does not fall, and should not, is the judgement of what to build, the architecture that makes it hold up in the real world, and the implementation that makes your team actually use it. The saving is structural, which is why it holds across projects rather than being a one-off.
Bring us the idea you already have, or book an audit and we map where the money is leaking. Either way, you deal directly with the senior team that designs and builds it.
When the manual building gets cheaper, the money that remains buys the parts that were always the point: knowing what to build, architecting it so it survives the real cases, and implementing it so the business runs on it. Bamco engagements typically start around $50k and are priced as a fraction of what a legacy build would have quoted, scoped after an audit so the number is real before anything is built. A system is built to close a specific, costly leak, so it is meant to pay for itself in multiples. The price fell; the value did not.
Whether you can name exactly what you want built, or you just know something is leaking, the next step is the same conversation.