Ask HN: How do agencies price projects when AI increases productivity and costs?

[hakonbogen]

I’m curious how agencies and freelancers are pricing projects now that AI tools make us more productive but also introduce new costs. Many of us rely on LLMs, generative design, AI-assisted coding and other services that carry API fees or compute costs. If you can deliver work significantly faster with AI, do you still bill by the hour? Have you moved to fixed-price or value-based models? How do you factor in the overhead of AI tools without eating into your margins, and how do clients react? I’d especially like to hear from smaller agencies, designers and project managers who use AI heavily.

[reggz]

I think there's the work and there's the compute bill. AI mostly changes the work side since you can finish faster but the compute cost is still real and can vary a lot. The way I’ve seen it handled is a fixed project fee with “normal” AI usage included, and if it turns into heavy runs or lots of experimentation that part gets billed separately.

Otherwise you end up paying the API bill yourself.