One Fixed Price. No AI Token Bill Shock.

The Problem with Time-and-Materials Pricing

Time-and-materials billing shifts all the risk onto you. You get an estimate up front, then an invoice at the end — and the two rarely match. The scope crept, the hours ran long, a dependency took longer than planned, and now you are negotiating a change order for work you thought was already covered.

AI-built software has introduced a new version of the same problem: usage-based pricing tied to tokens or compute. The pitch sounds modern — "pay for what you use" — but in practice it means your bill depends on how many tokens a model burned solving your problem, not on the problem you asked to have solved. A harder-than-expected edge case, a model that needed extra passes to get something right, a feature that turned out gnarlier than it looked — all of that becomes your bill shock, not ours. You are left watching a usage counter instead of running your business.

How Marviy Prices Projects

We do it the other way round. You describe your problem to ARIA, we design a System Blueprint for it, and you receive one proposal with one fixed price before any build work starts. That price does not move because a model needed more tokens, more retries, or more compute than expected — that risk is ours to manage, not yours to absorb.

Pricing is based on the scope of what you need built — features, integrations, data models, user flows, and complexity — not on how the work gets done underneath. Projects range from $5,000 for a single-purpose tool to $150,000+ for enterprise-scale systems, and your proposal shows the exact number before you commit to anything.

Fixed Price, Milestone Payments

Once you accept a proposal, the price is locked. You pay in milestones as the work is delivered — 30% to begin, 40% at build completion, 30% on final delivery and sign-off — never a running tab, never a surprise reconciliation at the end. What you approved is what you pay, regardless of what happens underneath to get there.

You also never need to think about which model is doing the work, how much it costs us to run, or how efficiently it ran. If you have your own LLM provider relationship and want to bring it, you can — that is a configuration choice available to you, not a line item that changes your price either way.

Why This Is Fairer

• You know the cost before you commit — the proposal is the price, not an estimate that drifts.
• We carry the execution risk — if a part of the build turns out harder than expected, that is our problem to solve, not your invoice to absorb.
• No usage anxiety — you are never watching a token counter or wondering if asking ARIA one more question will cost you money.
• Full transparency up front — your proposal breaks down what you are paying for before any work begins, not after.

The Bottom Line

Time-and-materials billing and usage-based AI pricing both ask you to carry risk that should sit with whoever is doing the work. Marviy prices the problem, not the process — one proposal, one fixed price, milestone payments, no bill shock.

Visit our Pricing page to see how it works in practice, or start a project and get your proposal.