Author
Ravi Iyer covers AI-native agency operations for DevShopVault. Prior background in services-firm finance and delivery ops; focus on the unit economics behind fixed-price AI builds.
June 2026 rate cards for AI agency builds split by archetype: solo operator, 3-person team, 8-person team, 20-plus-person studio. Discovery, build, retainer, audit, and white-label bands per archetype, plus a worked example on what to charge for a 6-hour AI-agent build.
A six-criterion tier list of the AI app builders that survive a client handoff in 2026, scored for source-code ownership, deployable target, bundled vendors, MCP provisioning, white-label flow, and the maintenance cost the client inherits.
The 2026 EHR formula has the same structure as the classic one and a different set of inputs. AI builders collapse delivery hours but introduce five new categories most P&Ls miss. Here is the formula, four-archetype benchmarks, a worked traditional-vs-AI example, and the five moves that actually raise EHR.
The roles an AI-native agency actually needs, the order to hire them in, and US/EU compensation brackets — plus the utilization and bill-rate math that tells you when each hire pays for itself.
