How much does AI agent development cost?

“Pilot agent $60,000-$120,000. Production multi-agent system $240,000-$680,000. Enterprise platform $510,000-$1,600,000. Cost drivers: number of tools the agent integrates with, evaluation set complexity, observability and audit logging, regulatory requirements, post-launch monitoring tier. The biggest hidden cost is NOT the LLM bill - it is the evaluation set, guardrails and observability you need to safely run agents in production.”