Free · No signup · Honest answers

Buy a tool, hire a partner, or build it yourself?

Four inputs, one honest recommendation. Sometimes the answer is a $99/mo SaaS tool — and when it is, this calculator says so. We built it the way we'd want a vendor to answer us.

Your situation

Adjust to your business. The recommendation updates live — no email gate, no "talk to sales" wall.
Our honest recommendation
—

Buy a SaaS tool

$1.2K–$6K/yr

Synthflow, Sameday, or your CRM's built-in AI. Fast and cheap. You configure it, you maintain it, it breaks at your edge cases.

Custom AI partner

$18K–$42K/yr

Built around your systems and edge cases, operated and tuned for you monthly. Pays off when integrations and volume are real.

Build in-house

$90K+/yr

A real AI/automation hire (loaded cost). Makes sense at scale with a standing backlog of internal builds — rarely below $20M revenue.

Cost ranges are 2026 market rates: SaaS voice/automation tools at $99–$500/mo; custom built-and-operated partners at $800–$2,500/mo (our own pricing sits here); a loaded automation engineer salary at $90K+. The deeper teardown is in our guide: how much an AI voice agent costs in 2026.
How the recommendation works

No black box. Here's the exact logic.

Under $500K revenue, a SaaS tool wins — custom can't pay for itself yet, full stop. Between $1M and $20M, the call hinges on complexity: two or more systems to integrate, 15+ hours a week of manual work, or no one in-house to babysit tools all push toward a custom partner, because that's where off-the-shelf products quietly fail. Above $20M with a real technical owner, an in-house build starts to beat renting anyone. We sell the middle option, so read our reasoning critically — then check it against our full build-vs-buy breakdown and the 12 vendor questions we publish for free.

Keep going

Decided to build? Find what's worth building first.

The AI automation opportunity finder ranks your workflows by ROI, and the AI readiness scorecard tells you whether the foundation is in place.

Embed this on your site

Use this calculator on your blog or website. Free. No attribution required.

Paste this iframe anywhere. It loads our calculator at the size you set. We don't track your visitors — we just appreciate the link.

<iframe src="https://mediaspearhead.ai/tools/ai-build-vs-buy-calculator?embed=1"
        width="100%" height="780" frameborder="0" style="border-radius:12px;"></iframe>

Want the recommendation pressure-tested?

Book a 30-minute call. We'll look at your actual systems and call volume, and tell you straight which option fits — including the two we don't sell.

Book your free roadmap call
Book a free pipeline audit See the system