Development team as a subscription — what is it and how does it work?

A development team as a subscription means you get the delivery capacity of a complete team at a fixed monthly price — instead of hiring developers or buying consulting hours. You pay for what gets delivered, not for time or presence. The model is sometimes called Software Development as a Service (SDaaS), and it has only become truly viable now that autonomous AI agents can do the implementation work under human direction.

Why the model exists

In a typical development project, programming accounts for 70–80 percent of the work. When AI agents take over that part, the traditional way of pricing development — counting hours — disappears with it. What remains worth paying for is what actually matters: that the right thing gets built, that it holds up to quality standards, and that someone takes responsibility for the result.

That is why we at Wizardworks, a Swedish AI-first consultancy, don't sell hours. Our subscription gives you an agentic engineer (a human) and AI agents that together deliver the equivalent of a traditional development team — at roughly a tenth of the cost.

How it works in practice

• An agentic engineer leads the delivery. An experienced human is your point of contact: interprets your needs, designs the solution, makes the technical decisions and is accountable for quality.
• AI agents do the implementation. Autonomous agents pick up tasks from your board, implement, test and document — in your tech stack and your workflow, powered by our platform Fae.
• Fixed monthly price. No time reporting, no surprises. A cancellable subscription instead of employment obligations or project procurement.
• You own everything. Code, documentation and knowledge belong fully to you — no lock-in to tools or vendor.

Who is it for?

The model fits organizations with a continuous need for development — new features, integrations, maintenance, further development — where the need doesn't justify an in-house team, or where recruiting is too slow and expensive. Our typical customers are mid-market companies that depend on software but don't have (or want) a large development organization of their own.

How is it different from consulting hours?

The hourly model sells you effort; the subscription sells you outcomes. With hours, you carry the risk of how long something takes. With a delivery subscription, that risk sits with the vendor — which only works if the vendor has a delivery model where implementation doesn't scale with human time. That is exactly what agentic development changes.

Want to see what it would mean for you? Read about our offer or how we work.