Why we stopped billing by the hour

4 min read·Updated October 13, 2026

A year ago, an integration like the ones we now deliver in an afternoon took us a week. With AI tools in our workflow, much of the code we used to write by hand now comes out in minutes.

That’s good news for any client. But if we billed by the hour, it would be bad news for us: every productivity gain would make us bill less. That’s why at Korbex we decided to stop selling hours and start selling results.

The problem with billing by the hour

The hourly model puts the agency and the client on opposite sides. The client wants a solution fast and cheap; the agency earns more the longer it takes. Nobody does it on purpose, but incentives matter:

• Efficiency gets punished. If we automate a task, we bill less for it.
• The client buys uncertainty. They know what an hour costs, not what the project will cost.
• Effort gets measured, not impact. A timesheet doesn’t say whether the client’s business got better.

With AI, this becomes unsustainable. When build time drops to a fraction, billing for time stops reflecting the value we deliver.

What AI doesn’t make cheaper

Writing code became cheap. What’s still hard, and where the real value is, is everything around the code:

• Understanding the business. Knowing which problem is worth solving and which isn’t.
• Deciding what to build. Choosing the right architecture, integrations and boundaries from the start.
• Showing up in production. Making the solution work on Monday at 8 a.m., not just in the demo.

An AI can generate a thousand lines in seconds. It can’t sit down with an operations manager to understand why their team loses two days a month reconciling invoices. That’s still our job.

How we work now: pricing by results

Instead of selling hours, we agree with the client on a measurable result and a price for achieving it. We call it Results as a Service.

1. 01

   We define the result together

   For example: cutting customer response time in half, or automating the monthly reconciliation.

2. 02

   We agree on how to measure it

   An indicator the client already understands and can verify.

3. 03

   We set the price for the result

   Not for the time it takes us to get there.

4. 04

   We deliver and measure

   If the result doesn’t come, the risk is ours.

For the client, the change is concrete:

What isn’t easy

Pricing by results isn’t magic, and it doesn’t fit everything. It has challenges we’d rather state up front:

• Not every result is easy to measure. Some projects are exploratory and the goal is to learn, not a number. In those cases we say so and agree on a different arrangement.
• We take on more risk. That’s why we spend more time at the start understanding the problem before we commit.
• It takes mutual trust. The client has to share real data so we can measure the impact.

We don’t see it as a downside. It’s the filter that makes us choose well which problems to solve.

Let’s talk about results

The software industry is changing, and the question is no longer how many hours a project costs. It’s what changes in your business once it’s done.

If you have a process that costs you time or money every month, tell us which one. That’s where we start: with the result you want to see.