Where we are
Toronto, Ontario. We work across the GTA in person — Mississauga, Vaughan, Markham, Scarborough, Hamilton — and remotely with clients across Canada and the US.
About
Small studio. Toronto. Real software.
Built by AI exists because there's a gap between the two options most Canadian businesses get offered: a cheap template site from someone who disappears, or an agency engagement with four account managers and a discovery phase that costs more than the build. AI collapsed the cost of doing this work properly. We priced for that; most of the industry didn't.
The name is literal
We build with AI, heavily, as part of how the work gets done — not as a marketing angle. It's why a one-page site costs $199 instead of $2,400, and why a custom internal tool costs what a decent template site used to.
The savings show up in your invoice rather than our margin. That's a deliberate choice and it's the whole business model: charge for the hours the work actually takes now, win more of the work, and don't spend anything on a sales department.
AI is not why the work is good. A human still designs the system, reviews every line that ships, and is on the hook when it breaks. AI makes a competent developer considerably faster. It does not make an absent one accountable.
Why we publish prices
Because everyone hates the ritual: three calls, a discovery workshop, and a proposal that finally reveals a number four times what you had in mind. It wastes your afternoon and ours.
Publishing them also keeps us honest. It's very hard to quietly drift back to agency rates when the floor is written on a page anyone can read — including the client who paid it last month.
If our starting points are wrong for your budget, you'll know in thirty seconds on the pricing page instead of thirty days into a sales process.
How we think
Five things we're opinionated about.
The workflow matters more than the technology
Most "AI projects" that fail were process problems wearing a technology costume. We spend the first days watching how work actually moves through your business, because automating a broken process just breaks it faster and more expensively.
Efficiency belongs to the client
When a tool makes us faster, the price comes down — it doesn't become extra margin we quietly keep. Same principle on everything we pass through: hosting, domains, model usage and licences all go on your accounts at cost, so we never have a reason to steer you toward the expensive option.
Boring technology, deliberately
We pick tools with large hiring pools and long track records. If we get hit by a bus, you should be able to hire someone in Toronto next week who understands your codebase on day one. Novelty is a cost you pay later.
A human signs off on anything that matters
Language models are excellent at first drafts and unreliable at final answers. Every system we build knows which category it's in — and escalates to a person when it isn't confident, rather than inventing something plausible.
Measured, or it didn't happen
"It seems better" is not a result. We agree on the number before we build — hours saved, response time, error rate, page speed — and we report it afterwards even when it's not the number we hoped for.
Your data is your data
We default to Canadian or US data residency depending on your obligations, turn off training-on-your-data wherever a vendor offers the switch, and tell you plainly which third parties touch what. If a workload can't leave your walls, we'll build it so it doesn't.
Who you'll work with
You get the builder, not a handler.
Alex Saringer — Founder & Principal Developer
Built by AI is a small, deliberately senior studio based in Toronto. The person on your discovery call is the person writing the code, and the person you email in six months when something needs changing. For larger builds we bring in a trusted collaborator or two — always people we've shipped with before, never an anonymous subcontractor you've not been told about.
Replace this paragraph with two or three specific sentences about your background — years building software, industries you know well, the kind of problem you most enjoy. Specific beats impressive.
Practicalities
The details people ask about.
Hours and response
Monday to Friday, 9–6 Eastern. Email gets a reply within one business day. Clients on a care plan get a faster lane and a direct line during business hours.
Contracts and invoicing
Plain-language contracts, Ontario law. Fifty percent to book the window, fifty on launch. HST on Canadian invoices. Interac, wire, or card.
Insurance and compliance
Happy to provide proof of commercial liability and E&O coverage, sign your NDA, and complete vendor security questionnaires. Just ask during scoping.
Languages
We work in English and build bilingual EN/FR sites where you need them — useful if you sell into Quebec or deal with federal procurement.
What we won't do
Scraping people's personal data, mass unsolicited outreach, engagement-farming content, or anything designed to deceive the people it's aimed at. We'll say no and explain why.
Currently booking new projects
Let's find out if this is worth building.
Twenty minutes on a call, no obligation and no pitch deck. Worst case you leave with a clearer idea of the problem than you had going in.