Who Owns Your AI Agents If You Stop Paying?
What happens to your automations when the contract ends, and why the answer tells you what the contract was really protecting.
Ask before you sign, not after
It is a strange feature of this market that people commission custom automation without establishing what happens to it when they stop paying. The answer varies enormously and it is rarely volunteered.
| Arrangement | What you keep if you leave |
|---|---|
| Built on the agency's own platform | Usually nothing. The agents stop. |
| Built in your accounts, agency-managed | Everything, if you also have the credentials and the documentation. |
| Licensed to you | Whatever the licence says. Read the termination clause specifically. |
| Work-for-hire, assigned to you | All of it, including the code. |
None of these is dishonest. The first one is a legitimate model with real advantages. But you should know which one you are buying, because it determines what your leverage looks like at renewal.
What the contract term is actually for
A twelve-month minimum makes a provider’s revenue independent of whether the work is working. That is the function of it. It is not inherently wrong — long builds need runway — but it should be priced as what it is: risk moved from them to you.
Month-to-month inverts that. If the agents stop earning their keep, you stop paying, and the provider has to care about month four as much as month one. $2,500/month. Month-to-month. Cancel anytime.
Five questions, in writing
- Who owns the code, the prompts and the configuration when we stop?
- Whose accounts are the model and platform credentials in?
- What is the notice period, and what is the shortest possible commitment?
- If we leave, what exactly do we get handed, and in what format?
- What happens if it does not work — and is that answer a number?
Any provider who cannot answer these in a paragraph each has not thought about it, which is itself the answer. Ours are: you do; yours where possible; one month; everything; and our customers see the equivalent of at least $100,000 in payroll savings within six months. We guarantee it — or we refund every dollar, no questions asked.