Behest vs building your own
Months to build a control plane. Hours to start with Behest.
Attribution, budgets, chargeback, governance, and routing are already built, maintained, and ready. Developers are running in hours once a trial is approved; enterprise rollouts take days to weeks, in our cloud or yours.
The short version
Is it better to build or buy an AI control plane?
Building your own means attribution, budgets, PII scrubbing, model policy, audit, and routing: roughly 9 to 18 engineer-months by our estimate, plus upkeep. Behest, the control plane for enterprise AI, ships all of it. Developers are running in hours once a trial is approved; enterprise rollouts take days to weeks.
What you get instead of a build project
Hours to start, not months to build
Developers sign in, point an app at Behest, and the controls are already there. Enterprise rollouts with your own providers, teams, and policies take days to weeks, not a quarter of engineering.
Nothing to maintain
Security patches, new AI providers, new models, and new attack techniques are handled for you. No budget enforcer to fix under load, no audit store to babysit.
Governance from the first call
Model access by team and an audit trail of every call are included. On the Enterprise plan, private data is removed before a model sees it and prompt attacks are blocked, so security reviews start from yes instead of from a to-do list.
What you would have to build
An enterprise-grade AI control plane, estimated as one build plus ongoing upkeep, by our estimate. Every capability ships in Behest today.
| Estimate | You build it | Behest |
|---|---|---|
| Production, enterprise-grade build: design, build, security review, testing, and load testing | 9-18 engineer-months | Included |
| Ongoing maintenance: provider API changes, security patches, new attack techniques, dashboards | 0.5-1 FTE per year | Included |
| Time to the first controlled AI call | Months | Hours, once a trial is approved |
Estimates are typical ranges for a team building the whole control plane to production quality; your numbers will vary. Private-data removal and prompt-attack defense are Enterprise plan capabilities in Behest.
Frequently asked questions
- Should I build or buy an AI control plane?
- Building attribution, budgets, chargeback, PII scrubbing, model policy, audit, and routing takes months, then needs ongoing maintenance as providers and attack techniques change. Behest ships all of it already built: developers are running in hours once a trial is approved, and enterprise rollouts, in our cloud or yours, take days to weeks.
- How long does it take to build an AI control plane from scratch?
- By our estimate, a production, enterprise-grade build of attribution, budgets, chargeback, private-data scrubbing, prompt-attack defense, model policy, audit, and routing, including design, security review, testing, and load testing, takes roughly 9 to 18 engineer-months, then 0.5 to 1 FTE per year to maintain as providers, models, and attack techniques change. Your numbers will vary.
- What are the hidden costs of building your own AI control plane?
- Ongoing maintenance and security patches, scaling problems under load, the opportunity cost of engineers not working on your product, hiring specialists, and keeping up with new AI providers, new models, and new attack techniques.
- Can I migrate from a DIY AI control plane to Behest?
- Yes. Behest uses the same API format as OpenAI, so switching is straightforward: point your existing calls at your Behest project URL and the controls apply from the first call.
Skip the build. Keep the control.
Attribution, budgets, governance, and cost-aware routing already built, in our cloud or yours. See it on your own AI stack.
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