How to compare private AI agent services
Compare private AI agent services by the work they can demonstrate, the systems they may reach, where evidence and model processing occur, and who operates each component. Ask every vendor to complete the same deployment and acceptance checklist. A useful shortlist depends on your environment and requirements, not an unsupported best-vendor label.
Evaluating this for your team? Discuss your use case, deployment boundary and success criteria in a technical briefing.
Book a technical briefingCompare approaches against the same requirements
- Hosted service: evaluate provider operations, tenant access and every external processing route.
- Customer-hosted platform: evaluate internal infrastructure, identity, backups, upgrades and model serving.
- Disconnected deployment: verify local dependencies, controlled updates, offline licensing and recovery through a disconnected acceptance test.
Ask for evidence, not a category label
- Repeat one real host question and inspect the commands and output.
- Ask which supported platforms and connectors were actually tested.
- Demonstrate a denied action and any human-review path.
- Document model context, logs, backups and support access.
Host investigations show the commands that ran, their exit codes and output, per host.
Execution follows the configured host policy. A command can be approved, denied or referred for human review; individual approval depends on that policy.
Compare cost over the same period
Total evaluated cost equals the agreed recurring service or licence fee plus implementation, customer infrastructure, model usage and any separately priced support or offline work. State the currency, billing unit, term, tax treatment and exclusions in each quote. An on-premises licence does not remove the customer’s compute and operating costs.
Write a shortlist decision your team can defend
Record each mandatory requirement, its evidence, pass/fail result and remaining dependency. Mark an untested requirement as unverified, rather than assuming that a product name or deployment label establishes it.
Review the managed-service scope · Read the security evidence
Questions buyers ask
Which option is best?
Choose the option that meets your required data boundary, demonstrated workflows and operating capacity. Use a common acceptance test rather than a generic ranking.
Does on-premises guarantee local inference?
No. A customer-hosted application can call a hosted model. Identify every model endpoint and processing location in the design.
What controls should we test?
Test default access, administrator permissions, command review, evidence and rejection behavior on the agreed release.
Read-only execution policy is the default on every enrolled host; the full policy is an explicit, per-host choice.
Changing a host's execution policy from read-only to full is an administrator-only action.
Execution follows the configured host policy. A command can be approved, denied or referred for human review; individual approval depends on that policy.
What costs should we compare?
Separate recurring licence/service fees, implementation, customer infrastructure, inference, support and offline release handling. Compare the same host count and support scope.
Where to go next
All guidesBring one question of your own.