Full disclosure: we're Ryz Labs, and we're one of the options on this page. We think we're the better choice for most teams, and we'll show you why, including when you should stay with Cheesecake Labs. Everything we say about other companies comes from their own sites and public listings, linked at the end.
Cheesecake Labs is a product engineering and AI studio founded in 2013, with an office in San Francisco and its engineering hub in Florianópolis, Brazil. It says it has shipped 300+ products, and it sells fixed-scope AI implementations it says go "live in 8 to 12 weeks," along with modernization, data work and senior engineering teams. Clutch lists a $50,000+ minimum project. Buyers look at alternatives when they want senior engineers drawn from across Latin America rather than one hub, when they want an AI team that keeps running the system after launch, or when they want engineers working on their own roadmap. For those, our pick is Ryz Labs.
A fixed 8-to-12-week AI build is a good way to launch. The hard part comes after: retrieval quality drifts, new document types show up, and the people who built it have moved to the next client. Our AI pod teams stay with the system. A typical pod is about seven senior engineers, including a tech lead, an ML engineer and backend engineers, working in your cloud, your repos and your standups with weekly demos. When you're ready, you can grow the pod or take the whole system over. Fortune 500 engineering teams trust us for exactly this.
The work is in production. Fraud detection for a global fleet company has scored 244K+ invoices in under 30 seconds each and surfaced $5.94M in fraud confirmed by the client's fraud team. An AI driver-support agent covers about 218,000 calls a year in three languages. A pod that grew from zero to three engineers built marketing compliance review for a global capital management firm that handles 8,000+ documents a year. See our case studies.
Only the top 1% make it, out of tens of thousands of engineers interviewed across Latin America. Recruiters source, our in-house ARC system ranks the pipeline, every candidate goes through a structured NTRVSTA AI interview, and recruiters review each one before and after. AI scores are advisory; people decide. See our vetting process. All our engineers work US business hours, including New York hours.
Our rates are public: mid-level $7,000-$10,000 a month, senior $10,000-$15,000, leads quoted per team. A four-person senior pod for three months is 4 × $10,000-$15,000 × 3, or $120,000-$180,000. You get a plan, a price and the names of the people before you start. For a head-to-head, see Ryz Labs vs Cheesecake Labs.
Where we're not the right fit: a studio-led product launch with brand, UX research and mobile design in one package, or a proprietary AI platform you license. Cheesecake Labs or a platform vendor fits those better.
Azumo is a San Francisco-headquartered nearshore company that says it has built production AI since 2016. It sells dedicated teams, staff augmentation and full project builds, and prices project work per "Delivery Unit," which it defines as "a defined, testable piece of working software." It's the closest match to Cheesecake Labs' fixed-scope AI work. See Ryz Labs vs Azumo.
FullStack (formerly FullStack Labs) offers two routes: a cross-functional team that builds and scales your software, or vetted LatAm engineers added through its Connect platform, where you can watch recorded assessments. It says teams are "within three hours of every US time zone" and offers a two-week trial. See Ryz Labs vs FullStack Labs.
Distillery, founded in 2012 and based in Manhattan Beach, California, says it has over 250 professionals. It sells staff augmentation, dedicated agile teams and end-to-end development with its own QA, UX and project management, and lists Anthropic and OpenAI among its partners. See Distillery alternatives.
If you want top 1% senior engineers on your own team, or an AI pod team that ships and keeps improving the system, talk to us. Our guides to nearshore AI engineering teams and nearshore outsourcing companies cover the wider field, and our LatAm developers page covers roles and stacks.
For US teams that want top 1% senior engineers on their own team, or an AI pod team that ships to production and stays with the system, Ryz Labs. You see a plan, a price and the names of your engineers before you sign.
Azumo prices project work per Delivery Unit, which is the most explicit fixed-scope model on this page. If your AI scope is likely to change, a Ryz pod priced per engineer is the better fit.
Ryz recruits senior engineers across Latin America, and our engineers work US business hours. For a broader list, see our guide to LatAm staff augmentation companies, or read about staff augmentation with Ryz.
Ryz engineers work on your team, reporting to your leads. Talk to us to scope your team.
We checked these firms' sites and Clutch profiles in October 2026. Pricing and services change often, so confirm the details with each firm before you sign.
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