Attestly vs doing it manually

For most teams, the real alternative to a tool like Attestly isn't another piece of software — it's a compliance consultant or lawyer, a Word template, and a round of interviews with your engineering team.

The manual route usually looks like this: a consultant interviews your engineers about what the system does, drafts the nine Annex IV sections from what they're told, and you review it. Reported market figures put the Annex IV documentation line item alone at roughly €4,000–€18,000 per system, with some founders reporting being quoted €20,000–€80,000 for a fuller compliance engagement covering classification, documentation, and process. It's a one-time snapshot — if your system changes (new tools, new prompts, new guardrails), the document goes stale until someone pays for a revision.

Attestly reads your agent's actual runtime traces and drafts the monitoring, human-oversight, and change-log sections directly from that evidence, with each sentence linked to the specific trace event behind it. Documentation updates by re-syncing from new traces, not by starting a new engagement. Pricing is published, with a free tier.

Where each one fits better

A consultant brings something Attestly deliberately doesn't try to replace: legal judgment calls — interpreting edge cases, advising on liability, signing off with professional accountability. If your system sits in genuinely ambiguous territory under the Act, that judgment is worth paying for.

If the work is describing what your agent actually did — the part that's mostly mechanical, evidence- gathering work dressed up as a bespoke engagement — Attestly does that from your traces instead of from an interview transcript, and keeps it current as your agent changes. Many teams use both: Attestly for the evidence-backed sections, a consultant or in-house counsel for the judgment calls. Attestly's drafts are a starting point you review and approve, not a substitute for your own sign-off — same as you'd review a consultant's draft.