Pricing
A fractional CTO with frontier AI behind him, billed three ways. You don’t need a call to find out what an hour costs, what a fixed project is quoted against, or what a retainer reserves — it is all here, and none of it changes once we start.
Engagement models
The work is the same in all three — the difference is who carries the risk of the scope moving, and what you want to commit to before it does.
Flexible hourly billing for work that doesn't need a fixed scope agreed up front.
$200/hr
Ideal for
What it gives you
One-time delivery against an agreed scope, with the price settled before work starts.
Fixedprice
Ideal for
What it gives you
An ongoing partnership with reserved capacity, from a minimum of 20 hours per month.
Custom
Ideal for
What it gives you
Side by side
Nine lines. Everything not on this table is identical in all three — the engineer, the standard, and what gets handed over.
| Terms | Hourly | Project-based | Retainer |
|---|---|---|---|
| Minimum commitment | None | The agreed scope | 20 hours a month |
| Rate | $200 an hour | Quoted, then fixed | Reduced against $200 |
| Price fixed before work starts | No | Yes | Partly |
| Change the scope mid-flight | Any time | By change order | Any time |
| Capacity reserved for you | No | For the project | Yes |
| Answered first | Standard | Standard | Yes |
| Billing | Fortnightly | On milestones | Monthly |
| After release | Billed as hours | 30-day warranty | Included |
| Best for | Small scopes, exploration | MVPs, launches with a date | Live products, growth |
Move between models at any point — most clients do
In every engagement
These are the jobs that separate software that runs from software that keeps running. They are not add-ons, not a phase at the end, and not billed separately — they are in the rate, whichever model you pick.
Schemas, service edges and data ownership settled before anything is generated. These are the decisions traffic makes permanent.
Authentication, authorisation and what each role may touch — specified by a person, and the one area where no generated answer ships unread.
Every line AI writes is read and reshaped by the engineer who will answer for it in six months. Generated code is a draft, not a delivery.
Automated coverage written alongside the code, so a change a year from now fails loudly in a pipeline instead of quietly in production.
Written as a side effect of the work rather than promised after it — architecture, APIs, and how to run the thing.
Pipelines, environments and infrastructure as code. A release is a command, not an afternoon.
Logging, metrics and alerts from the first deploy, so a problem is something we see rather than something you report.
Query plans, caching and payloads treated as build work. Slow is a defect, and it is cheapest to fix before launch.
Direct access to the two people doing the work, on a fixed rhythm. No account layer, no status theatre.
Before you talk to anyone
Pick the project type, the complexity and the timeline. The estimator returns a range, the hours behind it, and what the same work costs under each of the three models — the same arithmetic we would do on a call.
Estimated cost
$64,000 – $87,000
This estimate is non-binding and provided for planning purposes only. Final pricing depends on detailed scope validation.
Terms
Everything below is how we actually work. If an answer here rules us out, better that you know now than after a call.
A short scoping conversation, then a written breakdown of hours, milestones and deliverables, with contingency for testing and revisions built in. The hourly rate is published so you never need a call to learn what an hour costs; a fixed price is a different thing — it needs the scope in front of us before we can hold it.
Most clients do. Hourly while the direction is still forming, project-based to get the first version out against a date, then a retainer once it is live and the work becomes continuous. There is no penalty for switching and no new onboarding when you do.
On hourly and retainer work, nothing — you change your mind and we adjust. On a fixed price, a material change gets a change order with the new price and date before any of it is built. You will always see the impact before we act on it.
All of it: discovery, technical planning, system design, implementation, code review, testing, deployment, documentation, meetings and the messages in between. Third-party services — hosting, APIs, licences — are billed through at cost, never marked up.
Hourly is invoiced fortnightly against tracked hours. Fixed-price work is billed on milestones, so you pay for delivered and approved work. Retainers are billed monthly in advance. Bank transfer, ACH or card.
Yes. Retainer hours are billed below the standard rate, and the rate improves as the monthly commitment rises. Large fixed-price projects are quoted on the same basis.
Thirty days’ notice to cancel, and you can pause for up to two months a year without penalty. Unused hours do not roll over month to month, but tell us in advance about a planned quiet period and we will bank them.
You are never locked in. Hourly stops whenever you say so, fixed-price work is paid milestone by milestone, and a retainer ends on notice. We would rather tell you in week one that we are the wrong people than invoice you for a year of it.
A useful first conversation
Run an estimate, then bring it to us. Thirty minutes with the two people who would do the work, and an honest answer about what it takes.
