Published numbers, so nobody wastes a meeting.
We publish where our work starts because it saves both sides time. If the floor is above your budget, you have found that out in ten seconds instead of after three calls.
Three ways to work with us.
We recommend starting with the sprint. It is the cheapest way to find out whether the rest is worth doing.
Architecture Sprint
Buy the plan before you buy the build.
Best for: Teams who need a defensible technical direction and a real number to budget against.
- About 50 hours with our Principal Architect & systems lead
- Two working sessions with your team
- System and data model design
- Architecture decision record with trade-offs
- Risk register and phased delivery plan
- Credited in full against a build within 60 days
Project Build
A defined system, delivered and handed over.
Best for: A specific outcome with a clear boundary: an MVP, an AI system, a platform migration, a security programme. Typical scopes in our estimator land between $15,000 and $50,000.
- Fixed scope with a fixed price band
- Weekly staging builds you can click
- CI/CD, tests, and monitoring included
- Pre-release security review included
- Full source and infrastructure ownership
- 30 days of post-launch support
Embedded Engineer
Senior architectural & engineering capacity, not a staffing line.
Best for: Companies who need continuous senior capacity across product, AI, and infrastructure.
- A dedicated senior engineer or architect, 160 hours a month
- Architect oversight at no extra cost
- Your tools, your repository, your standards
- Monthly architecture and cost review
- Add engineers at the same monthly rate
- Pause or cancel with 30 days notice
Senior engineering at global rates, not zip-code rates.
Every number on this page is built from one rate: $50 per senior engineering hour. Architect oversight and the pre-release security review are included, not billed on top. We publish it so you can check our math.
- US product agencies$120 – $250
- UK & Western Europe agencies$90 – $180
- Vetted freelance networks, solo$60 – $150
- Latin America nearshore$50 – $95
- Eastern Europe agencies$45 – $90
- FolrikArchitect and security review included$50
Market ranges are published 2026 senior-developer rate bands from agency and vetted-contractor surveys. We never bill hourly; the rate is how our fixed bands are built.
$5,000 buys about 100 hours of senior engineering: roughly 2.5 weeks of one senior engineer, with the architect and the security review on top at no extra line item.
$8,000 a month is one senior engineer, full time, for 160 hours. The architect’s oversight comes with it.
$2,500 is about 50 hours from an architect and a senior engineer across five working days, and it credits in full against the build.
The estimator runs on the same rate, so every range it shows comes with the hours behind it.
Distributed, not discounted
Our engineers work across time zones, so the rate reflects global senior salaries rather than one expensive city's payroll. The seniority bar does not move: nobody on your project is junior.
No sales or account layer
You talk directly to the architect and engineers who build the system. There is no account manager, sales team, or resourcing markup sitting between you and the work, so none of it is in the rate.
Less rework to pay for
Fixed scopes, weekly staging builds, and a hard cap of four concurrent engagements remove most of the waste that quietly inflates project budgets elsewhere.
Where each practice starts.
These are floors, not quotes. The estimator will get you considerably closer in about a minute.
Four rules we do not bend.
You see a number before you commit
Every engagement starts with a written scope and a price band. If we cannot estimate something confidently, we say so and time-box a spike instead of padding the number.
Fixed bands, not hourly meters
You are buying an outcome. We carry the estimation risk within the agreed band, which means we have the same incentive you do to keep scope honest.
You own everything, always
Code, infrastructure, prompts, workflows, and documentation live in your accounts from day one. There is no proprietary layer holding your system hostage.
Scope changes are priced, not absorbed
When you want something new mid-build we give you the cost and the timeline impact in writing, and you decide. No silent overruns, no end-of-project surprises.
Pricing questions
Because the rate is built on global senior salaries rather than one expensive city's payroll, and there is zero sales or account management layer to fund. What we do not discount is seniority or architectural discipline: every engagement is architected and led by our Principal Architect with pre-release security reviews included. The $50 hourly rate behind every band is published on this page so you can check the math.
Builds start at $5,000, which is about 100 hours of senior engineering. Below that, the architecture, testing, security review, and handover we include on every project would be most of the budget, and a specialist freelancer is a better and cheaper fit. The $2,500 architecture sprint is the only thing we sell below the floor.
Third-party costs are yours and billed to your accounts directly — cloud hosting, model inference, SaaS licences, domains, and an external penetration test if your compliance requires one. We forecast them during the architecture sprint so there are no surprises, and we design to keep them low.
We consider it, as a partial offset against cash, for early-stage companies whose product we understand and believe in. It is never the whole arrangement, and we will tell you honestly and quickly whether it is a fit.
Within the agreed scope, the band holds and the overrun is ours. If the scope changed, we priced that change in writing when it was requested. The failure mode we design against is discovering the problem at the end.
Typically 40% to start, 30% at an agreed midpoint milestone, and 30% on handover. Retainers are billed monthly in advance. We invoice in USD and can accommodate wire, card, or stablecoin settlement.
That is usually the right move. The Architecture Sprint exists exactly for this: five days, a fixed fee, and a plan you own whether or not you continue. It credits in full against a build.
Let us look at your architecture.
Two ways to start, both of them short. Bring the problem, not a specification — the first useful thing we do is tell you what we would build and roughly what it costs.
Book an architecture call
Fifteen minutes, no deck. We map your problem to an approach and tell you what a realistic scope and budget look like.
- A specific technical recommendation
- A budget band you can plan against
- An honest answer if we are the wrong fit
Send a written brief
Prefer to write it down? Send us the shape of the problem and we will reply with a first take, usually under 12 hours.
- Goes straight to an engineer, not a sales inbox
- We reply with an approach, not a brochure
- Links to repos, docs, and screenshots welcome
or email [email protected]