Fixed price vs hourly agency billing
Agencies quote hours. Founders need outcomes. Fixed-price products cap cost and define deliverables before code starts.
Last updated: 2026-06-13
Fixed price vs hourly agency
Hourly and T&M agencies bill for time spent. Stantons Dev House sells The Investor Demo, The Core Engine, and The AI Cortex with published EUR tiers and fixed scope. You receive named deliverables in your AWS account instead of open-ended statements of work.
Why hourly estimates drift
Discovery phases, change requests, and integration surprises expand agency SOWs. Founders absorb risk while the vendor logs hours.
Fixed-price products force scope conversations upfront. We map your stage to a tier with known workflows and integrations.
You still get senior engineers. The commercial model changes, not the craft.
What you get with fixed price
A named product deployed to your AWS account with repo access and IaC. Upgrade paths between demo, SaaS core, and AI cortex are documented.
Published tiers on the site set expectations before the sales call. The demo call confirms fit and returns a guaranteed quote.
See our agency alternative page for a side-by-side positioning summary.
When hourly might still make sense
Open-ended R&D with no defined outcome may fit staff augmentation or internal teams better than product purchase.
If your board demands a specific hourly vendor, compare total cost to a fixed deliverable with the same milestone dates.
Most pre-seed and seed founders optimizing for fundraising or first revenue choose fixed scope.
How to compare two proposals fairly
Line up deliverables, not day rates. Ask each vendor what you own at handoff and which AWS account runs production.
Add your founder hours to hourly quotes. Fixed-price products include senior delivery and architecture in the tier.
Talking to your board about fixed scope
Boards prefer predictable build spend tied to milestones. Present product tier, EUR price, and delivery date together.
Link to our agency alternative page if directors want a positioning summary versus incumbent vendors.