How Much Does a Fractional CTO Cost?
Most pricing pages in this market stop at "contact us". Here are the numbers instead: what the market charges, what I charge, and what moves the figure in either direction.
A fractional CTO typically costs $8,000–25,000 per month on retainer, against $200,000+ per year plus equity for a full-time hire. Oleg Sotnikov charges $5,000–10,000 per month for fractional CTO work, from $3,000 per month for advisory, and $5,000 fixed for a five-day Team & AI Audit. The monthly retainer is the standard billing model in this market; hourly rates are rare, and day rates appear mostly in UK engagements. Every engagement is month-to-month.
How Fractional CTOs Charge
Four billing structures behind the fractional CTO rates you see quoted. The first one covers most serious engagements.
Monthly retainer
The standard. You buy a level of involvement for the month rather than a stack of hours, and the CTO owns outcomes: architecture, hiring, delivery. Market retainers sit at $8,000–25,000/month; mine is $5,000–10,000.
Day rate
Common in the UK market and for work with defined edges: a due-diligence review, a board-facing assessment. It suits an assignment with a start and an end, though it prices attention rather than responsibility.
Hourly
The fractional CTO hourly rate is a popular search and a rare contract, usually a warning sign. Billing by the hour pays for time spent instead of problems removed, and it turns every architecture conversation into a metered call. What you actually hire a CTO for is judgment, and nobody invoices that honestly by the hour.
Equity or hybrid
Early-stage companies often ask to cover part of the retainer in equity. That can make sense when cash is the real constraint, but it changes the role: an advisor with a vesting schedule is a part-owner, not a hired operator. I keep the cash portion meaningful so both sides stay clear on what is being bought.
What the Alternatives Cost
The same job, senior technical leadership, priced three ways.
Full-time CTO
$200,000+
per year, plus equity
- Equity on top, plus benefits and payroll tax
- Months of searching before anyone starts, and a bad hire makes you run it twice
- You still fund the whole team underneath
Market fractional CTO
$8,000–25,000
per month, retainer
- The usual range for an experienced operator at a few days a month
- Firms sit at the top of it, because you also pay for their bench
- Tooling, CI, and monitoring stay on your own budget line
Fractional CTO with me
$5,000–10,000
per month, month-to-month
- One senior operator, no agency margin between you and the work
- GitLab with in-memory CI runners, Sentry, Grafana, and Loki included, a stack worth $2,000–5,000/month
- Advisory from $3,000/month, or the $5,000 fixed audit as an entry point
These figures are here for comparison. What sits inside each package is listed in full on my pricing page.
What Moves the Price
Most of the spread between one quote and the next comes down to these.
Scope: advice or hands on the work
Judgment on a weekly call is one price. Owning delivery is another: writing code, running the pipeline, being on the hook when something breaks overnight. My own line falls at $3,000/month for advisory and $5,000–10,000 for the operating role.
Company stage and team size
A seed company with a handful of engineers needs decisions and an architecture that holds. An org spread across several squads needs process, hiring, and a management layer, which takes more days and costs more money.
Specialized work
AI transformation and technical due diligence carry a premium. Both are judgment calls made against a deadline with real money on the outcome, and due diligence in particular compresses weeks of review into a short window.
Timezone and cadence
Daily standups inside your working hours cost more than async review with one call a week. I work US Pacific and async-first, in English and Russian, which keeps the cadence affordable without leaving anyone waiting a day for an answer.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much does a fractional CTO cost?
Most fractional CTOs work on a monthly retainer of $8,000–25,000, depending on seniority, how involved they are, and whether you hire an individual or a firm. A full-time CTO costs $200,000+ per year plus equity, before you count the team underneath. My own fractional CTO rate is $5,000–10,000 per month, with advisory from $3,000. Fractional CTO pricing is retainer-first across the market; CTO-as-a-service pricing is the same question under a productized label, and the numbers above still apply.
Why is your rate below the market range?
Three reasons, and less experience is not one of them. You work with one senior operator instead of an agency, so no bench margin lands on the invoice. Delivery is AI-lean, so the same output takes fewer hours. And my platform (GitLab with in-memory CI runners, Sentry, Grafana, Loki) comes with the engagement rather than arriving as a separate $2,000–5,000/month line.
Do you charge hourly?
No. I price monthly retainers, and so do most serious fractional CTOs. Hourly billing puts the two of us on opposite sides of the same clock: I get paid for time, you need the problem gone. Day rates are common in the UK market and reasonable for bounded work such as a due-diligence review, but ongoing technical leadership belongs on a retainer.
What's included at $5,000–10,000 per month?
Team transformation comes first: restructuring engineering around AI so fewer people ship more. Then AI development workflows, my platform (GitLab, in-memory CI, Sentry, Grafana, Loki), the "how to work" framework your team keeps after I leave, and ongoing technical leadership across architecture, hiring, vendors, and board questions. The pricing page breaks down what belongs to each package.
Can we start small?
Yes. The $5,000 Team & AI Audit is the usual entry point: five business days, a written report, and a walkthrough call, with no obligation to continue. Most clients move to a monthly retainer afterwards, and everything after the audit is month-to-month, so you can stop at the end of any month.
See the Full Price List
Three packages with published prices. You do not need a discovery call to find out what things cost.
Month-to-month, cancel anytime. 3 client slots open for 2026.
Related reading
Notes on fractional leadership, AI-lean teams, and what engineering actually costs.
