DevOps pricing for startups, written down.
Fractional DevOps pricing for startups, with nothing hidden behind a sales call. Prices in US dollars, excluding VAT or sales tax. UK clients can be invoiced in pounds at the day's rate.
Buff: fixed price.
Blue: monthly.
Pink: compliance.
Everything we sell, on one board.
AWS production readiness review
A fixed-price AWS review for startups: five working days, read-only access, a ranked fix list with cost and effort per item. The $1,900 fee comes off your first month on a plan. What the review checks.
AWS cost reduction, paid from savings
No upfront fee for cutting your AWS bill: we make the changes and invoice 20% of the verified monthly saving for 6 months. For startups with AWS spend from $8,000 a month, ideal before credits expire. How savings are verified.
Fractional DevOps plans
A monthly DevOps retainer for startups instead of a full-time hire: 20, 40 or 80 engineering hours on AWS, Terraform and CI/CD, with response times in writing. Fractional DevOps pricing compared with hiring.
AWS cost review, fixed fee
A fixed $1,500 AWS cost review for accounts spending up to $30,000 a month. You get every saving priced per month and keep all of it; under 3x the fee in annual savings, the review is free. Reduce AWS costs before the credit cliff.
SOC 2 infrastructure package
SOC 2 for startups on AWS: the infrastructure controls auditors test, built in Terraform and wired into Vanta or Drata, from $5,900. The SOC 2 AWS checklist and costs.
Heroku to AWS migration
A fixed-scope Heroku to AWS migration onto ECS Fargate and RDS, quoted after the review, with a rehearsed and reversible cutover. The Heroku to AWS migration map.
The review fee comes off your first month if you start a plan within 30 days. Plans run three months, then month to month with 30 days' notice.
How that compares with the alternatives.
- US DevOps engineer, base salary$130k to $155k /yr
- UK DevOps engineer, median salary£70,000 /yr
- UK contractor, median day rate£525 /day
- Fractional senior DevOps, marketplace rates$100 to $153 /hr
- Our Growth plan, effective hourly$122.50 /hr
The effective rate assumes you use all 40 hours. If you consistently don't, drop a plan; if you consistently need more, it may be time to hire.
When a quote is different from the board.
The strips assume one AWS organisation, one main application and a normal amount of mess. We'll quote separately, before any work starts, when:
- You run on Google Cloud or Azure, or across several clouds
- There are several unrelated products or more than three environments
- You need out-of-hours on-call or a contractual SLA
- A project is a one-off, like a migration or a new Kubernetes platform
We don't charge setup fees, onboarding fees or a minimum spend on top of the board.
How much does a fractional DevOps engineer cost?
With us, $2,900 to $7,900 a month depending on hours and response times. Marketplace rates for senior fractional DevOps engineers run about $100 to $153 an hour; a full-time US hire is $130k to $155k in base salary before overheads.
Do you offer discounts for very early startups?
Not on the plans. We'd rather point you to the free readiness checklist and answer a quick question by email than sell a plan you don't need yet.
Is there anything on top of these prices?
Only things you'd pay anyway: your AWS bill, any tools you choose (a compliance platform, a monitoring service) and the SOC 2 auditor's fee. Those are billed to you directly by the vendor, never marked up by us.
Can we start with something smaller than a plan?
Yes. The readiness review is the smallest paid piece of work, and quick questions by email are free. If something needs a few hours rather than a month, ask and we'll quote it.