Freelancer, agency, or your own team?
There are five realistic ways to get software built and only one of them is us. This page compares all five on cost, time to start and what actually goes wrong, so you can rule us out quickly if we are the wrong shape for your problem.
The five options, side by side
| Hiring model | Typical cost | Time to start | Best for | Main risk |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Marketplace freelancer (Upwork, Fiverr) | $15–80 / hour | Days to start | A single well-specified task you can describe in one page and verify yourself | No second engineer reviewing the work; the project stops if that one person does |
| Independent senior contractor | $70–150 / hour | 2–6 weeks to start | Extending a system that already has an owner and a working process | You still supply the architecture, the review and the standards |
| Low-cost offshore agency | $8,000–25,000 / project | 1–3 weeks to start | Well-defined builds where the specification is genuinely finished before it starts | Scope-change billing, staff rotation mid-project, and code nobody documents |
| Dedicated team or engineering partner | $4,500–20,000 / month | 2–4 weeks to start | Products that will run for months and be maintained by someone after launch | More expensive than a freelancer, and overkill for a two-week brief |
| In-house hire | $90,000–160,000 / year plus recruitment | 2–5 months to start | Long-term ownership once the product direction is settled | Slowest to start, hardest to reverse, and you must be able to interview well |
Ranges are indicative market rates for European and EMEA delivery in 2026, not CarryCodes quotes. Last reviewed 2026-09-09. Our own published starting prices are on the pricing page.
How to choose, in four decisions
Use a marketplace freelancer when the brief fits on one page
If you can write down exactly what you want, verify it yourself when it arrives, and the whole thing takes under two weeks, a marketplace is faster and cheaper than any agency. We say this on our own website because it is true, and because the alternative, selling a founder a retainer for a job that needed a fortnight, is how agencies lose referrals.
Hire a company when the code will outlive the person who wrote it
The difference is not talent, it is continuity. A company gives you a second engineer reviewing every change before it merges, cover when one person is unavailable, accountability for the architecture rather than just the ticket, and a contract that survives an individual leaving. Those matter from roughly month three onwards, and they matter enormously at handover.
Get an independent audit before you pay the final invoice
Most disputes between a founder and a developer come down to the same thing: the buyer had no way to judge what they received. A code audit from a third party who did not write the code answers that in days rather than months, and gives you specific evidence rather than a suspicion. It is also the cheapest insurance available on a build you have already paid for.
Keep your team and add oversight when the problem is trust, not capacity
If your developers are shipping but you cannot tell whether the work is any good, you do not need to replace them. A fractional CTO reviews what they ship, sets written standards, joins the planning calls and reports monthly on delivery risk. It costs a fraction of rebuilding the relationship from scratch.
Tell us which of the five models you think you need and we will tell you if we agree — including when the answer is a marketplace freelancer rather than us.
Two ways to start, both of them cheap.
Book a call and talk it through, or write the problem down and send it — whichever you would actually do today. Either way you get a reply from an engineer within one business day, and an honest answer about whether we are a fit.
Not ready for either? A $600 consulting session buys one straight answer with no obligation to hire us.