Pricing
What the work costs.
We price engagements, not time. The ranges are published so you can decide whether this is your kind of engagement before you talk to anyone. If a number ends the conversation here, it did its job.
THE LADDER
The ladder
A sequence, not a menu.
The call scopes the work. Product Inception proves the idea. The build or the partnership delivers it. Most ambiguous scopes go through Product Inception first, a full build should never be the first time an idea meets reality.
№ 1
Fit callFree
Thirty minutes. You describe the product, we give you an honest read on fit and the shape of the work. Free in both directions. If the answer is no, we'll let you know, and then do our best to get you in touch with a referral.
№ 2
Product InceptionFrom $7,500
One to three weeks of prototype-led product definition. You get a clickable proof-of-value prototype and an implementation memo. That's enough real software to answer the question that could sink the project, before the real money moves.
About Product Inception№ 3
The engagement
One rung, two shapes. The product decides which; the call is where that gets read.
Phased build$75k–$250kTypical engagement $100k–$200kThree to five months
Phased delivery of a full product, scoped before it starts, priced by phase, with a decision point between each one. The range is wide because products are too, not because the number is negotiable. Three months is the tight end of the schedule and it takes a well-defined scope that holds; four to five months is more common. Qualified work with a defined destination starts here; anything more ambiguous goes through Product Inception first.
- What gets builtTwo to four weeksScope, sequence, and what comes out to protect the rest.
- How it worksThree to six weeksResearch and interface design, before anyone writes the code behind it.
- How it holds upSix to twelve weeksArchitecture and implementation, built to survive the second year.
Embedded partnership$8k–$20k/monthThree-month minimum
An ongoing retainer for embedded engineering partnership or fractional engineering leadership. Senior engineering inside your team, carrying an existing product and its roadmap month over month. Most partnerships are continuity: a build goes live, and the people who made its decisions stay with the product. Partnerships have a three month minimum, enough time to absorb a codebase and be accountable for it. The longest has run four years.
How the numbers work
Ranges come with reasons.
What moves a build within $75k–$250k
How much product has to exist at launch, how many kinds of user it serves, how many systems it integrates with, whether it touches hardware or the physical world, and what compliance asks of it. Most engagements land between $100k–$200k.
Why ranges, not tiers or hours
We price engagements as phased scopes with decision points, not as time. Hours value the typing whereas judgment is the job. A phase buys a defined outcome, and each decision point is a chance to stop, redirect, or continue on evidence. An hourly rate tells you what effort costs; it tells you nothing about what the product will cost. A scoped phase does. A range stops being a range once the work is scoped, and the scoping starts with the call.
Where the partnership fits
A phased build is for a product that needs to come into existence. The partnership, at $8k–$20k/month, is for one that already exists: an ongoing roadmap, a team that needs senior engineering leadership, work that doesn't divide well into phases. Most partnerships are continuity so that the people who made its decisions stay with the product. Partnerships are a three-month minimum, and if the scope is still ambiguous it starts at a Product Inception, not here.
Who's accountable at these numbers
Every engagement is principal-led. Dom scopes the work on the call, owns architecture and the major product calls through the build, and reviews what gets deployed. The person who priced the engagement is the person on the hook for it in production. Where a build needs more hands, specialists come from a small set of recurring collaborators for things like design, UX, and extra engineering capacity. We contract for a defined role and a booked block of time. Nobody is held on standby, so that capacity is scoped into the proposal before you sign, naming the actual people rather than a bench chart. Their work lands in your repository, inside the same written decision log, and clears the same review before release. Continuity, committed capacity, and exclusions are engagement terms, not website copy: raise them on the call and they get answered in the proposal, in writing.
Where this isn't the answer
If you're comparing hourly rates, we can't give you one, and a studio that bills by the hour will answer your question better. If you expected a tier picker, there isn't one, our work doesn't come in sizes. If you need a brochure site, this is more capability than the job wants, and it can be done well for far less elsewhere. None of that is a judgment on the work. It's triage, and it runs in both directions.
What the studio ships
That's every number we have. The next step is a conversation about your product, not a negotiation.
Talk through your productFreeThirty minutesReply within one business dayhello@houseofgiants.com