We publish three numbers on the pricing page and update them when they change. Most studios do not. The reason we do is simple: an unpriced proposal costs a prospective client two or three meetings before they learn whether we are in the same universe, and it costs us the same meetings.
The three shapes
Bounded first slice. A written scope, a fixed price, a date. Used to get a real thing into real hands and turn a hypothesis into evidence. It is not a whole product — it is the smallest version of it that a user can actually use, plus the deployment plumbing that makes the next slice cheap.
Dedicated team, per month. A small senior team working continuously against a rolling priority list. This is the right shape once the direction is clear and the constraint is throughput rather than certainty. You get the same people month to month, which matters more than any process.
Senior engineer day rate. For advisory work, audits, a few weeks of reinforcement, or a specialist gap. Priced per day because pretending otherwise invites the kind of estimating theatre we are trying to remove.
What is inside the number
The rate covers engineering time, the design and architecture work that engineering needs to be useful, code review, testing, CI and deployment, and the time spent talking to you directly. It does not cover a bench of unassigned engineers, an account manager relaying messages, or a sales team's commission — none of which appear in your build.
What moves it
Upwards, in rough order of impact: integrations with third-party systems whose owners are slow to give access; compliance evidence such as audit trails and data residency; migrations of data nobody has validated in years; and a decision-maker who cannot join the weekly call.
Downwards: a clear owner on your side, existing API access, a written definition of what "done" means for the first slice, and a willingness to cut scope rather than add weeks.
Where to go next
If the shape is obvious, each tier has its own page with a week-by-week plan. If it is not, the proposal form takes your use case, budget band and timeline and comes back with a written recommendation — including "you do not need us for this" when that is the answer.
Frequently asked
Why publish prices at all?
Because the alternative wastes both sides' time. If the number does not fit your budget you should find that out from a web page, not from a third meeting.
What makes a quote go up?
Integrations with systems we cannot access, compliance evidence, migrations of untrusted data, and decision-makers who are not in the room. Design polish and feature count move it far less than people expect.
Do you do fixed price for a whole project?
Only for a bounded first slice with a written scope. Beyond that, fixed price forces both sides to guess, and the guess is always paid for by quality.