For founders and managing directors who need technology leadership or delivery but aren’t sure whether to hire, bring in a part-time expert or pay for a team. By the end you should know which option fits your stage and roughly what each costs.
A fractional CTO gives you senior technology leadership for one to three days a week, typically £3,000 to £8,000 a month, but usually doesn’t build anything. A product subscription gives you a team that designs and builds for a fixed monthly fee. Hiring a full-time CTO costs well over £120,000 a year once tax and fees are added.
In brief
- A fractional CTO sets direction, reviews suppliers and represents technology to investors. You still need someone to do the building.
- A product subscription delivers the work itself, with senior people deciding how it’s built, for a fixed monthly fee you can pause.
- A full-time CTO makes sense once technology is the core of the business and there is a team for them to lead.
- In the UK, employer National Insurance adds 15% to salaries above £5,000. In the Isle of Man the employer rate is 12.8%.
- Many businesses combine two of these, for example a fractional CTO overseeing a subscription team.
What does a fractional CTO do?
A fractional CTO is an experienced chief technology officer who works for several businesses part-time. They make the technology decisions a business can’t make alone, but they rarely write the code themselves.
Typical work for a fractional CTO includes:
- Choosing the technology and the architecture for a new product
- Reviewing suppliers, quotes and the quality of work being delivered
- Preparing technical due diligence for investors or buyers
- Hiring and managing the first developers
- Setting security and data protection practices
UK fractional CTOs typically charge £3,000 to £7,000 a month on retainer for one to three days a week, or around £1,000 to £1,600 for single days. Other market surveys put the wider range at £2,000 to £8,000 a month. Fintech, healthtech and other regulated sectors usually pay more.
When choosing a fractional CTO, look for someone who has built products in a business like yours, not just managed large teams. Ask for two references from current or recent clients of a similar size, and ask what they delivered in the first three months. Agree in writing how many days you are buying, how quickly they’ll respond between those days, and what happens to their access and your documents when the arrangement ends.
How does a product subscription work?
A product subscription is a team of designers, developers and other specialists who work on your roadmap for a fixed monthly fee. You send requests, the team prioritises and ships them, and you can usually pause or scale up as your needs change.
The difference from a fractional CTO is output. A subscription produces designs, features, websites and integrations every week. Senior people on the team make the technical decisions as part of that work, which covers most of what a smaller business needs from a CTO.
The trade-off is commitment. A subscription team works for several clients, so it isn’t the right home for a person you want on your board or holding equity. For most businesses that need things built and don’t yet need a technology executive, that trade-off works in their favour.
What does it really cost to hire a CTO?
A full-time CTO is the most expensive option, and the salary is only part of the cost. Robert Half’s 2026 salary guide puts the UK median CTO base salary at £160,500, while job adverts tracked by ITJobsWatch quote a median of around £120,000.
Here is the first-year cost of a CTO hired on a £120,000 salary in the UK:
| Cost | Amount |
|---|---|
| Salary | £120,000 |
| Employer National Insurance at 15% above £5,000 | £17,250 |
| Recruitment fee at 25% of salary | £30,000 |
| Total before pension, benefits, equipment and equity | £167,250 |
Employer National Insurance is 15% on earnings above £5,000 a year for 2026/27, with no upper limit. Recruitment fees for senior roles vary, and retained search in the UK commonly runs at 25% to 35% of salary.
Then there’s the time. A senior hire can take months to find, and a CTO with no team to lead will often end up doing the building themselves, at a CTO’s salary.
How do the three options compare?
The three options suit different jobs, so compare what you need done before you compare prices.
| Fractional CTO | Product subscription | Full-time CTO | |
|---|---|---|---|
| What you get | Senior technology direction and oversight | A team that designs and builds, with senior technical decisions included | A permanent technology leader |
| Who does the building | Someone else: your developers or a supplier | The subscription team | The CTO at first, then a team they hire |
| Typical cost | £3,000 to £8,000 a month for one to three days a week | From £3,000 a month, depending on capacity | £150,000+ in year one, plus a team |
| Commitment | Monthly or quarterly retainer | Monthly, can usually pause | Permanent employment |
| Best for | Businesses with developers or suppliers that need direction | Businesses that need things built without hiring a team | Funded businesses where technology is the product |
As an example of the middle option, our Studio subscription starts at £3,000 a month for design, development, go-to-market and AI work, and can be paused at the end of any paid month.
What about hiring developers instead of a CTO?
Hiring developers gets work done, but it doesn’t give you anyone to decide what should be built or how. Many small businesses hire one or two developers, then find they also need the direction a CTO would provide.
Contract developers are the quickest way to add capacity. The UK median contract rate for a senior developer was £550 a day in the six months to May 2026, so one senior contractor working full-time costs around £11,000 a month. Two cost £22,000.
That’s good value when you know exactly what needs building and someone senior is setting the direction. It’s poor value when a contractor is left to make product and architecture decisions alone, because those decisions are hard to undo later.
Before choosing any of the options, it helps to answer four questions honestly:
- Do we know what we need built for the next six months, or do we need help working that out?
- Is anyone in the business able to judge whether technical work is good?
- Will we need this capacity every month, or in bursts?
- Is technology the product we sell, or a tool that supports what we sell?
If you can’t answer the first two with confidence, you need direction before capacity, which points to a fractional CTO or a team that brings senior judgement with it. If the answer to the last question is “a tool”, a permanent technology executive is rarely the right first hire.
Which option fits your business?
Start from the gap you need to fill. For most businesses under about 50 staff without an in-house tech team, we’d start with a subscription or a fractional CTO and hire later.
- If you have developers or a supplier but nobody senior checking their work, a fractional CTO fits.
- If you need things designed and built and have no team, a product subscription fits.
- If you’re raising investment and need someone to own the technology story and the technical due diligence, a fractional CTO fits, often alongside a subscription team doing the building.
- If technology is the product, you’re funded, and you have a roadmap for years of work, hire a CTO and build a team around them.
- If you’re starting a new venture and can’t fund any of these, consider a studio that co-founds with you in exchange for equity. Our guide to venture studios explains how that works.
A common mistake is hiring a full-time CTO too early, before there is a team or a budget for one. They end up doing a developer’s job on a CTO’s salary, and often leave once they realise the role isn’t what they expected.
What’s different in the Isle of Man and Channel Islands?
Hiring senior technology people on the islands is harder than in a large UK city, because the local pool is small and relocation adds cost and time. That makes part-time and subscription options more attractive for island businesses than they are for a firm in Manchester or London.
Employment costs are also different. In the Isle of Man the employer National Insurance rate is 12.8% above £176 a week for 2026/27, compared with 15% in the UK. On a £120,000 salary that’s about £14,200 a year in employer contributions rather than £17,250, which helps, but doesn’t change which option fits.
Frequently asked questions
How many days a week does a fractional CTO work?
Most fractional CTOs work one to three days a week for each client, often with some availability for urgent questions in between. Early-stage businesses usually start at one day a week. More days make sense during busy periods such as a major build, a fundraising round or a supplier change, and many arrangements flex month by month.
Can a fractional CTO become our full-time CTO later?
Sometimes. Some fractional CTOs take a permanent role with a client once the business can afford it, but many prefer to keep several clients. A more common path is for the fractional CTO to help write the job description, run the hiring process and hand over to the permanent CTO, which reduces the risk of a costly wrong hire.
Does a product subscription include technical leadership?
A good one does, as part of the work. Senior people on the team choose the technology, review each other’s code and make architectural decisions as they build. What a subscription doesn’t usually include is a named executive who sits on your board, represents you to investors or holds equity. If you need that, pair the subscription with a fractional CTO or a technical non-executive.
What should a fractional CTO’s first month include?
Expect a review of your current technology, suppliers and code, a short written assessment of the main risks, and a plan for the next three to six months. They should also agree with you how decisions will be made and reported. If the first month produces no written findings, ask for them before committing to a longer retainer.
How Hyperlabs can help
Hyperlabs Studio is a senior product team on one monthly subscription, from £3,000 a month. It covers design, development, go-to-market and AI, with the technical decisions made by the senior people doing the work, and you can pause at the end of any paid month. It suits businesses that need things built without hiring a team.