A fractional CTO who makes the decisions and ships the code
Most fractional CTOs advise. You still hire and manage the engineers. Deepsel's fractional CTO makes the architecture and roadmap calls, then builds the product with a senior team, so you see working software every two weeks and get a plain-English scorecard every month. $15,000 a month, month-to-month, money back if the first 30 days don't work out.
What a fractional CTO is, and when a startup needs one
A fractional CTO is a senior technology leader who works for your company part of the time, on a monthly retainer, instead of joining as a full-time executive. They own the architecture, the stack, security, hiring and the technical side of fundraising.
In practice that usually means advice. Go Fractional's benchmark (October 2026) puts a typical engagement at 15 hours a week for $9,000 to $15,000 a month, and most fractional CTOs say up front that someone else writes the code. Fine if you already have engineers. Most founders who go looking for one don't (if you did, you'd be hiring a senior developer instead). You need one when:
Non-technical founder, product to build
You've got customers or a term sheet and nobody to turn the idea into software. One accountable person has to make the calls and do the build.
Vibecoded prototype, business to build
AI tools got you a demo. Now it needs auth, security, tests and a deploy that survives real users, and someone senior has to decide what stays and what gets rewritten.
Investors ask who owns the technology
You're raising and the CTO question comes up in every meeting. You need a named senior person who can defend the architecture in the diligence call.
What Deepsel's fractional CTO decides and builds
We call the role a Fractional Founder: the technical cofounder you didn't find, who makes the calls and then ships them. I'm Tim Tran, Deepsel's founder, and I lead every engagement myself, with a senior team in Hanoi that works a daily overlap window with US clients. We keep it small on purpose (three senior people, a handful of retainer clients at a time, and a waitlist when we're full).
Decides
- Architecture and stack. What to build on and what to buy, written down so the next engineer can follow it.
- Roadmap and scope. What ships first and what waits. In a vibecoded or inherited codebase, what survives and what gets rewritten; our software project rescue page shows how that call gets made.
- Investor and tech-diligence calls. A senior person in the room who explains the system and defends the choices.
Builds
- Senior engineers on the keyboard. Khuong Pham (7+ years, full-stack React and Python) and Trang Hoang (QA, 6 years, test automation) do the building and the testing.
- A demo every two weeks. Working software, in repos and servers you own, so there's nothing to hand over later.
- A monthly plain-English scorecard. What shipped, what slipped and what we're doing about it.
How a fractional CTO engagement runs at Deepsel
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Discovery call
Thirty minutes with Tim, free. You get an honest technical read on what you have, and it's yours to keep whether we work together or not.
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First 30 days
We audit what exists, make the architecture and roadmap decisions and show you the first working demo. Wrong fit? Every dollar comes back.
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Two-week cycles
The engineers build. You see a demo every two weeks and get a scorecard every month, and any month you score under 50 is refunded.
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Step back or scale
A typical startup MVP ships inside 1 to 2 months. Then you step back to $0 a month and keep the code, docs and roadmap, or you add engineers and keep going.
Fractional CTO pricing, published and month-to-month
Three plans, no setup fee, no minimum term. If you need a tech lead plus several engineers on parallel workstreams, that's a custom Scale plan, so ask.
Technical Leadership
$15,000 / month
A fractional CTO who takes charge of your technology and answers for it personally, plus the senior engineers who design, build and ship.
- Architecture, roadmap and product decisions
- Senior engineers who build and demo every two weeks
- Investor and tech-diligence support
- Monthly plain-English scorecard
For non-technical founders who need a product built, or a vibecoded product turned into a real business.
Senior Product Engineer
$4,000 / month half-day, or $8,000 / month full-time
One dedicated senior engineer, a demo every two weeks, a daily overlap window with US hours.
For founders who already have a technical lead and need more hands.
Rescue Sprint
$3,000 fixed, one week
One week, one time, for a product that exists but you can't trust yet.
- Full audit of product, code and architecture
- Critical bugs and security holes fixed and shipped
- Plain-English scorecard and roadmap, yours to act on with Deepsel or anyone
The week, day by day, is on our software project rescue page.
For comparison, advise-only fractional CTOs list retainers of $5,000 to $15,000 a month for one to two days a week and $18,000 to $25,000 for three or more (CTO on Demand, July 2026), and Go Fractional's October 2026 benchmark is $9,000 to $15,000 at 15 hours a week. At those prices you still hire and manage the engineers yourself. We've written up the full breakdown of fractional CTO cost and rates.
Guarantees on every plan
- Month-to-month, 30 days' notice, no termination fees.
- First 30 days: full money-back guarantee.
- IP yours from the first commit under a US-jurisdiction agreement; repos and servers in your own accounts.
- Any engineer replaced within 7 days if not a fit.
- Happiness Index: you score us every month on delivery, accepted work and incidents. A month under 50 is refunded.
Who should hire a fractional CTO from Deepsel, and who should not
A good fit
- Non-technical founders with a funded or bootstrapped product to build and ship.
- Founders with a vibecoded prototype that has to become something users and investors can trust.
- Companies between technical leaders who need decisions made and code shipped while they search.
Buy something else
You already have a technical lead. You need capacity, and the Senior Product Engineer retainer at $4,000 or $8,000 a month is the cheaper buy.
You need a full-time executive. A growing engineering org needs a CTO on payroll every day. We can hold the seat while you hire (and hand the new CTO a documented codebase in your own accounts), but as the permanent answer we're wrong.
You want advice only. With engineers already in place, an advise-only fractional CTO at $150 to $250 an hour costs less than we do.
Fractional CTO vs full-time CTO, technical cofounder, agency and freelancer
Full-time CTO
Average total pay $325,186, middle half $245,593 to $438,495 (Glassdoor, October 2026). Add about 43% on top of wages for benefits (BLS, June 2026) and roughly 1% equity for a hired C-level executive (Index Ventures). The right call once you've got the funding and the org to keep one busy.
Technical cofounder
The best outcome if you find the right person. You pay in equity: 45.9% of two-person founding teams on Carta split it equally in 2024 (Carta), and the search takes months, with no reliable average to plan around. Noam Wasserman puts cofounder conflict behind 65% of high-potential startup failures (via Entrepreneur).
Agency or freelancer
An agency builds whatever the statement of work says, and nobody there answers to you for the architecture. A freelancer is fast for a defined feature, but nobody owns the roadmap, the security or the handover. Our guide on how to choose a software development company lists the questions to ask before you sign, and our list of small software development companies for startups compares 16 firms with their Clutch figures.
Ours is $15,000 a month for the decisions and the team that carries them out, month-to-month, with the IP yours from the first commit. That's the top of the advise-only range, with the hands included.
Same job, different names
Virtual CTO, outsourced CTO, CTO for hire, startup CTO. Same offer, different packaging. Three of the terms do mean something specific.
Part-time CTO
A CTO for a set number of hours or days a week, usually one or two, on a retainer. Our part-time CTO page covers hours, prices and the availability trap.
Interim CTO
Full-time but temporary. An interim CTO fills an empty seat while you recruit the permanent hire. Read when an interim CTO makes sense and what one costs.
CTO as a service
The subscription framing, sold mostly by agencies and consultancies as a package. Our CTO as a service page separates the versions that carry accountability from advice sold by the hour.
Fractional CTO questions founders ask
How much does a fractional CTO cost?
Go Fractional's October 2026 benchmark is $9,000 to $15,000 a month for about 15 hours a week. Vendor price lists run $5,000 to $15,000 for one to two days a week and $18,000 to $25,000 for three or more, and that buys decisions only. Deepsel charges $15,000 a month for the fractional CTO and the team that builds. The full guide to fractional CTO cost has the detail.
How much does a fractional CTO charge per hour?
Go Fractional's live data (October 2026) averages $209 an hour, middle half $150 to $250. One vendor, CTO on Demand, quotes $200 to $400 (July 2026). Deepsel doesn't bill by the hour; the retainer is a flat monthly fee.
Is fractional CTO a thing?
Yes. Go Fractional counted 18 job posts and 930 candidate profiles for the role in the 90 days to October 2026. One practitioner on r/startups calls part-time technical leadership an oxymoron, because advice without execution leaves you managing a team you can't evaluate. That gap is the reason Deepsel includes the build team.
Will investors accept a fractional CTO?
At pre-seed, often yes, as long as the product is shipping and a senior person can answer the technical questions. At the VC stage, investors expect a CTO on the team, as one CTO-as-a-service provider on r/startups confirms. Our engagement is the bridge: investor and tech-diligence support is included, and the CTO or cofounder you hire later inherits a documented codebase in your own accounts.
Isn't it a conflict of interest when the fractional CTO also runs the dev team?
It can be, and fractional CTOs on r/startups warn about it: a CTO who profits from billing engineers has a reason to recommend more engineers. Our answer is in the contract rather than in a promise. IP, repos and servers sit in your accounts from the first commit under a US-jurisdiction agreement. The retainer is month-to-month with no termination fees, the first 30 days are refundable, and a month scored below 50 on the Happiness Index is refunded. You leave any month with everything, so there's no lock-in to exploit.
Do I need a fractional CTO or a senior developer?
If someone on your side already owns the technical decisions, you need capacity: the Senior Product Engineer retainer, $4,000 a month half-day or $8,000 full-time. If nobody does, you need the fractional CTO, which at Deepsel comes with the engineers.