Pricing
How engagements are billed.
Work is billed against a prepaid balance of tokens rather than hourly. You buy a balance, services draw it down as they are delivered, and you always know what is left. The mechanism is written into our Master Services Agreement, so it is the same for every client.
How it works
1. We scope the work with you
A conversation, not a form. What triggered the search, what is in scope, what is not, and what a good outcome looks like.
2. You get a proposal with a number
A statement of work naming the services, the deliverables and the token cost. You are agreeing to a specific number before anything starts.
3. You buy the balance
Prepaid, in advance of delivery. This is the part that keeps a small firm solvent enough to turn down work it should not take.
4. Work draws the balance down
Each service has a token cost. If more is needed to finish, we tell you before we get there, not after.
Why not hourly
Hourly billing pays us for time rather than for outcomes, and it makes every conversation about scope into a conversation about cost. A balance lets work move between assessment, remediation support and advisory as the picture changes, without renegotiating a contract each time.
It also means unused budget stays yours to direct. That matters more than it sounds, because the alternative is spending an allocation because it was allocated.
Straight answers
Questions about the model
- Why tokens instead of an hourly rate or a fixed fee?
- Because scope moves. A token balance lets work shift between assessment, remediation support and advisory without renegotiating a contract each time, and it means unused budget stays yours to direct rather than being spent because it was allocated.
- Do you publish rates?
- No. Engagements vary enough that a published number would be wrong for most readers, and a rate card invites comparison on price rather than on scope. You get a firm number in the proposal, before you commit to anything.
- Do tokens expire?
- The agreement asks that tokens be used within a reasonable time and they are non-refundable. In practice we would rather talk about a balance you are not using than watch it sit there, so raise it with us.
- What happens if the work runs longer than expected?
- We tell you before it does, not after. If additional tokens are needed to finish, that is a conversation while there is still time to change the scope instead of an invoice at the end.
The contractual detail
This page is the plain-language version. The binding terms are in section 3 of our Master Services Agreement, which covers purchase, payment terms, usage accounting, refunds and expiry. Quotes and statements of work reference that agreement directly.
It is worth reading before you sign something rather than after, which is why it is published rather than sent on request.
Want a number?
Tell us what you are trying to find out and we will scope it and quote it.