The 2026 price ranges
I have been a CFO for 25 years, raised $300M+ for the companies I have worked with, and now work fractionally with founders across the UK, Europe, Africa and the Middle East. These are the ranges I see in the market and use in my own practice.
| Model | Typical price | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly retainer | $3,000 to $12,000/mo | Ongoing finance leadership: reporting, forecasting, board packs, fundraising support. The most common model. |
| Hourly | $150 to $450/hr | Ad hoc advice and short defined tasks. Specialised fundraising work sits at the top of the range. |
| Project fee | $750 to $25,000 | Defined deliverables: a document review, an investor grade financial model, fundraising preparation. |
| Full time CFO (for comparison) | $200K to $500K+/yr | Usually justified above roughly $50M revenue, heavy transaction volume, or IPO preparation. |
Where you land inside the retainer range comes down to four things: stage (a pre seed founder needing a monthly forecast is not a Series A company with investor reporting), complexity (multiple entities, currencies and revenue lines cost more to manage than one product and one bank account), cadence (weekly involvement costs more than monthly), and fundraising, which is the biggest single driver. During an active raise, a fractional CFO’s involvement often doubles for two to three months, and specialised work such as building the model investors will stress test and preparing the data room commands the top of the hourly range.
Why the range is so wide
Because “fractional CFO” is an unregulated label that covers two very different services. At one end is a part time management accountant with a new title: they will produce your numbers, and $3,000 per month is paying for reporting. At the other end is someone who has sat in the CFO chair through raises, exits and scaling, and is bringing judgement: what the numbers mean, what investors will ask, which decision to make. When you compare quotes, you are rarely comparing like with like. The question that separates them is simple: has this person raised money and faced investors as a CFO, or only prepared accounts?
Fractional vs full time: the real comparison
The full time comparison founders make is usually salary only, and it understates the true cost by close to half. A $250,000 CFO salary becomes $350,000 to $500,000 once you add bonus, equity, employer taxes, benefits and recruitment fees, and you carry that fixed cost whether or not there is CFO level work to do every week. A fractional engagement at $5,000 per month is $60,000 per year, roughly 80 to 90 percent less, and it scales up during a raise and down after it. For most companies between $1M and $50M revenue, the volume of genuinely strategic finance work simply does not fill a full time executive’s week, which is why the fractional market has been growing at over 100 percent year on year.
What you should get for the money
A proper retainer, typically 2 to 8 days per month, should include a monthly close review and management accounts you can trust, a rolling cashflow forecast so runway is never a surprise, board level reporting, and availability between sessions for the decisions that cannot wait. If you are raising, it should include the fundraising layer: an investor grade financial model, a deck whose numbers reconcile with that model line for line, preparation for the questions investors will actually ask, and support through diligence. If a quote does not clearly include these, ask what it does include before comparing prices.
When fractional is the wrong answer
Honestly: not everyone should hire one. If your books are a mess, fix bookkeeping first; a CFO working on top of bad data is expensive triage. If you are pre revenue and pre raise, a course or a one off review is better value than a retainer. And past roughly $50M revenue or serious transaction volume, the coordination load usually justifies a full time hire, often paired with a strong controller. A good fractional CFO will tell you which of these you are rather than sell you a retainer.
How I structure engagements
Three entry points, in ascending commitment. A free 30 minute strategy call to diagnose where you are and whether you need a CFO at all. A $750 CFO document review: I review your deck, model and plan the way an investor will, and give you a specific list of what to fix. And fractional retainers in the $3,000 to $12,000 per month range depending on scope, delivered remotely across the UK, Europe, Africa and the Middle East, with onsite work for certain projects. Founders who only need the documents, not the engagement, use InvestorReady.AI: a complete investor pack (deck, plan, 3 year model) from $299 in 24 to 48 hours.