What does a fractional CTO cost?

A fractional CTO costs less than a permanent hire because you pay for a slice of a senior person’s time rather than a full salary, pension, bonus, equity and the cost of recruiting them. The honest answer to the exact figure is that it depends on three things: the scope of the work, the seniority of the person, and the engagement model you choose. Anyone who quotes you a single national average is guessing, because a two-day-a-month advisory retainer and a three-day-a-week turnaround mandate are not the same product. Rather than invent a number, this page walks through what moves the price and points you to the Starkhorn pricing page and the cost calculator so you can model your own.

The three engagement models, and how each is priced

Fractional and interim technology leadership is usually bought in one of three ways, and each carries a different cost logic. Understanding the model is more useful than chasing a number, because the model is what you are actually budgeting for.

• Day rate. You pay for days used. This suits project work, a technology due diligence exercise, or a defined piece of IT strategy with a clear start and finish. The total is predictable because the scope is bounded, and you stop paying when the work is done.
• Monthly retainer. You agree a fixed number of days each month for a recurring fee. This is the typical shape for an ongoing fractional CIO or CISO engagement, where the same person stays close to your business, attends the board, and owns the technology roadmap over time. Retainers give you the most continuity per pound.
• Full-time equivalent salary. The benchmark you are implicitly comparing against. A permanent senior technology leader carries a salary plus on-costs, and for security leadership specifically a UK CISO salary runs roughly £95,000 to £600,000 or more depending on sector and scale (recruiter DWH). A fractional model lets you access that calibre of person for a fraction of that annual outlay.

The right model follows the work, not the other way around. If you are unsure which fits, the interim leadership route covers a defined gap, while a fractional retainer covers a permanent-but-part-time need.

What actually drives the price up or down

Five factors explain almost all of the variation you see between quotes. Get clear on these and you can predict roughly where you will land before anyone sends a proposal.

Scope. A pure advisory role that shapes strategy and reviews the board pack costs far less than a hands-on mandate that runs vendor selection, hiring, and a transformation programme. The more execution you want, the more days you buy.

Seniority and track record. A leader who has carried real profit-and-loss accountability and sat on a board prices differently from a generalist consultant. You are paying for judgement that prevents expensive mistakes, not just hours.

Days per month. The single biggest lever. Two days a month and three days a week are an order of magnitude apart in cost, and most over-budgeting comes from buying more time than the work needs.

Risk and regulation. Work touching NIS2 compliance, financial services security, or board-level cyber governance demands deeper specialism and tends to sit at the higher end. The downside it protects against is large: the ICO fined British Airways £20 million in 2020 and Interserve £4.4 million in 2022, and the global average cost of a data breach reached USD 4.44 million in IBM’s 2025 report.

Duration and commitment. A longer, predictable engagement is usually more efficient per day than a short, urgent one, because the leader carries context forward rather than relearning your business each time.

Why fractional is usually cheaper than a permanent hire

The comparison most people get wrong is fractional fees against a permanent salary in isolation. The real comparison is the total cost of ownership. A permanent CTO costs salary plus employer pension, national insurance, bonus, equity, holiday cover, and the recruitment fee to find them, which alone can run to a significant share of the first year’s pay. You also carry the risk of a bad hire in a senior, hard-to-replace seat. A fractional arrangement removes the on-costs, removes the recruitment risk, and lets you scale time up or down as the work changes. For most mid-market companies the work genuinely does not need a full-time leader, it needs senior judgement applied to the right problems at the right moments, which is exactly what a virtual CIO or virtual CISO model delivers.

How to budget without a quote

Start from the outcome you need, then count backwards to days. If you want a strategy set and a roadmap owned at board level, that is a small retainer. If you want someone running a security uplift, a CISO as a service engagement, or an incident response plan built and tested, that is more days and a firmer commitment. Write down the deliverables, decide how many days a month they realistically take, and choose the model that matches. The Fractional CIO Cost Calculator turns those inputs into an indicative figure in a couple of minutes, and the pricing page shows how Starkhorn structures engagements so there are no surprises.

Where the money earns its keep

Cost only means something against value. The areas where senior part-time leadership pays for itself fastest are the ones where a wrong decision is expensive to unwind: governing AI adoption and shadow AI before it creates exposure, getting ransomware readiness right before you need it, choosing the right platforms in a transformation, and giving the board a clear view of technology risk and strategy. A few days a month of the right person spent here protects far more than the fee. If you want the work scoped before you commit, cyber security consulting can frame the engagement first.

Why Starkhorn

Starkhorn is led by Daniel J. Jacobs, who has spent over 20 years in technology and security, 15 of them in leadership roles, including Interim Group Technology Director at VetPartners, the BC Partners-backed veterinary group, and CIO and CISO at Jardine Motors Group. He is the author of The Strategy Bridge and holds PRINCE2, ITIL Foundation and full membership of the Institute of Interim Management.

That experience means the figure you are quoted is grounded in having run technology and security at group scale and at board level, so the days you buy are spent on the decisions that actually move the cost and the risk, not on learning your business.

Frequently asked questions