What you are really comparing

A cost comparison between a fractional and a permanent CIO is not a single number against another single number. You are comparing two different ways of buying the same outcome: a senior technology and security leader who can set direction, make decisions and carry the board. A permanent hire is a fixed annual salary plus the costs that sit on top of it. A fractional CIO or CISO is a defined slice of that leader’s time, priced to the scope you actually need. The figure that matters is the total cost of getting the work done, not the headline salary.

The three engagement models, and how each is priced

There are three ways to buy CIO-level leadership, and they are priced on different bases. Understanding the basis is the first step to budgeting honestly.

• Full-time salary. An annual fixed cost. The work fills the role whether or not there is a full week of CIO-level decisions to make. On top of the salary sit employer National Insurance, pension, recruitment fees, bonus and the cost of the time the role sits empty during the hiring process.
• Monthly retainer. The common shape for a virtual CIO or vCIO engagement. You agree a fixed number of days or a fixed scope each month and pay a predictable fee. You are buying judgement and continuity without the full-time overhead.
• Day rate. The usual basis for interim cover and project work. You pay for the days worked. It suits a defined piece of work with a clear end: a transformation programme, a due diligence exercise, or covering a sudden leadership gap.

Starkhorn publishes its engagement models openly on the pricing page rather than asking you to guess. The right model depends on whether you need ongoing leadership, a fixed project, or short-term cover.

What drives the cost up or down

Whichever model you choose, the same factors move the number. Scope is the largest. A few days a month of board-level steer costs far less than near full-time programme leadership. Seniority matters: a leader who can sit in front of investors and a regulator commands more than a hands-on technical manager, and for good reason. The state of your estate matters too. An organisation mid-way through a messy migration, or one carrying real cyber risk, needs more attention than one that is stable.

The work itself drives the figure. Standing up board-level cyber governance, preparing for NIS2 compliance, building an incident response plan or setting an AI governance framework each carry different effort. Rather than quote a figure that would not survive contact with your situation, Starkhorn scopes the work and prices it to that. The cost calculator lets you model your own variables before you speak to anyone.

Why fractional is usually cheaper for the work involved

The core reason is simple: most mid-market organisations do not have a full-time CIO’s worth of CIO-level decisions to make every week. They have strategy to set, risk to govern, a board to brief and a handful of significant programmes to steer. That is real, demanding work, but it does not fill a five-day week of executive-grade judgement every week of the year. A permanent salary pays for the full week regardless. A fractional model pays for the decisions that actually need making.

A permanent hire also carries costs that never appear on the salary line: recruitment fees, the months a senior search takes, the risk of a poor fit, and the ramp-up time before a new hire is productive. A fractional or interim leader is productive from the first week and carries none of those on-costs. For most organisations buying CISO as a service or fractional CIO support, the total cost of getting the same outcomes is meaningfully lower than a permanent appointment, with the added benefit that you can scale the engagement up or down as need changes.

When a permanent hire is the right spend

This is not an argument that fractional always wins. If your organisation genuinely needs a full week of CIO-level attention every week, has a large internal technology function to manage day to day, and expects that to hold for years, a permanent hire can be the better long-term value. The honest test is demand: if the role would be busy at executive level five days a week, buy it five days a week. If it would not, you are paying for time you do not use. Many organisations use a fractional or interim leader precisely to work out which of those is true before committing to a permanent salary.

The cost of getting it wrong

Any cost comparison is incomplete without the downside. Weak technology and security leadership is expensive in ways that dwarf the leadership fee. The IBM Cost of a Data Breach Report 2025 puts the global average cost of a breach at USD 4.44 million. UK regulators act on poor governance: the ICO fined British Airways £20 million in 2020 and Interserve £4.4 million in 2022. Set against figures of that size, the cost of competent leadership, whether through cyber security consulting, ransomware readiness or fractional CIO support, is small. The expensive option is having no one senior accountable for the risk.

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 of leading technology and security at group level, on an interim basis at VetPartners and permanently at Jardine Motors Group, is exactly the perspective needed to tell you honestly when a slice of senior time is enough and when a full-time hire earns its salary.

Frequently asked questions