// COMPARE

Fixed-price studio vs offshore agency: the real trade-offs

Offshore agencies win on the quoted hourly rate. Fixed-price studios win on the total you actually pay, the date you actually ship, and the state of the code afterwards. Which matters more depends on how well-defined your project is.

Side by side

	Offshore agency (hourly)	Authect (fixed-price studio)
Quoted price	$15–50 per hour	One fixed total per project
Final price	Estimate plus overruns; 20–50% over is common	The quoted price, unless you change the scope
Who does the work	Often junior developers after a senior sales call	The senior engineers you meet on the first call
Communication	Account manager, ticket queue, time-zone gap	Direct with the engineers, in your Slack
Timeline	Open-ended; billed while it runs	3–6 weeks for most projects, confirmed before start
Quality controls	Vary widely; testing is often a separate line item	Tests, security audit and monitoring inside the price
Incentive	More hours, more revenue	Ship on time; overruns cost the studio, not you
Ownership	Check the contract; proprietary frameworks are common	Your repository, standard stack, no licences to keep paying

When an offshore agency is the better choice

You need a large team for a long time (10+ developers for a year) and have your own product and engineering management to direct them.
The work is well-understood maintenance on an existing system with clear tickets.
You can review code and manage quality yourself.

When a fixed-price studio is the better choice

You are a founder or small team without a CTO to manage developers day to day.
You need a date and a budget you can plan a launch or a fundraise around.
The product is new, so the scope needs judgement, not just execution.
You want the people who scoped the work to be the people who build it.

Why the hourly rate misleads

An hourly rate prices the input, not the outcome. A $25 hour that takes three times as long as a $90 hour costs the same and arrives later. The number that matters is total cost to a working, maintainable product, and that number is only knowable in advance with a fixed price.

The second issue is incentives. When the agency earns more the longer the project runs, scope creep is profitable for them. When a studio commits to a fixed price, every overrun comes out of its margin, so it has every reason to scope carefully and ship. That is the whole point of the model.

What Authect commits to

A fixed price and a confirmed timeline before work starts, senior engineers only, weekly previews, a security audit and compliance basics inside the price, unlimited revisions within the agreed scope, and your code in your repository from day one. Payment by bank transfer, Stripe or Whop, with no VAT on invoices from Dubai.

Common questions

What happens if my scope changes on a fixed-price project?

You get a short change order with the price and timeline impact before any work on it starts. Nothing changes without your yes. Small clarifications inside the agreed scope are simply done.

Is a fixed price bad for projects that are still being figured out?

It's bad for open-ended research. For a product you can describe in a page, it's better: the scoping call turns the idea into a defined first release, and later phases are quoted separately as you learn.

Where is Authect's team?

Authect is registered in Dubai and works with clients in the UAE, Europe, the US and Latin America. Work happens in your tools and time zone overlap is planned on the first call.

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