Open data

The Fractional Rates Index

What fractional product leadership actually costs, measured from prices providers publish themselves. Free to read, quote and reuse.

Edition

August 2026 · v1.2

1 in 6

at least 17.5%

At least 17.5% of providers publish a price (129 of 736), the floor of a 17.5%–22.4% interval: 36 providers could not be read and are counted as non-publishing.

Fractional Rates Index · August 2026 · v1.2 · N=736 providers, 938 provider-offering rows, captured 17–21 August 2026

The Transparency Index

CTO is the most transparent role, roughly twice the CFO rate. A provider offering more than one role appears once per role, so the role samples overlap.

Table 1 — providers publishing a price, by role
Role	Publishes a price	Publishing / in sample
CTO	24.3%	35 / 144
CMO	19.4%	31 / 160
COO	16.1%	23 / 143
Multi-function	15.8%	9 / 57
CPO	13.5%	14 / 104
CFO	12.5%	19 / 152
All providers	at least 17.5%	129 / 736

Role samples overlap: a provider offering two roles is counted in both. The all-provider figure is by provider, not by row.

The Price Band

Confirmed USD monthly tiers run from $299 to $50,000. Half of the published floors fall between $2,500 and $8,000, and that is the band drawn below.

Interquartile range of published USD monthly floors. The full confirmed range runs $299–$50,000 across 122 tiers from 61 providers, and is not drawn: a linear axis to $50,000 would crush the quartiles.

Table 2 — published USD monthly retainer
Measure	Monthly (USD)
Lowest confirmed tier	$299
First quartile of floors	$2,500
Median floor	$5,000
Third quartile of floors	$8,000
Highest confirmed tier	$50,000
Providers with a published USD monthly price	61 · 122 tiers

Other currencies, monthly median: GBP £4,000 (23 tiers, 12 providers) · EUR €5,450 (12 tiers, 7 providers).

Findings

Quote any of these with attribution. Each copies with its source line attached.

1 in 6

At least 17.5% of providers publish a price (129 of 736), the floor of a 17.5%–22.4% interval: 36 providers could not be read and are counted as non-publishing.

3 in 4

More than three quarters of providers require a sales call to learn the rate (77.6%–82.5%).

$299–$50K

Confirmed USD monthly tiers run from $299 to $50,000 across 122 tiers from 61 providers.

$5,000

The median published USD monthly retainer floor is $5,000.

72%

72% of priced rows are open-ended floors: a starting-at figure with no ceiling.

33%

Only 33% of priced rows state the hours the price buys.

24.3%

CTO is the most transparent role, roughly twice the CFO rate.

43.6%

43.6% of prices found by automated screening did not survive human verification; 5.3% of "no price" verdicts missed a price that was published, 41% of those on a /pricing page the scraper never opened.

Fractional Rates Index · August 2026 · v1.2

Methodology

What counts

Published prices only. A rate stated publicly on the provider's own site or listing. No quotes, no estimates, no hearsay. Every automated verdict was re-checked by hand.

Sample

736 providers, 938 provider-offering rows, captured 17–21 August 2026. 36 providers could not be read and are counted as non-publishing.

Access

Raw data + methodology on GitHub. Reuse under CC BY 4.0. The engagement documents this index informs live at The Engagement Standard.

How to cite this

Fractional Rates Index (August 2026, v1.2). Sivan Kadosh. saasfractionalcpo.com/data. Published prices only, N=736 providers.

Next editions

Fractional CTO
CFO
CMO
COO

Quarterly

The Index is maintained by Sivan Kadosh, who runs an independent fractional CPO practice for B2B SaaS founders. It exists because the pricing question kept getting answered badly. About the practice