This is a practical pricing benchmark, not a market survey.
It is based on the public pricing I use across Daniel Johnson and We Scale Startups, the current service ranges on both sites, and the operating patterns I see when founders compare a fractional CMO with an agency, consultant, junior marketer, or full-time CMO hire.
The goal is not to create a universal rate card. It is to give founders a sane comparison before they commit to the wrong shape of help.
The useful benchmark range
For post-PMF startups, fractional CMO work usually needs to be compared with three alternatives:
- a specialist agency at roughly £6k–£20k/month
- a senior full-time marketing leader at roughly £120k–£180k base plus equity and on-costs
- a narrower consultant or freelancer who can advise or execute one slice, but does not own the whole GTM system
My public fractional CMO pricing currently sits at:
- Strategy Sprint: from £6,000 for 2–4 weeks
- Fractional CMO: from £7,500/month, 3-month minimum
- Fractional CMO Plus: around £12,000/month for deeper operating support
On the We Scale Startups side, the broader consultancy ranges are:
- Growth Diagnosis: from £4,000
- 90-Day Growth Sprint: from £15,000
- Acquisition System Build: from £30,000
- Fractional CMO: from £8,000/month
Those ranges are deliberately visible because they filter out the wrong buying conversation early.
What the fee is actually buying
The fee is not buying a cheaper version of a full-time CMO.
It is buying senior ownership for the stage where the company needs better growth decisions before it needs a permanent executive layer. In practice that means:
- diagnosis of the current growth bottleneck
- ICP, positioning, offer, and channel judgement
- reporting and weekly decision rhythm
- agency or team direction
- sharper hiring briefs
- handoff of the operating system when the company is ready to internalise it
That is why comparing a fractional CMO with a channel agency can be misleading. The agency may be doing valuable work, but the job is different. One executes a channel. The other decides what the system should do and how the channel fits inside it.
When the cost is justified
The cost is easiest to justify when a founder is still carrying too many growth decisions personally.
If the company has traction, customers, and enough commercial signal to scale, unclear growth ownership becomes expensive quickly. The hidden cost is not just missed campaigns. It is slower learning, weaker hiring, confused agency briefs, messy reporting, and founders spending senior time on decisions the company should be able to run without them.
The spend is harder to justify when the company is pre-PMF, pre-revenue, or still unsure whether the problem is worth solving. At that stage, the company needs customer research and product learning more than a fractional CMO.
A simple decision rule
If you know exactly what channel you need executed, hire the specialist.
If you do not know which channel matters, why the funnel is stuck, what the positioning should say, or what the team should stop doing, senior fractional leadership is often the cleaner first step.
The best engagement should leave the company with a stronger system, not a dependency on one external person forever.