Comparison Guide · 2025

CodeMiners vs Software Agency — Dedicated Teams at 65% Lower Cost

Traditional software agencies charge $150–$350/hour and add 30–50% overhead on top of their engineers' salaries. With CodeMiners, you hire the engineers directly — same quality, a fraction of the cost.

65%

Cost Savings vs Agency

$2,200

vs $15K+ at agencies

48 hrs

Start time

Why Agency Pricing Is So High

You're not just paying for engineers — you're paying for the agency:

30–50% agency markup

Every agency bills their engineers out at 2–3x the engineer's actual cost. That premium funds their sales, marketing, and management teams.

Dev rotation

Agencies staff projects with whoever is available, not whoever is best. Your most experienced developers get pulled onto new client acquisitions.

Filtered communication

Your questions go through a project manager, then a team lead, then the developer. Context is lost at every handoff.

Scope as leverage

Change requests mean new proposals, new estimates, new delays. Agencies have financial incentives to keep scope locked.

Hidden costs

Discovery phases, design sprints, QA cycles, and deployment work are often billed separately — the headline rate is just the start.

No continuity guarantee

The developer who built your feature 6 months ago has likely moved to another project. You start over explaining context.

Head-to-Head Comparison

FeatureCodeMinersTraditional Agency
Monthly Cost (1 dev)
From $2,200/month
$15,000–$40,000/month
Who builds your product
Named, dedicated engineers you know
Whoever the agency assigns internally
Developer continuity
Same developer, full engagement
Often rotated mid-project
Team transparency
Direct daily communication
Filtered through project manager
Control over priorities
Direct — you set the sprint
Mediated through account manager
Scalability
Add/remove devs in 48 hours
Slow — requires new proposals
IP & code ownership
Full IP assignment, your repo
Usually included, but verify terms
Overhead & profit margin
Lean structure, low overhead
30–50% agency margin built in
Full-service project ownership
You manage the team directly
Agency manages end-to-end
Discovery & design sprints
Available but you direct it
Structured agency-led process

Skip the Agency Markup

Same vetted senior engineers, no agency overhead. From $2,200/month — start in 48 hours.

Get Your Team Today