Fractional CTO vs. Full-Time CTO for Startups

Quick Comparison

What Does a Fractional CTO Actually Do?

A fractional CTO is a senior technologist who works with your company part-time — typically 10–20 hours per week. They handle the same responsibilities as a full-time CTO but focus on the highest-impact decisions:

• Technical strategy — Choosing the right tech stack, architecture patterns, and infrastructure for your stage
• Vendor and team evaluation — Reviewing agency proposals, evaluating developers, assessing outsourced code
• Architecture decisions — Database design, API structure, security approach, scalability planning
• Investor readiness — Technical due diligence prep, explaining your tech to investors in terms they understand
• Hiring — Writing technical job descriptions, screening candidates, conducting technical interviews
• Code review — Ensuring quality standards when you're using contractors or an agency

What a fractional CTO typically does not do: write production code, manage a daily standup with your engineering team, or handle operational tasks like deployments and incident response. Those are execution-level tasks that belong to your development team or agency.

Learn more: What Is a Fractional CTO and How Does It Work?

When a Fractional CTO Is the Right Choice

• You're pre-product. You have an idea but no code yet. You need someone to help you scope, plan, and choose a development partner.
• You're a non-technical founder. You need a technical voice in the room for strategy discussions, investor meetings, and hiring — but you don't have $250K/year to spend on it.
• You're using an agency or freelancers. You need someone to evaluate proposals, review deliverables, and make sure you're not getting taken advantage of.
• Your engineering team is small (0–5 people). You don't have enough people to justify a full-time CTO managing them. A fractional CTO sets up processes and reviews work without the overhead.
• You're between CTOs. Your previous CTO left and you need coverage while you hire a replacement.

When You Need a Full-Time CTO

• Your engineering team is 10+ people. At this size, you need full-time management — sprint planning, 1:1s, performance reviews, career development.
• Technology is your core differentiator. If your product's value comes from proprietary technology (ML models, complex algorithms), you need a CTO who's embedded in the technical details daily.
• You're post-Series B. Investors at this stage expect a committed C-suite. A fractional CTO signals you're still figuring things out.
• You need a co-founder, not an advisor. If you need someone with skin in the game — equity, full commitment, shared upside — a fractional CTO isn't that.

The Cost Math

Here's what each option actually costs when you account for everything:

For a pre-seed startup with $500K in the bank, spending $300K+/year on a CTO leaves almost nothing for the actual product. A fractional CTO at $10K/month lets you invest the rest in building.

The Common Path

The most successful startups we work with follow this progression:

1. Pre-product → Fractional CTO + Agency. The fractional CTO helps scope the product and oversees the agency building it. Total cost: $15K–$30K/month. Duration: 3–6 months.
2. Post-launch → Fractional CTO + Small team. Hire 1–2 developers. The fractional CTO mentors them, reviews code, and sets processes. Total cost: $25K–$40K/month. Duration: 6–12 months.
3. Growth stage → Full-time CTO. When the team hits 5–10 engineers and you've raised a Series A, hire a full-time CTO. The fractional CTO helps with the transition and can advise during onboarding.

How Eight Bit Studios Offers Fractional CTO Services

At Eight Bit Studios, our fractional CTO service pairs strategic technical leadership with our development team. This means you're not just getting advice — you're getting someone who can also direct the build.

Our co-founder Don Bora brings 35+ years of software experience, including AI research at Northwestern and senior engineering roles at Bank of America and UBS. He's guided dozens of startups from idea to launch as a fractional CTO.

The advantage of a fractional CTO who's also part of an agency: no gap between "what we should build" and "what actually gets built." Strategy and execution are connected.