How much does a fractional CPO cost?

The published numbers.

Every fixed-scope piece carries a price and a delivery window on its own page. Nothing is quoted on request, because a price you have to ask for is a price that moves depending on who is asking.

• The Sanity Check — from £3,500, about a week. An independent read on a development partner's quote before you sign it.
• The Prototype — from £6,000, one to two weeks.
• The Backlog — from £7,500, one to two weeks.
• The Quality Review — from £8,500, one to two weeks.
• High-Fidelity Designs — from £9,500, two to three weeks.
• The Coaching Programme — from £12,500, eight to twelve weeks.
• The Roadmap — from £15,000, two to three weeks.
• The MVP — from £18,000, two to three weeks.
• The Fractional CPO — from £2,000 a month, three months or more.

What moves the price.

Four things, and none of them is how well the call goes.

• Days per month. The retainer scales with the commitment, not with a rate card that pretends every month is identical.
• Whether there is a team to lead. Owning strategy for a founder who builds it themselves is a different job to leading three squads.
• Whether you need the work owned or reviewed. A quality audit is a week. Owning the roadmap and defending it at board level is ongoing.
• Whether equity is on the table. Converting part of the fee changes the cash number, not the value of the work.

Against a full-time hire.

A Chief Product Officer in the UK is a £150k-plus salary before equity, employer costs and a recruitment fee. Then there is the part nobody prices: the three to six months of searching, the notice period, and the quarter it takes a new senior hire to become useful. For a company that genuinely needs a full-time CPO, all of that is worth paying. For one that needs senior product judgement now and cannot yet justify the seat, it is a six-figure bet placed before the question is settled.

The fractional version is not cheaper per hour. You are buying fewer hours of the same seniority, starting in days, and stopping the month you decide the seat should be permanent.

What you should not pay for.

• A retainer with no scope. If nobody can tell you what changes by month three, you are buying availability rather than outcomes.
• Junior delivery at senior rates. Ask who is actually doing the work, by name, and what percentage of their week sits on your account. A day rate tells you the price. A team sheet tells you the risk.
• Lock-in. The best fractional engagement is the one that ends because you no longer need it. Anything designed to prevent that is designed against you.