A fractional CFO costs somewhere between about $1,400 and $12,000 a month on published rates, depending on hours and the stage of your company. Whether that is worth it depends on one question: are you short of numbers or short of judgment? Numbers are cheap to get. Judgment on a fundraise, a pricing change or a board that wants answers is what the money buys.
What the sellers publish
Most published rates come from firms that sell the service, so read them as asking prices. Graphite Financial, which sells CFO services to startups, lists these (Graphite Financial, fractional CFO hourly rates):
| Stage | Hourly | Monthly |
|---|---|---|
| Early stage | from about $150 | Their example: 8 hours at $175 to $350, so $1,400 to $2,800 |
| Growth stage | $200 to $350 | $3,000 to $10,000 |
| Established | project or consulting basis | $3,000 to $12,000 |
| Full-time CFO, for comparison | about $230,000 average US salary, before benefits and equity |
The same page gives the average hourly rate as $175 to $450 in one place and $175 to $350 in its FAQ. That is typical of this market: the numbers are soft, and what you pay depends on the person, how messy your books are and how much of a deadline you bring.
What it costs in runway
A seed-stage company has $1.4 million in the bank and a net burn of $70,000 a month, which is 20 months of runway.
| Option | Monthly cost | Net burn | Runway |
|---|---|---|---|
| No CFO | $0 | $70,000 | 20.0 months |
| Light hourly help, about 8 to 10 hours | $2,000 | $72,000 | 19.4 months |
| Growth-stage retainer | $5,000 | $75,000 | 18.7 months |
A $5,000 retainer is $60,000 a year and costs this company about 1.3 months of runway. Judge it the way you would judge a part-time hire, with the same arithmetic as what a hire really costs. If the CFO helps you raise on better terms, or stops one bad pricing decision, 1.3 months is cheap. If they produce a monthly report you could have read off your own numbers, it is expensive.
What a fractional CFO actually does
The work worth paying for is the part that needs experience you do not have:
- Building the financial model investors will pick apart, and sitting with you through diligence.
- Forecasting and scenarios: what happens to cash if you hire three people, raise prices or lose your biggest customer.
- Board and investor reporting, on a schedule, in the form your board expects.
- Pricing and unit economics: margins, cost of revenue, what each customer is really worth.
- Overseeing the bookkeeper and accountant you already have, so month-end closes and nothing is missed.
What they should not be doing at CFO rates is entering transactions, reconciling the bank, filing taxes or chasing invoices. That is bookkeeping and accounting. If a proposal includes it at the CFO's hourly rate, ask for it to be split out and priced separately, or give it to a bookkeeper.
Judgment or visibility: the test
Most founders who search for CFO prices have a visibility problem. They want to know their runway, what a hire does to it and whether burn is going up. That is arithmetic on numbers you already have, and it does not need a CFO.
| Your situation | What you need | Who can do it |
|---|---|---|
| You do not know your runway or burn this month | Visibility | You, with a model you keep current |
| You want to know what a hire does to runway | Visibility | You, with a draft plan or a calculator |
| You are raising a priced round and diligence questions are past your depth | Judgment | A fractional CFO, ideally one who has done that round before |
| Your board wants reporting you cannot produce | Judgment and process | A fractional CFO, at least to set it up |
| Several entities, currencies, inventory or debt | Judgment | A fractional CFO, plus a good accountant |
| Looking at the numbers makes you anxious and you want someone else to own them | Neither | A CFO cannot take this off you; the numbers still have to be yours |
For the visibility rows, a runway model you actually keep current answers the questions every day. Plainhub's AI finance agent answers them from the numbers you have recorded, for example what a hire at a given cost does to runway. It does not replace the judgment rows, and it says so.
If you hire one
Start with a project with a defined output: a fundraise model, a pricing review or a board pack template. A few weeks of work tells you whether the person's judgment is worth a retainer, and costs far less than finding out six months into one.
If it becomes a retainer, write the monthly deliverables into the agreement (forecast update, board pack, a set number of hours) so it does not drift into paying for availability. And keep your own numbers live: you should still be able to say your runway and burn without asking the CFO. They add judgment on top of numbers you both see.