Engineering subscription vs hiring in-house: a 6-month cost breakdown

Hiring in-house and subscribing to a senior team look like they sit on the same axis: both deliver shipped software. They do not. The cost structure, the ramp curve, and the option value of pausing or scaling are different shapes. Here is the six-month math, side by side.

The in-house path

Two senior engineers at €7,500 per month fully loaded is €15,000 per month, or €90,000 over six months. Add €15,000 in recruiting fees, three months of zero output during the search, two months of ramp-up at half productivity, and you've spent roughly €105,000 for capacity that is genuinely productive for about three months out of six.

The first feature ships in month four. Months one to three are search; month four to five are ramp; month six is the first month you are running at full speed. If your roadmap shifts in month five, you eat severance or carry the team through the change.

The subscription path

Stacklane's mid-tier subscription is €7,000 per month, €42,000 over six months. No recruiting fees, no ramp tax, no severance. The first feature ships in week one because the team is already a team. If your roadmap shifts in month three, you pause; you resume in month five and the same engineers pick up the same codebase without spin-up cost.

Where the comparison is unfair to each side

Hiring buys you something the subscription doesn't: equity-aligned individuals who accumulate context over years, can be promoted, and stay through three product pivots. If you're building a ten-year company and you've already raised the capital to absorb the search-and-ramp tax, hiring is correct.

Subscription buys you something hiring doesn't: same-day start, pause-anytime optionality, and zero downside if you decide the roadmap was wrong. If you're at MVP, between rounds, or running a service business where engineering is a cost center rather than the product itself, subscription is correct.

Most teams do both, sequentially

The pattern we see most often is six to twelve months on subscription to get to product-market fit or Series B, then a transition to in-house hires for the long-term team. Subscription buys the time to know what to hire for; hiring builds the team you'll have for years.