GrowthHafsteinn Runarsson · AI Konsulent09 May 2026 · 6 min

Fixed price: why we carry the overrun risk

Hourly billing quietly hands the overrun risk to the client. Every underestimate, every rabbit hole, every it-turned-out-to-be-harder-than-we-thought lands on their invoice. The incentives are wrong at the root: the seller profits from the very thing the buyer fears.

We dropped hourly billing in 2021. Every project since has been a number agreed before work starts. If we scoped it wrong, that is our problem — as it should be, because we are the ones with the information to scope it right.

Carrying the overrun risk ourselves made two things sharper. Our scoping, because a sloppy estimate now costs us directly and gets reviewed like production code. And our clients' briefs, because a fixed number focuses everyone on what actually needs to exist rather than what would be nice to explore on the meter.

It also changed the sales conversation. There is no clock running, so a question is just a question. Clients got braver: they bring us the ambitious version of the idea, not the version they think they can afford by the hour.

Fixed pricing is not magic. It is discipline plus an honest buffer, and the occasional project where we eat the difference and learn something about our own estimates. But it puts the incentive where it belongs — on shipping the thing, not on billing the time.