What Is a Developer Retainer?
Monthly backend development support with no scope per request. You get dedicated capacity, priority access, and a developer who already knows your product.
The plain explanation
A developer retainer is a standing monthly agreement. You pay a fixed fee — from €2,500/month — and in return you get a dedicated slice of a senior developer's time every month. The work isn't predefined. It gets applied to whatever your product needs that month: a new feature, an integration, infrastructure work, a bug that finally needs fixing, or code review on a PR your team is unsure about.
There is no project scope to write, no proposal to approve, no renegotiation every time a new task comes up. You have capacity. You direct it.
How it differs from a project
A fixed-scope project has a defined beginning and end. You describe what needs to exist, we agree on exactly what gets built and for how much, I build it, and you receive a deliverable. Done. That model works when you know what you need.
A retainer is different in one key way: there is no fixed scope. Instead of buying a deliverable, you are reserving capacity. The developer holds that time for you — which means turning away other work — and the monthly fee reflects that reservation, not just hours delivered.
This matters because real products don't always have clean, pre-scoped work. Some months you're shipping a new billing flow. The next you need something patched urgently. A retainer absorbs all of that without administrative friction.
Who uses a retainer
- Startups with ongoing backend needs but no capacity to hire a full-time developer yet
- Product teams that are frontend-heavy and need a standing backend resource
- Companies running a live product that needs consistent maintenance and feature development
- Founders who want a technical partner available week to week, not just for a one-off build
- Teams that have a backlog that never empties — work that's always there, always changing
What a retainer with me looks like
I work in weekly cycles. At the start of each week you tell me what the priority is. I build, ship, and report back. At the end of the month you get a brief summary of what was delivered.
There are no timesheets, no hourly tracking, no account manager in between. One person builds, one person is accountable. I'm available by email and respond the same day during working hours.
The engagement starts with a two-week onboarding: I read your codebase, ask questions, and get up to speed. After that, work happens without ramp-up overhead every time something new comes in.
When a retainer is not the right fit
A retainer requires enough continuity to be worth the onboarding. If you have one specific thing to build — a Stripe integration, a tool, a single backend feature — a fixed-scope project is cleaner and cheaper. If you need a second opinion or a few hours of consultation, hourly work is the right format.
A retainer makes sense when you always have something in the backlog and expect that to remain true for several months.
Frequently asked questions
Is a retainer the same as hiring an employee?
No. It is a business-to-business engagement. No employment relationship, no payroll overhead, no benefits. You get dedicated development capacity with the flexibility to end the arrangement on short notice — two weeks, not three months.
What if I don't use all the hours in a month?
Hours don't roll over. The retainer pays for reserved capacity, not just delivered output. If you consistently need less than what the retainer covers, the scope of the engagement should be renegotiated downward. I will raise it if I notice the work isn't filling the capacity.
What is the minimum commitment?
Month-to-month with two weeks notice to start or end. No long-term lock-in. That said, retainers work best with at least two to three months of continuity — enough time to build real familiarity with the codebase and ship meaningful work.
How do I know what you'll be working on?
You direct the work. At the start of each week you set the priority. I don't decide what gets built — I build what you decide. You get visibility into progress through regular updates and a monthly summary.
What stack do you work in?
Go, Node.js / Express, vanilla JS for tooling. Self-hosted infrastructure on VPS (OVH, Hetzner, or your provider). I don't do frontend frameworks or mobile — this is backend, infrastructure, and server-side tooling.
Start a retainer
Describe your product, your stack, and what the ongoing work typically looks like. I'll confirm availability and respond within 24 hours.