-- Bureau CFO has published a pricing index of 47 fractional CFO providers in the United States, the United Kingdom and the United Arab Emirates, using data collected from their websites on September 21, 2026. Thirty-two of the 47 publish no price for ongoing CFO work. Among the nine firms that publish a US-dollar price for CFO work, the median starting retainer is $1,900 a month, while 11 of 18 pricing guides that describe the whole market put the market floor at $3,000. A fractional CFO is a part-time or outsourced financial executive who splits time across several companies instead of working full-time for one.
Fifteen providers publish a price for CFO work itself, a share that barely changes from market to market: 10 of the index's 32 US providers, 4 of 12 in the United Kingdom and 1 of 3 in the United Arab Emirates. Seven publish a price for something other than ongoing CFO work, such as bookkeeping, tax, a referral fee or a bundle where CFO time has no separate price.
Nine firms publish a US-dollar price for CFO work, which the index converts to a starting monthly retainer: $1,599 at Zeni, $1,600 at airCFO, $1,600 at Burkland, $1,750 at Pilot, $1,900 at CFO Ventures, $4,000 at Acuity, $5,000 at Local Fractional, $5,000 at Ascent (from a published $60,000 a year) and $5,000 at Eightx (from a published $60,000–$120,000 a year). The median is $1,900, and the highest is 3.1 times the lowest.
The other six providers that publish a CFO price are four matching networks, which place an independent CFO rather than deliver the work themselves, and two UK firms that price in pounds, £1,750 at flinder and £4,000 at Flow Partners.
Bureau CFO also collected 23 published guides on the cost of a fractional CFO, and 18 of them state a US-dollar range for the whole market. The lowest floor, $2,000 at Chalifour Consulting, is still above the $1,599 retainer at Zeni. The highest ceiling is $20,000, a figure three guides give (The Expert CFO, ChiefViews and CFO Advisors).
Only 13 of the 47 providers (28%) state how many hours or days a month their price includes. Three providers charge almost the same headline price, and what it buys differs or goes unstated. At airCFO, the Launch tier costs $1,600 a month and includes 8 hours of advisory and support. At Zeni, CFO Lite costs $1,599 a month and includes one 1-hour strategic call. At Burkland, the Starter tier costs $1,600 a month and the time included is not stated. At about $1,600 a month, a retainer can mean 8 hours of work or a single one-hour call.
The three tiers at airCFO each land near $200 an hour, while hourly ceilings in pricing guides disagree by 2.2x ($325 in Eightx's guide versus $700 in SA Unlimited's). Bureau CFO's reading is that hours per month, the number connecting an hourly rate to a monthly one, is the figure most providers and guides leave out.
Eleven of the 47 providers address whether a one-time payment applies on top of the monthly price, and the other 36 say nothing either way. Five of the 11 charge one. Zeni lists a $2,000 setup fee on its $1,599 tier and $6,000 on its higher tiers at list price, while a "50% off setup + migration" promotion running on the Zeni site in September 2026 would cut the entry-tier fee to $1,000. Dark Horse charges a CFO Assessment starting at $5,000 before any engagement begins, and its monthly CFO fee is not published. At flinder, a transition fee equal to one month's fee is disclosed on the pricing page; Pilot charges an onboarding fee equal to one month of bookkeeping, and Kruze an onboarding fee per legal entity.
In a separate count, 15 of the 47 providers name a figure for hiring a full-time CFO instead. Two US-dollar examples from provider pricing and blog pages show the spread: Local Fractional cites $180,000 and Eightx cites up to $800,000 a year. Fourteen of the 15 cite no source at all, so most of these claims cannot be confirmed or disproved. The one that does, Whipplewood, cites US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data on financial managers: a Denver metro median of $193,400, at the low end of what the other providers name.
In BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics data for May 2025, the two closest official occupations are Financial Managers, with a median annual wage of $166,570, and Chief Executives, with a 90th percentile annual wage of $507,730. Neither is called "CFO": Financial Managers is a broader category, and Chief Executives covers every C-suite title, not finance specifically.
Of the 23 guides, one, from Institution, checked eight providers' own price pages; 14 cite no external source, and 8 cite something other than their own number, usually a full-time CFO salary survey with official data behind it, alongside a fractional-CFO range that has none. Twenty-two of the 23 are published by a company that sells fractional CFO services, recruiting or a competing product. KORE1 states three different ranges on one page: "$8k–$18k per month" in the body, "$5,000-$15,000/month" in its own FAQ, and "from the mid-8,000s to nearly 20,000 per month" in an embedded video transcript.
Bureau CFO screened 59 companies marketing fractional, outsourced, part-time or virtual CFO services across the US, UK, EU and UAE. Two sites could not be collected; of the remaining 57, 47 qualified as active providers with a named, ongoing CFO product and 10 were excluded, among them six accounting firms with no distinct CFO product. Collection covered up to 12 pages per site in a single window, September 21, 2026, so a price published elsewhere would not have been captured. One site, The Accountancy Cloud, names a fractional CFO tier but renders its price by script, so it is counted among the 32. A published price is the advertised starting point on a provider's site, not necessarily what a client pays after a scoping call. Currencies are shown as published and are not converted into one unit.
Bureau CFO, which publishes the index, is itself a fractional CFO provider; it was not among the 59 companies screened and is not one of the 47 in the index.
Bureau CFO (bureaucfo.com) is a fractional CFO service operated by FYF Management Ltd. It publishes pricing for its own service on its site, along with ongoing pricing-transparency research on the fractional finance market.
Contact Info:
Name: John J.D.
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Organization: Bureau CFO
Website: https://bureaucfo.com/
Release ID: 89206831
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