Compare - devkyn vs Hiring In-House
An in-house senior dev is the right call when you have steady full-time work and the budget to recruit and retain one. devkyn is better when you want senior code shipping this week without the hiring cycle, the salary, or the commitment.
| devkyn | Hiring In-House | |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing model | Flat $6,900/month. Pause or cancel anytime. No salary, no benefits, no overhead. | Salary + benefits + payroll tax + equipment + recruiting. Senior full-stack runs six figures, fixed whether the backlog is full or empty. |
| Who does the work | A senior engineer. Founder-led, the same person every task. Senior only, no junior hand-off. | One person you hired. Great if they're great. Everything stalls when they're on PTO, sick, or quit. |
| Turnaround | 48 to 72 hours average per task, starting the day you subscribe. | 1-3 months to hire and onboard before a single line ships. Then it depends on that one person's load. |
| Contracts | No contract. Month to month. Stop whenever. | Employment commitment. Severance, notice periods, and the cost of a bad hire if it doesn't work out. |
| Management overhead | None. No standups, no 1:1s, no managing. You send a task, we ship it. | You manage them. Hiring, onboarding, reviews, performance, retention. That's real time off your plate. |
| Revisions | Unlimited requests and revisions, in priority order. Reprioritize anytime. | Unlimited too. It's your employee. But their hours are finite and they can only do one thing at a time. |
| Scope | Code only. Web apps, SaaS features, bug fixes, APIs, integrations. | Whatever you hire for. Can own deep internal context, on-call, architecture, and long-term roadmap. |
Where Hiring In-House wins
- Deep context and ownership. A full-time hire lives in your codebase and product every day, so they build institutional knowledge no subscription can match.
- Availability beyond code. They can sit in meetings, own architecture decisions, mentor juniors, take on-call, and do the non-code work a subscription deliberately skips.
- If you have steady full-time work, a salary is often cheaper per hour than any subscription. A great senior hire who stays years is one of the best investments you can make.
Where devkyn wins
- Code shipping this week, not in three months. No job post, no interview loop, no notice period.
- Flat $6,900/month. No salary, benefits, payroll tax, equipment, or recruiter fees stacked on top.
- A senior engineer from the first line. senior, founder-led, no bad-hire gamble and no junior hand-off.
- Full-stack range across frontend, backend, infra, and payments, so most tasks ship without waiting on anyone else.
- Pause or cancel anytime. Scale your spend to your actual backlog instead of paying a fixed salary through slow months.
- Zero management. No standups, no 1:1s, no performance reviews. You send a task, it gets built.
Choose devkyn if…
You want senior code shipping in days, flexible spend, and zero hiring or management overhead.
Choose Hiring In-House if…
You have steady full-time work and want one person to own deep product context, architecture, and the non-code stuff long term.
Frequently asked questions
- Is devkyn cheaper than hiring in-house?
- For most teams, yes, until you have enough steady work to keep a full-timer busy every day. A senior full-stack hire costs six figures in salary plus benefits, payroll tax, equipment, and recruiting, all fixed whether your backlog is full or empty. devkyn is flat $6,900/month, and you pause it when the work slows down. If you genuinely have full-time work year-round, a great long-term hire can win on cost per hour.
- Can I cancel devkyn anytime?
- Yes. No contract, month to month. Pause or cancel whenever. No severance, no notice period, none of the friction of ending an employment relationship.
- How fast can devkyn start compared to hiring?
- Hiring a senior dev typically takes one to three months from job post to first shipped code, plus onboarding. devkyn starts the day you subscribe, with 48 to 72 hours average turnaround per task.
- Can devkyn replace a full-time developer?
- For shipping code, often yes. We handle web apps, SaaS features, bug fixes, APIs, and integrations at a senior level. What we don't do is the non-code work: on-call, deep architecture ownership, mentoring, meetings. If you need someone embedded in all of that, hire. If you need code shipped, subscribe.
- What happens when you hire later, or take time off?
- Your work is founder-led and senior. Same hands every task, no junior hand-off. The honest trade-off versus a bigger in-house team: this is async and code-only, not a 24/7 on-call rotation. What you get instead is no salary, no payroll, no recruiting, and the freedom to pause anytime the backlog goes quiet. A single in-house hire you pay through PTO, sickness, and resignations regardless.
Got a task? Let's ship it.
3 spots open. Subscribe today, drop your first task, and most tasks ship in 48 to 72 hours. No call required.