{"head":{"title":"What Is a Software Development Retainer? | OceanLab","description":"A retainer is a monthly agreement that reserves a team's time for ongoing work. How it differs from a project contract, when it fits and common mistakes.","canonical":"https://oceanlab.in/glossary/retainer"},"crumbs":[{"name":"Home","path":"/"},{"name":"Glossary","path":"/glossary"},{"name":"retainer","path":"/glossary/retainer"}],"slug":"retainer","term":"Retainer (software retainer)","aka":["monthly retainer","retainer agreement"],"category":"Buying software","short":"An ongoing agreement where a client pays each month to reserve a set amount of a team's time.","body":[["Under a retainer the client books capacity, such as one engineer full-time or two engineers part-time, for a monthly fee. The work is whatever is most important that month: new features, fixes, maintenance or support."],["It differs from a project contract, which ends when a defined scope is delivered. A retainer has no fixed end scope, so it suits products that keep changing after launch."]],"why":["A retainer keeps the same people on your product, so knowledge stays with the team instead of being rebuilt each time a new project starts. Budgeting is simple, and the team can react quickly because time is already booked."],"example":["After launching a booking app, a company keeps two engineers on a part-time retainer. In a typical month they fix bugs from support, ship one or two small features from the ",{"href":"/glossary/backlog","text":"backlog"}," and keep dependencies up to date."],"inBuild":["OceanLab's embedded engineers are billed as a monthly retainer. Part-time is fine and it runs month to month. The engineers work inside the client's team, remote from India with overlap for US, UK and Europe, Middle East and Australia or Asia time zones."],"mistakes":[["No agreed priorities, so the time gets spent on whatever was asked most recently."],["Not reviewing what each month delivered, which makes it hard to judge value."],["Using a retainer for a large fixed scope that would be clearer as a project."]],"related":[{"href":"/glossary/time-and-materials","label":"Time and materials (T&M)","detail":"A contract where you pay for the hours actually worked, at agreed rates."},{"href":"/glossary/statement-of-work","label":"Statement of work (SOW)","detail":"The document that sets out what a supplier will deliver, by when, for how much, and how the work will be accepted."},{"href":"/glossary/velocity","label":"Velocity","detail":"The amount of finished work a team completes in a sprint, used to forecast how much fits in the time left."},{"href":"/glossary/sla","label":"SLA (service level agreement)","detail":"A contract that promises a level of service, such as uptime or support response time, and says what happens if it is missed."}],"tools":[{"href":"/tools/team-size-calculator","label":"Team size calculator","detail":"Free tool"},{"href":"/tools/developer-rate-comparison","label":"Developer rate comparison","detail":"Free tool"},{"href":"/tools/software-maintenance-cost","label":"Software maintenance cost","detail":"Free tool"}],"links":[{"href":"/embedded-engineers","label":"Embedded engineers","detail":"OceanLab engineers working inside your team."},{"href":"/software","label":"Software by industry","detail":"Systems we build per industry, with guides and tools."}],"sources":[],"legal":false,"updatedAt":"2026-10-25"}