Retainer (software retainer)
Also called monthly retainer, retainer agreement.
An ongoing agreement where a client pays each month to reserve a set amount of a team's time.
Last updated
What it is.
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 it matters
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.
In a product build
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.
Common mistakes.
- 01
No agreed priorities, so the time gets spent on whatever was asked most recently.
- 02
Not reviewing what each month delivered, which makes it hard to judge value.
- 03
Using a retainer for a large fixed scope that would be clearer as a project.
Work it out with a tool.
Related terms.
- Time and materials (T&M)A contract where you pay for the hours actually worked, at agreed rates.
- Statement of work (SOW)The document that sets out what a supplier will deliver, by when, for how much, and how the work will be accepted.
- VelocityThe amount of finished work a team completes in a sprint, used to forecast how much fits in the time left.
- SLA (service level agreement)A contract that promises a level of service, such as uptime or support response time, and says what happens if it is missed.
Guides and pages
Browse the full glossary or read answers to common questions.
