A fractional COO in the UK typically costs £3,500–£8,000 per month for 1–2 days a week of embedded senior leadership, on a 3–12 month engagement. Compare that to £140,000–£200,000 base salary plus equity for a full-time COO, with a 3–6 month recruitment cycle. The Edwards Practice retainer starts at £4,000/month with a 3-month minimum.
If you’re a founder weighing up whether you can afford this, the short answer is: you almost certainly can. The longer answer is below.
The standard UK fractional COO price range
Most UK fractional COOs charge in one of three brackets. I’ll be honest about which I sit in.
| Tier | Monthly fee | What you usually get |
|---|---|---|
| Entry | £2,500 – £4,000/mo | 1 day a week. Often a less senior operator, or someone running 5+ clients in parallel. |
| Standard | £4,000 – £8,000/mo | 1–2 days a week. Senior operator with 10+ years in scaling roles. Embedded, not sidelined. 3–5 clients max. |
| Premium | £8,000 – £15,000/mo | 2–3 days a week. Ex-COO of a large scale-up. Often includes hands-on recruiting or M&A support. 2–3 clients max. |
The Edwards Practice retainer starts at £4,000/month with a 3-month minimum, so we sit at the bottom of the Standard tier. Most engagements settle around £5,000–£6,000/month once we’ve scoped the work.
What changes the price
Five factors move the number up or down inside the standard band.
- Days per week. 1 day = lower bound, 2 days = upper bound. Some engagements start at 2 days for the first month, then settle to 1 day a week once the systems are in.
- Commercial contracting load. If commercial contract review is in scope (most of ours include it), that’s senior legal-adjacent work and it adds to the fee.
- Reporting cadence. Monthly board reporting is light. Weekly leadership cadence with full prep is more.
- Sales ops scope. Building a CRM, pipeline process, and rev-ops dashboards from scratch sits at the upper end. Maintaining one that exists is lighter.
- Geography. London-based founders who want regular on-site days will pay slightly more than fully-remote engagements. The travel time is real.
What you should not pay extra for
Be wary of any fractional COO who charges separately for:
- An “intake report” or “audit” at the start of the retainer. That’s part of the work, not an add-on.
- Travel within the UK if they took the engagement knowing you’re based outside London.
- Use of their own tools (Notion templates, dashboards, contract frameworks). You’re paying for the operator, not licensing their library.
How it compares to a full-time COO
A full-time COO in the UK costs:
- £140,000 – £200,000 base salary. Outside London or in earlier-stage businesses, sometimes £120,000. In senior FinTech or regulated scale-ups, well north of £200,000.
- 0.5% – 2% equity. Usually with a 4-year vest and a 1-year cliff.
- 3–6 months to recruit. And another 3–6 months to ramp to full capacity.
- 6–12 month unwind if it’s the wrong hire. Severance, replacement, the awkward all-hands.
A fractional COO at £6,000/month is £72,000/year. About one-third the cost. You get one-half the hours and (in most cases) ninety-percent of the strategic value, because the operator has been through the same scaling problem six times before. The compromise is real, but the maths usually points to fractional below £10M revenue. We wrote a full framework for the call: Fractional COO vs Full-Time COO.
Is a fractional COO worth it?
The honest test: does the role pay for itself in three months?
Most engagements I’ve run have hit one of these in the first 90 days:
- Renegotiated a customer contract that was leaking 5–10% margin.
- Built a pipeline process that recovered 1–2 deals previously lost to follow-up failures.
- Cleared the founder’s calendar enough to win one new account they’d been too busy to pursue.
Any one of those covers the fee twice over. If the fractional COO can’t show you, by month three, how the engagement has paid for itself, you should be reviewing the engagement.
The Edwards Practice pricing in detail
- The Ops Audit. From £5,000, one-off, two-week fixed-fee diagnostic. See the Ops Audit page.
- Fractional COO Retainer. From £4,000/month, 1–2 days a week, 3-month minimum. See the Fractional COO page.
- Strategic Adviser Retainer. From £1,500/month, monthly operating review, 6-month minimum. See the Strategic Adviser page.
No day rates. No deliverable checklists. Monthly invoicing. You can roll off at the next month-end after the initial minimum.
Also worth reading
- What Is a Fractional COO?
- Fractional COO vs Full-Time COO: Which Is Right for Your Stage?
- 5 Signs Your Startup Has Outgrown Ad-Hoc Management
If you want to scope the actual cost for your business, book a 30-minute discovery call. The call is free, and you’ll leave with a real number, not a brochure range.