Dedicated developer · Monthly retainer
For teams with a live Base44 app and a weekly backlog: a dedicated Base44 developer, one named senior engineer, works inside your app 20–40 hours a month for $4,000–$8,000, or a $2,000-a-month Care plan keeps it covered. Both retainers open after one fixed-price engagement, so you judge the written work before you commit to a month.
Short answer
A dedicated Base44 developer is a senior engineer who works inside one Base44 app every month: shipping fixes and features from your backlog, running regression checks after Base44 platform updates, and sending changes that touch auth, payments or data through a second senior's review before they merge. Base44Devs offers two retainers. The Care plan costs $2,000 a month for priority on the urgent slots, a monthly regression check after Base44 updates, Slack triage and up to 10 senior hours. The Embedded senior block costs $4,000–$8,000a month for 20–40 dedicated hours, with up to 50% of unused hours rolling over, an SLA in the retainer letter and written Friday notes. Both open after a first fixed-price engagement and stop on 30 days' notice.
A retainer is the wrong shape for one bug or one decision. One production issue fits a $1,500 fixed-price bug-fix sprint; an outage fits the urgent Base44 developer path; a stay-or-migrate question fits a written recommendation from a Base44 consultant.
Freelancers, agencies and vetting are compared on every route to hiring a Base44 developer.
Retainers
Both retainers are fixed monthly fees for a named senior engineer. The Care plan keeps a live app covered. The Embedded senior block puts a senior in your backlog every week.
TIER
$2,000/mo
USD · Per month · After a first engagement
For a live Base44 app that needs a senior on call rather than a senior in the codebase every week.
Scope
Out of scope
TIER · RECOMMENDED
$4k–$8k/mo
USD · Per month · After a first engagement
$4,000–$8,000 a month for one senior engineer working inside your Base44 app, with the hours and the SLA set in the retainer letter.
Scope
Out of scope
Entry engagement
Fixed scope first; retainers only after a first engagement. The first engagement lets you judge the engineer's written work, and lets us read your app, before either side commits to a month. Pick the entry that matches the state of your app.
Entry 01 · Audit
Twelve components and 110 pass/fail checks, delivered one business day after access (two for 15+ tables or multiple integrations). The $497 fee is credited in full against any fix, build, migration or written-recommendation engagement booked within 30 days. If you ordered the audit for a specific bug and we cannot reproduce it, we refund the fee; otherwise it is non-refundable.
Entry 02 · Sprint
One high-impact issue: root cause, fix, regression test plan and a written summary. Starts within 48 hours; ships 48–72 hours after kickoff. Money-back if the sprint cannot resolve the issue, including a Base44 platform bug with no workaround. If a Base44 update breaks the fix within 90 days, we re-fix it at no charge.
Entry 03 · Build
MVP $4,500 in 2–4 weeks, standard $9,000 in 4–6 weeks, premium $15,000 in 6–10 weeks. Every build carries a 30-day defects warranty.
Fixed price, and a refund if we don't fix it. A $3,000 multi-bug rescue or a migration off Base44 from $6,000 also counts as the first engagement.
What the hours buy
The Embedded senior block is senior engineering time on one Base44 app, delivered in writing. Six things come with every month.
Fixes, features and performance work from your backlog, prioritised with you each week. The same senior sits in your Slack channel and on your weekly product call, so context never resets.
End-of-day Friday notes cover what shipped, what is in flight, what is blocked and next week's scope. The notes are the record you show a co-founder or an investor.
Base44 changes the platform on its own schedule. After updates, the engineer re-checks auth, payments and your core workflows and logs anything that moved on a regression watch list.
Changes that touch auth, payments or data get a second senior's code review before merge. One engineer ships; a second one reads the diff.
Response and ship-time commitments are written into the retainer letter before the first month starts, next to the monthly hours and the fee.
Up to 50% of unused hours roll into the following month, so a quiet week is not lost and a heavy month has headroom.
Alternatives
Most buyers compare a retainer with hourly help. Each figure below carries its source and the date we read it; the full table of Base44 developer rates, sourced 23 Sep 2026, sits on the cost page.
| Route | What you pay (source, date) | What you get | Risk |
|---|---|---|---|
| Base44 Partners directory | What you pay (source, date)Posted hourly median $85/h (n=351 profiles with a posted rate) — snapshot of app.base44.com/partners, 23 Sep 2026 | What you getFree to browse. Directory listing and the Verified Partner badge become available at Specialist (Level 3), a builder-milestone level; joining needs no approval (Base44 partner-program docs, read 23 Sep 2026) | RiskHourly billing; quality varies from partner to partner |
| Freelance marketplaces | What you pay (source, date)Upwork's Base44 page: featured cards at $5–$16/h, 1–4 jobs each (read 23 Sep 2026) | What you getBreadth and a fast start | RiskVetting and rework risk sit with you |
| Offshore dedicated-developer shops | What you pay (source, date)Advertised from $20–$22/h (search results, 23 Sep 2026) | What you getHourly capacity | RiskGeneralists: Base44 is one stack among many |
| Generalist agency | What you pay (source, date)Base44's own blog: agency projects $50,000–$500,000+, freelancer projects $5,000–$50,000+ (read 23 Sep 2026) | What you getA multi-discipline team | RiskPrice and scope drift |
| Base44Devs retainer | What you pay (source, date)Care plan $2,000/month; Embedded senior $4,000–$8,000/month, after a first fixed-price engagement from $497 | What you getA Base44-only senior, written Friday notes, second-senior review, published prices | RiskFixed monthly fee and 30 days' notice; the entry engagement carries the money-back sprint, the 90-day fix hold and the audit credit |
The hourly routes win on price per hour. The retainer buys a Base44-only senior, written weekly notes, a second-senior review on risky changes and terms published before you call.
Billing and paperwork
Procurement teams ask the same questions. These answers go into the engagement letter or the retainer letter unchanged.
Retainer and engagement terms · 2026-09
Before you sign
A retainer is a bet on one engineer. These are checks you can run before the first month, not credentials you take on trust.
Engagement letters name the assigned engineer and include their professional profile. Articles on this site are bylined to our lead engineer. Read the lead engineer's author page before the call.
The entry engagement produces written work you keep: an audit report against 12 components and 110 checks, or a sprint's root-cause summary and regression test plan. Judge the retainer on that document.
The 47 published fix playbooks show how the team diagnoses Base44 auth, payments, routing and credit-burn failures, step by step and in public.
The team has shipped or debugged 100+ base44 apps in production. Senior engineers only: no junior bench and no undisclosed subcontracting.
Process detail
Most buyers have been burned by vague engagements before. Here is what the first weeks look like, what to push back on, and where the deliverables land.
Day 0
Free 15-minute call with the engineer who would lead the work. Written fixed-price proposal within one business day. Multi-month and enterprise scopes get their proposal within one week. If a retainer is the wrong shape for your app, we say so on the call.
Day 1
Read-only collaborator access to your Base44 workspace. The first task is the written architecture review: data model, auth posture, payments path, integration surface and AI-agent edit history.
Day 3-5
The review lands as PDF and Markdown: scope, findings, prioritised actions, cost-of-inaction estimate and regression watch items. For migrations it includes the schema migration plan, payments cutover plan and rollback playbook. Walkthrough call included.
Week 2 onward
Written notes every Friday cover shipped, in-flight, blocked and next-week scope. Milestones ship per the engagement letter, and a second senior reviews auth, payments and data changes before merge.
Engagement close
Written hand-off doc, regression watch list and walkthrough call, with a 14-day open line. If the fit was good, we offer a retainer letter: the Care plan at $2,000 a month or an Embedded senior block at $4,000–$8,000, each on 30 days' notice.
QUERIES
$4,000–$8,000 a month for the Embedded senior block, which buys 20–40 dedicated senior hours with up to 50% of unused hours rolling over. The lighter Care plan costs $2,000 a month for priority on the urgent slots, a monthly regression check after Base44 updates, Slack triage and up to 10 senior hours. Both are fixed monthly fees, offered after a first fixed-price engagement. Hourly market rates, with sources and dates, are on the Base44 developer cost page.
The Care plan keeps a live app covered: priority on the urgent slots, a monthly regression check after Base44 updates, Slack triage and up to 10 senior hours for $2,000 a month. The Embedded senior block puts one senior engineer in your backlog for 20–40 hours a month at $4,000–$8,000, with written Friday notes, a second-senior review on auth, payments and data changes, an SLA in the retainer letter and up to 50% of unused hours rolling over.
No. Fixed scope first; retainers only after a first engagement. The entry can be a $497 production audit, a $1,500 bug-fix sprint or a build from $4,500. The first engagement lets you judge the engineer's written work, and lets us read your app, before either side commits to a month.
You do. IP assigns to you on payment of each milestone; on a retainer, each monthly invoice is the milestone. There is no license-back and no usage clawback, and the engagement letter or retainer letter states the term in writing.
Retainers need 30 days' notice. Fixed-scope work needs 14 days' notice, and you pay only for accepted milestones. Either way, in-flight work is handed off in writing.
NEXT STEP
Start with a free 15-minute call or a $497 audit. Retainers open after the first fixed-price engagement: $2,000 a month for the Care plan, $4,000–$8,000 for an embedded senior.