What a fractional executive costs, city by city

The same seat is priced very differently in London and Manchester, and the paperwork behind it is different again in New York, the Bay Area and Dubai. These guides give the day rate, the full-time comparison and the one thing about each market that catches companies out.

LondonFractional CFO £800 to £1,500 a day. Off-payroll rules decide who carries the risk, and it depends on your size.
ManchesterFractional CFO £650 to £1,200 a day. The candidate pool is thinner, so remote matters more here than in London.
New YorkFractional CFO $1,200 to $2,400 a day. Classification is the thing that actually costs money if you get it wrong.
San FranciscoFractional CTO $1,400 to $2,800 a day. California's ABC test is stricter than the federal one.
DubaiFractional CFO AED 3,500 to AED 7,500 a day. Free zone or mainland decides almost everything else.

Why the city matters less than it used to

Almost all fractional work now runs remote or hybrid with a day on site, so where an operator sits is rarely the constraint it once was. What the city still decides is the rate you will be quoted, the employment and tax rules the engagement sits under, and how deep the local pool is for a specialist seat. Those are the three things these pages cover.

Which seat you are hiring

What each seat covers, what it costs and when it is the wrong hire is set out across the eleven seat pages. The cost calculator runs a fractional engagement against the full-time hire with employer costs counted, and if the role turns out to be permanent, we find full-time executives too.

The bench

Every rate published, on every profile

Browse the bench and see what each operator charges before you speak to them. Book direct, with nothing taken from their rate. If you would rather not sift, Operator Search runs it for you: three researched candidates against your brief in five business days.