# Baked vs a design agency

> How Baked's monthly design subscription compares with a traditional design agency: pricing, scoping, speed and contracts.

Agencies do great work, usually on a project: a scope, a price, a timeline. Baked works month to month instead. Here is how the two compare.

## Pricing
- Baked: A flat monthly plan: $8,999 a month for Basic, $12,000 for Pro. YC companies get 10% off ($8,099 or $10,800), and referrals take off another 10% each.
- A design agency: Priced per project after scoping, often with a deposit and change requests billed on top.

## Getting started
- Baked: Book a 30-min intro call, join your private Slack channel and drop in your first request as soon as you're in.
- A design agency: Proposals, scoping calls and a contract before work begins.

## Speed
- Baked: Most requests are ready to review within a day. Basic gets 2–3 updates a week, Pro gets 3–4 updates a week.
- A design agency: Set by the project plan, with set rounds of review.

## Changing course
- Baked: Change priorities any day. Drop the next request in Slack.
- A design agency: Changes to scope usually mean a new estimate.

## How you work together
- Baked: Async in a private Slack channel. No standing meetings.
- A design agency: Status meetings, account managers and scheduled presentations.

## Commitment
- Baked: No contracts. Pause or cancel any month.
- A design agency: A contract for the project, sometimes with a minimum term.

## When Baked makes more sense
- Your plans change week to week, as they do at an early-stage startup.
- You want to talk to the people doing the work, in Slack, not through an account manager.
- You need brand, product, site and launch work to keep moving together.

## When a design agency makes more sense
- You have one large, fixed-scope project with a set budget and deadline.
- You need a big team on many workstreams at once, with formal project management.
- Your company needs procurement, long contracts or on-site work.

## Questions
### How is a design subscription different from an agency?
You pay one flat monthly price ($8,999 a month for Basic, $12,000 for Pro) instead of a quote per project, and send requests whenever you need them. No contracts. Pause or cancel any month.

### Is the quality the same as an agency?
Senior designers who have worked at Meta, Netflix, HubSpot and Expa, and been founding designers at 25+ startups. Recent work is on the work page, including Inkbox (YC S26), which went from no brand to launch in 12 days.

### Do you do fixed-price projects?
Work runs on the monthly plans. Book a 30-min call and we'll tell you honestly what a month can cover.

## Next steps
- Book a 30-min intro call: https://cal.com/baked/30min
- Plans: https://baked.design/#pricing
- Recent work: https://baked.design/work/
- Other comparisons: https://baked.design/compare/