# Hire a freelancer, or brief the herd?

Compare hiring a freelancer or agency with filing tasks to CodeHerder: what you pay for, who checks the work, and when a person is better.

Source: https://codeherder.com/freelancer-or-agents/

Deciding how to get it built

Both put code in your repository. They differ in what you pay for and who you wait on.

[Request access →](https://codeherder.com/get-started/#request-access) [Compare side by side →](https://codeherder.com/freelancer-or-agents/#side-by-side)

Measured across 355 shipped stories, the week of 21–27 September 2026.

Side by side

## Eight things that differ

The left column describes a typical engagement with a person. The right column describes CodeHerder. The page has no price for a freelancer, because rates vary too much. Use [the calculator](https://codeherder.com/calculator) to price your own tasks.

| Topic | Freelancer or agency | CodeHerder |
| --- | --- | --- |
| What you pay for | Hours, or a fixed quote. | A [plan](https://codeherder.com/pricing), plus your own model-provider bill. CodeHerder adds a $0 markup on that spend. |
| Cost visibility | It shows up on the invoice. | You see it per task and per stage while the work runs. Spend caps stop runaway work. |
| Who checks the work | The person who wrote it. Then you. | Separate review and verify stages check it. They did not write it. Then you approve. A workflow can add 6 more [kinds of gate](https://codeherder.com/verification). |
| A wrong turn | More billable hours. | A gate sent 39.1% of stories back. Those cost $29.19 on average. Read [what happens when an agent gets it wrong](https://codeherder.com/when-agents-get-it-wrong). |
| When work starts | When the person is free. | When a device is free. Several tasks run in parallel. |
| Small asks | Often below a minimum engagement. | One task each. See [clear the bug backlog](https://codeherder.com/use-cases/clear-the-bug-backlog). |
| Setup | A scope and a contract. | A repository and one connected device. See [will it work](https://codeherder.com/will-it-work) and [where agents run](https://codeherder.com/where-agents-run). |
| Code ownership | Your repository. | Your repository. |

Real asks, real receipts

## Three asks you might have quoted out

Each brief was filed in plain words. Each card shows what it cost and how long it took.

- "Explore this product and its recent history, identify one impactful improvement to the customer-facing documentation under support/, and implement it thoroughly."Rewrote the Observability support page to match the shipped report. The old page counted four summary numbers; the report now counts ten. The page missed the new filters and the daily trend. It also missed the time split, and it undercounted the CLI command family. $22.33 · 1h 1m [Read the full story →](https://codeherder.com/examples/observability-doc-drift/)
- "We recently changed it so that devices didn't keep the names of the ec2 servers they were created from - probably an ok change... but what it has been replaced with is useless... some hash that means nothing..."Added an operator-set device name that now wins everywhere a device is shown, with the old hostname kept as a fallback. $29.54 · 3h 9m [Read the full story →](https://codeherder.com/examples/device-display-name/)
- "Ridiculous that the size is truncated on this table. Also we need to be able to view attachments... so we should be able to preview images, videos or PDF's etc in the browser in a popover/modal."Fixed the truncated Size column and shipped an in-browser preview modal for images, video, audio, and PDFs, with zoom and a download fallback. $24.53 · 1h 51m [Read the full story →](https://codeherder.com/examples/attachment-preview-modal/)

When a person is the better choice

## Some work needs a person

- A person starts from nothing. If you have no repository yet, a developer can create one. See [from prototype to production](https://codeherder.com/prototype-to-production).
- A designer brings brand sense and talks to your users.
- A consultant makes the calls about your business, such as an architecture or a vendor.
- An engineer on call answers when production breaks at night.

Keep these back from the herd for now:

- Work on a host besides GitHub or GitLab. The merge stage signs in with your own gh or glab today.
- A change with no way to check the result: no test, no build command, no clear acceptance criteria.
- Anything you are not ready to have a person approve. A human still approves the plan and the result.

Use both

## Pay a person for the first few hours

Hire a freelancer to connect a device and set the review rules. After that, the herd works through the long tail of small asks. The freelancer reviews pull requests instead of writing them. Invite them as a workspace member. The [rollout plan](https://codeherder.com/rollout) names these roles:

- The person with the idea
- The technical owner
- The approver

FAQ

## Questions people ask before they choose

If a freelancer uses CodeHerder, who owns the code?

You do. Every change lands as a pull request in your own repository. CodeHerder does not host a copy that you need to buy back.

Can the herd take over work that a freelancer started?

Yes, once the work is in your repository. Each task starts its own branch from your code. Name the files or the feature in the brief, and the agent reads what is already there.

Can my freelancer work alongside the herd?

Yes. Invite them as a workspace member. They can review pull requests, set the review rules and take the work that needs a person.

How do I compare the cost of a task with a quote?

Take one ask you would have quoted out. File it, then read its cost on the task page. The calculator turns your monthly task count into a monthly total, so you can set it next to your own quote.