Pricing

Hey everyone, I’m a Senior Product Engineer / Architect based in Western Europe. I usually take on longer-term freelance contracts (currently billing at €110/hour), but I’ve recently been approached by an e-commerce scale-up for a standalone frontend audit, and I'm looking for advice on how to price and package it. Context: * The Client: A fast-growing B2C e-commerce scale-up (\~20 people). * The Stack: Vue.js / Nuxt. * The Problem: They’ve built a successful platform, but tech debt is accumulating. For example they have SonarQube in their pipeline but unit test code coverage metrics aren't enforced. They have E2E tests, but they are flaky and mostly ignored and the list goes on... * The Goal: The Tech Lead (who has a non-engineering background) wants a "fresh pair of eyes" to look at their frontend setup. * The Business KPIs: They explicitly told me their main drivers for this audit are Performance (Core Web Vitals) and Conversion (checkout funnel). * Deliverable: A prioritized audit report/roadmap that their PMs can easily digest and pull into their sprints. The Pricing Dilemma: If I just bill this hourly, factoring in onboarding, local dev setup, 1-on-1 interviews with their frontend devs (to gauge developer experience/friction), reviewing the code, and writing the report...it might take me roughly 3 to 5 days, maybe more. At €110/hr, that’s roughly €2,500 to €4,500. However, since this is an e-commerce platform where performance directly impacts conversion, a tactical report that speeds up their checkout process could be worth tens of thousands of euros in recurring revenue. Because of this, I'm leaning away from hourly billing and considering offering fixed-price tiers (e.g., a €6k "Architectural Health Check" vs a €10k "Performance & Conversion Strategy"). I will also likely do a half-day on-site kickoff (travel is about 2.5 hours each way and maybe hotel costs on top of that) Note: I have already asked the client for their rough budget bandwidth to make sure we are in the same ballpark, but haven't gotten their number yet. My questions for the experienced folks here: 1. Do you do fixed-price or tiered pricing for architecture/codebase audits? If so, how do you prevent scope creep when you don't know exactly what mess you'll find in the repo? 2. What is a reasonable price range for this kind of high-value audit in the European market? Is aiming for the €6k - €10k range realistic for a 20-person scale-up? 3. For those who have successfully sold audits at a premium, what specific deliverables (besides a PDF report) made the client feel it was worth every penny? Appreciate any insights!