$5K–$25K typical projects
Direct answer
Technical due diligence — an independent assessment of a codebase, architecture, and engineering practices before you invest, acquire, or commit budget — typically costs $5K–$25K depending on codebase size and how deep you need the review to go. I've spent 7+ years shipping production software, including as a Guest Engineer at Expensify on a platform used by millions, so I evaluate code against what actually survives in production rather than textbook ideals. I'm Top Rated on Upwork with $100K+ earned and verified client reviews, though most diligence work reaches me through direct referrals from founders and investors. Engagements start with a scoping call to define the questions you need answered, then run one to three weeks to a written report you can act on.
You're about to wire money — into an acquisition, an investment, or a rebuild — based on someone's claims about their own code. Technical due diligence replaces those claims with an independent read: what's actually there, what it will cost to maintain or extend, and which risks are deal-relevant versus cosmetic.
You need an MVP or v2 shipped on budget with someone who makes architecture decisions and owns delivery end-to-end.
You need a senior IC to augment the team, rescue a codebase, or lead mobile + AI integration without months of hiring.
You need a reliable senior subcontractor for client projects — clear communication, store-ready quality, white-label friendly.
30 minutes — goals, stack, timeline, budget range.
Fixed milestones, clear deliverables, start date.
Weekly demos, async Slack updates, production standards.
Store launch, documentation, knowledge transfer.
A buyer is acquiring a niche SaaS with one departing developer. I review the codebase, infrastructure, and deployment process, quantify the bus-factor risk, and identify what a new team needs in the first ninety days. The buyer proceeds — but with a revised price and a transition clause requiring documented handover, both directly supported by findings in the report.
An investor likes a founding team but can't judge whether the 'AI platform' is real engineering or a thin wrapper. I spend a week in the repository and architecture, separating genuine IP from glue code, and assess whether the platform can scale past its current user base. The investor gets a plain-language memo mapping technical findings to the deal thesis.
A non-technical founder paid an agency for a React Native app and suspects quality problems as bugs pile up before launch. I audit the codebase, test coverage, and release setup, distinguishing normal startup mess from structural problems. The founder receives a prioritized fix list and negotiating leverage: specific, evidence-backed defects the agency is contractually obligated to resolve.
The first step is a scoping call where we define the decision this diligence serves — acquisition price, investment go/no-go, rebuild-versus-repair — because the decision determines what I look at. Week 1 is access and reading: repository, infrastructure, CI/CD, dependency tree, issue tracker, and interviews with whoever wrote the code, if they're available. I run the app, trace the critical paths, and check whether the deployment story matches what was claimed.
Week 2 is analysis and drafting: architecture assessment, security posture, scalability limits, code quality in the areas that matter commercially, and estimation of remediation cost for each significant finding. Smaller engagements at the $5K end compress this into about a week with a narrower question set; $25K engagements cover larger codebases, multiple products, or include follow-up sessions with your team. You get a written report, a findings walkthrough call, and thirty days of follow-up questions included.
Scope is the main lever. A single-product review answering one sharp question — "can this codebase support 10x users?" or "is this safe to acquire?" — sits at the low end. Cost climbs with codebase size, the number of services and repositories, and whether infrastructure and security review are in scope alongside code. A review that includes interviewing the engineering team and assessing process (how they ship, test, and respond to incidents) takes meaningfully longer than code-only.
Depth of deliverable matters too. A memo for an investor who needs a risk summary is cheaper than a remediation roadmap with effort estimates that a post-acquisition team will execute against. Time pressure is the final driver: diligence often runs inside a deal window measured in days, and compressed timelines mean I clear other work to prioritize yours. If your question is genuinely narrow, say so — I'd rather quote $6K for the right scope than $20K for theater.
The biggest one is a conflicted reviewer: never let the agency that built the code, or one hoping to win the rebuild, grade its own work. The second is checklist theater — reports that count linting violations and comment density but never answer your actual question. A hundred pages of static-analysis output is not diligence; it's a tool run.
Be wary of reviewers who never ran the application. Reading code tells you structure; running it tells you truth — half of what I find comes from tracing real requests through the system. Also watch for verdicts without evidence: "the code quality is poor" is an opinion, while "the payment flow has no test coverage and three of its five external calls lack error handling, here are the files" is a finding you can negotiate with. Finally, avoid anyone who won't put remediation costs in writing. A risk without a price tag cannot inform a deal.
Ask what they've shipped, not just what they've reviewed. Someone who has carried production systems through scale, outages, and app-store releases evaluates code against reality; a pure consultant evaluates it against a style guide. Ask for a redacted sample report — the structure tells you whether you'll get decision-grade findings or a formatted tool dump. Ask how they handle areas outside their depth; a reviewer who says "I'll bring in a specialist for the smart-contract portion" is more credible than one who claims to cover everything.
Then check independence and confidentiality mechanics: will they sign your NDA, do they have any stake in the deal outcome, and are they available for the follow-up call where your lawyer or investor asks hard questions? The report is half the value; the other half is a reviewer who can defend every finding live, with evidence, when the other side pushes back.
A decision-grade report opens with a one-page executive summary a non-technical reader can act on: overall risk level, the three to five findings that matter to the deal, and a clear answer to the question you commissioned. Every finding below it carries severity, evidence (file paths, configurations, reproduction steps), commercial impact, and an estimated remediation cost in engineer-weeks — because "needs refactoring" is useless until it becomes "roughly six weeks for one senior engineer."
Good reports also say what's fine. A codebase's strengths are deal-relevant: solid test coverage on the billing path or a clean deployment pipeline is worth money and should be stated plainly. Expect an explicit list of what was not reviewed and why, so nobody mistakes silence for approval. And expect calibration: startup code is supposed to have shortcuts, and a reviewer who flags every pragmatic tradeoff as a crisis will sink good deals and exhaust your attention on noise.
Skip formal diligence when the deal size doesn't justify it — spending $15K to evaluate a $30K asset makes no sense; an hour or two of expert review is enough there. Skip it when you've already committed and nothing in the report could change the outcome. Diligence is decision support; without a live decision it's just an expensive way to feel thorough after the fact.
Don't buy it as a substitute for a hiring plan, either. If you're acquiring a product with no engineers attached and have nobody to act on findings, your first problem is capability, not information. And if you're a founder wanting ongoing quality oversight of your development team, you want a fractional advisor relationship, not a point-in-time audit — a report ages fast against a codebase that changes weekly. I do both, but they're different purchases, and buying the wrong one wastes most of the money.
You approve milestones and a price before any build starts — no open-ended hourly surprises.
You see running software each week, not status reports, so you can course-correct early.
The person who scopes the work is the person who builds it — no junior layers, no agency markup.
Top Rated on Upwork with public client reviews and $100K+ earned, plus contributions to Expensify. Check the receipts before you commit.
Chat-Based Financial Collaboration
Contributed 50+ merged pull requests to New Expensify — the production React Native app used by millions for chat-based expense management — working through Expensify's fully public open-source process alongside their core engineers, and recognized with a Guest Engineer invitation to their Curaçao offsite.
Food Truck Discovery Platform
Production food-truck discovery platform for US cities — customer and vendor React Native apps on iOS and Android, plus customer and vendor web, with AI features. Helps people find trucks nearby while vendors manage schedules, orders, and events.
Rewards & Engagement Platform
End-to-end React Native app for the US market with gamified rewards, real-time engagement, and secure payment flows — built from product scoping to App Store launch.
A focused review on a single codebase can complete in five to seven business days from access, including the written report — faster for a narrow question with a memo-style deliverable. The bottleneck is usually not my analysis but access: repository permissions, infrastructure visibility, and time with the selling team. If you tell me the deal deadline up front, I'll tell you honestly what depth is achievable inside it, and what has to be flagged as unreviewed.
Minimally disruptive when scoped properly. I need read access to repositories and infrastructure, existing documentation, and typically two to four hours of interview time with the technical lead spread across the engagement. I work under NDA, ask for nothing to be changed or cleaned up beforehand — a suspiciously tidied repo is itself a finding — and route all questions through an agreed channel so the process stays professional on both sides.
Rarely, and that's not the report's job. Most serious findings become negotiation inputs: a price adjustment, an escrow holdback, a transition-services clause, or a funded remediation plan with the risk owned knowingly. Nearly every codebase has real problems; the question is whether they're priced in. My report attaches an effort estimate to each significant issue precisely so your side can convert technical risk into deal terms instead of walking away from something fixable.
Projects typically fall in the $5K–$25K range depending on scope, integrations, and timeline. I provide a fixed-scope proposal after a 30-minute scoping call.
MVPs often ship in 8–12 weeks. Production systems with AI backends or RAG may run 12–20 weeks. Rescue and audit engagements can start within days.
Yes. I work with founders, CTOs, product teams, and agencies worldwide — US, UK, EU, and APAC time zones with async updates and weekly demos.
Yes. I specialize in React Native + Python (FastAPI) + AI (RAG, agents, OpenAI/Claude) under one senior owner — fewer handoffs, faster shipping.
Book a free 30-minute scoping call on this site, hire through Upwork, or email dhairyasenjaliya@gmail.com with your brief and timeline.
30-minute scoping call · Clear milestones · Senior engineer ownership