Your development team. Delivered.

The retainer is the total cost — there are no hidden fees. It includes developer salaries, QA coverage, project management, sprint ceremonies, weekly progress reports, all HR and compliance, tooling, DevOps support, and AI tooling (GitHub Copilot, Cursor, Claude) for all engineers as standard. The monthly retainer is everything.

Yes — Team as a Service typically costs 40–73% less than an equivalent internal team. A traditional internal team of 6 engineers in Sydney costs approximately $1.48M per year when superannuation, recruitment fees, onboarding, attrition, tooling, and management overhead are included — and that excludes QA, PM, and DevOps. An EB Pearls Growth Team starts from $396,000 per year with AI-augmented engineers providing 2–3× the output per head.

Yes — EB Pearls teams can be scaled up or down with 30 days' notice, with no redundancy process, no severance cost, and no HR complexity. This is the key commercial advantage over an internal team: you get the output of a large team without the fixed employment commitment.

EB Pearls carries the full replacement risk — written into every contract as a non-negotiable guarantee. A replacement engineer is sourced, vetted, onboarded, and up to speed with no disruption to the sprint cycle and no additional cost to you. This is the replacement guarantee. No other Australian development provider writes this into the contract as standard.

The client owns 100% of all code, documentation, and IP created during the engagement — written into every EB Pearls contract without exception. Full IP assignment is a non-negotiable term. An NDA is available before the first conversation. EB Pearls is ISO 27001 certified throughout every engagement, and all data handling complies with the Australian Privacy Act.

Yes — EB Pearls was founded in Sydney in 2004 and is headquartered at Suite 1A7, 410 Elizabeth Street, Surry Hills NSW 2010. Account managers and engagement leads are Sydney-based. The delivery team of 320+ engineers are full-time employees based in Kathmandu, Nepal — not contractors. All data is handled under the Australian Privacy Act. EB Pearls has been ranked #1 globally on Clutch for app development for four consecutive years (2021–2024).

Toptal is a freelancer marketplace — it matches you with individual developers you manage yourself. EB Pearls is a managed delivery model providing a full squad with PM, QA, and DevOps. Toptal's pricing is hourly and variable; EB Pearls operates on a fixed monthly retainer. For teams who want to manage individual developers directly, Toptal may suit. For teams who want managed delivery with one point of contact and one fixed cost, EB Pearls is built for that.

Staff augmentation gives you people you manage yourself. Team as a Service gives you a managed outcome — EB Pearls handles all coordination, HR, quality standards, and reporting. Staff augmentation places individual contractors into your team; you manage them day-to-day. Team as a Service delivers a fully managed squad with one point of contact and one fixed monthly cost.

EB Pearls can have a dedicated development team in active sprint within 2–3 weeks of contract sign-off. This is possible because EB Pearls maintains a bench of 320+ pre-vetted engineers, eliminating the open job posting and interview pipeline that makes internal hiring take 4–6 months. You interview and approve every engineer before they join your squad.

EB Pearls Team as a Service engagements start from $22,000 AUD per month for a Starter Squad — 1–2 developers, QA, and PM support. Most clients engage for a minimum of 3–6 months. The average engagement length is 12–24 months, with 97% of clients extending past the initial term.

Many Team as a Service engagements qualify for the Australian R&D Tax Incentive, returning up to 43.5 cents on every eligible dollar spent. Eligibility depends on whether the project involves genuine technical experimentation — a condition met by most custom software development. EB Pearls structures engagements to maximise R&D eligibility and provides documentation to support your claim. Engage your R&D advisor before the engagement begins.

Yes — every EB Pearls engineer uses GitHub Copilot, Cursor, and Claude as standard tools, included in the retainer at no extra cost. AI handles boilerplate and routine implementation; human engineers handle architecture, code review, and security validation. This AI-augmented model delivers 2–3× the output of a traditional team — which is why our retainers can be structured with smaller team sizes without sacrificing velocity.

Yes — codebase audit and modernisation is a specific engagement type within the Team as a Service model. The process starts with a 2-week codebase audit: identifying what is solid, what is fragile, and what the critical path risks are. A phased remediation plan is approved before any code is touched. EB Pearls recommends the minimum intervention needed — a full rewrite is only recommended when genuinely warranted, not as a default billing strategy.

EB Pearls is ranked #1 globally on Clutch for app development (2021–2024); BairesDev is ranked #15. Key differences: EB Pearls is Australian-headquartered with Sydney account management and AEST timezone alignment — BairesDev is LATAM-based with US Eastern timezone alignment. EB Pearls' Team as a Service model includes a contractual replacement guarantee; BairesDev's model does not. EB Pearls is ISO 27001 certified and built specifically for the Australian market.

EB Pearls is ISO 27001 certified for information security, ISO 9001 certified for quality management, and compliant with the Australian Privacy Act throughout every engagement. An NDA is available before the first conversation. All project information is handled under formal confidentiality obligations from the first call. For clients in regulated industries — healthcare, finance, government — additional controls including Australian-only data hosting are available.