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Why R&D studies cost 20% of your credit
Contingency pricing made sense when studies took weeks of manual work. It doesn't anymore.
by Claimship ·
Ask an R&D credit firm what they charge. The answer is usually 15 to 25% of whatever they find you.
On a $60,000 credit, that's $9,000 to $15,000. Every year. For paperwork about work your team already did.
Why the model exists
Traditional studies are labor. Someone interviews your engineers. Someone collects time surveys. Someone writes project narratives by hand. A firm can spend 40 to 80 hours per client.
Contingency pricing covers that labor and shifts the risk. If the firm finds nothing, you pay nothing. That was a fair trade in 1995.
What changed
The evidence now writes itself. Your commits, pull requests, tickets, and threads record what your team built, who built it, and when. Software can read that record and map it to the IRS four-part test.
That cuts the labor from 80 hours to almost none. The 20% fee never dropped with it.
The math
Claimship charges a flat fee of $1,500 to $3,000 per year. A $60,000 credit costs you $2,500, not $12,000. The difference stays in your runway. Run your own numbers in the calculator.
There's a second benefit. A study built from primary evidence is stronger in an audit than one built from interviews your team half remembers. You pay less and hold better cards. See the full comparison with a traditional study firm.
