Pricing
A flat fee. You keep the entire credit.
No percentage of your refund. No per seat pricing. No surprise study fees in April. One annual fee covers the study, the Form 6765 package, and quarterly tracking until the credit lands.
Most customers claim $20,000 to $250,000 in their first year. More than 50 technical employees? and we'll quote a flat fee for your team.
How the fee compares
The same credit, very different bills
Most startups pay for the R&D credit one of two ways. A contingency firm keeps 20 to 30% of whatever it finds. A fixed-fee study runs from a few thousand dollars to tens of thousands.
Here's the catch. Most funded software startups with US engineers qualify easily. The percentage fee scales with a credit you were going to get anyway. A flat fee doesn't.
Full breakdown of the four pricing models: how much an R&D study costs.
Contingency firm at 25% of the credit
Standard range is 20 to 30%
Fixed-fee study, mid-range quote
Firms price by complexity
Claimship Growth plan
Flat, regardless of credit size
Claimship Seed plan
Flat, regardless of credit size
Illustrative example. Your credit depends on your payroll. Estimate it here.
What the fee covers
Everything from connection to collection
The full study, not a summary
Project narratives, payroll allocations, and Form 6765 numbers. Every qualified dollar links back to the commit, pull request, or ticket that earned it. Your CPA gets a package they can file with your return.
Expenses beyond payroll
Cloud and compute spend, US contractor invoices, and supplies. Claimship scans a read-only bank or card feed and adds qualified expenses to the claim at no extra charge.
Tracking until the cash lands
Filing is not the finish line. Claimship pushes the elected credit into Rippling or Gusto and tracks it every quarter until the full amount shows up as lower payroll taxes.
Pricing questions
Do you take a percentage of the credit?
No. You pay one flat annual fee. R&D credit firms usually take 20 to 30% of what they find, so a $60,000 credit costs $12,000 to $18,000. With Claimship the same credit costs $1,500 or $3,000, depending on your plan. The rest is yours.
What counts as a technical employee?
Anyone whose work you claim in the study. Engineers, data scientists, designers doing product work, and technical founders. Plan limits are based on this count, not your total headcount. Sales, ops, and admin staff don't count against the limit.
What if we have more than 50 technical employees?
Tell us about your team through the Get started form. We price larger teams individually based on entity structure and how many projects need documenting. The model stays the same: a flat fee, not a percentage.
What if the credit isn't worth the fee?
We tell you before you pay. The first estimate comes from a first pass over your connected tools. If your likely credit doesn't clearly beat the fee, we say so and you walk away owing nothing.
Is filing included?
Claimship produces the audit-ready study and the Form 6765 package. Your CPA reviews and files it with your return, the same way they file everything else. Nothing about your accounting setup changes.
Are there other fees?
No. The annual fee covers all integrations, unlimited work items, the full study, the Form 6765 package, and quarterly tracking of the credit in your payroll provider. There are no setup fees, no per seat charges, and no charge that scales with the size of your credit.
Find out what your startup is owed
Tell us about your company. We connect your tools, run a first pass, and show you the number. If the credit isn't worth it, we'll tell you.