Question 1

How does QA Guardian calculate ROI?

Accepted Answer

The calculator compares your current QA spend — labor (with a 1.25× employer burden multiplier for taxes, benefits, and equipment) plus any CI compute costs — against QA Guardian's flat-rate, flow-based monthly subscription. The difference is your annual savings. Because Guardian's pricing is fixed per user journey ('Flow'), your costs don't balloon as your team scales or as you ship more features.

Question 2

How much does manual QA cost compared to automated testing with Guardian?

Accepted Answer

A single manual QA tester in the US earns roughly $66,000 in base salary. With standard employer overhead (taxes, benefits, equipment) applied at 1.25×, the fully-loaded annual cost is approximately $82,500, or about $6,875 per month. A QA Guardian Core plan covering up to 20 automated flows costs $3,500/month — roughly half the cost of one manual tester, while delivering consistent, 24/7 parallel test execution with no maintenance burden on your team.

Question 3

How much can a company save by switching from an SDET hire to QA Guardian?

Accepted Answer

A mid-level SDET in the US earns approximately $118,000 in base salary. Fully loaded at 1.25×, that's $147,500 per year. A QA Guardian Advanced plan covering 50 flows is $5,500/month ($66,000/year). A team replacing one SDET with Guardian's Advanced plan saves approximately $81,500 per year — while getting fully managed test maintenance, infrastructure, and CI/CD integration included.

Question 4

What is a 'Flow' in QA Guardian's pricing model?

Accepted Answer

A Flow is a single automated end-to-end user journey — for example, 'User Logs In', 'User Completes Checkout', or 'Admin Creates a Report'. Each Flow is capped at 25 interactions, 10 assertions, and 3 minutes of runtime to keep tests fast and stable. Guardian charges per Flow rather than per individual test step, because a user journey is the meaningful unit of application quality.

Question 5

Why does QA Guardian charge per Flow instead of per test?

Accepted Answer

Per-test pricing creates an incentive to write more tests regardless of value — a pattern called 'Test Bloat'. QA Guardian charges per user journey (Flow) to align its incentives with real product functionality, keeping the test suite lean and meaningful as your application evolves.

Question 6

Is QA Guardian's pricing fixed or does it scale with usage?

Accepted Answer

Guardian's pricing is flat-rate per tier, not usage-based. The Core plan ($3,500/month) covers up to 20 flows. Advanced ($5,500/month) covers up to 50 flows. Beyond 50 flows, additional flows are billed at $90/flow (flows 51–100) and $75/flow (flows 101+). There are no per-run charges, no overage fees, and no separate infrastructure costs.

See the numbers.

Methodology & Pricing Logic

In-House Labor Valuation

Guardian Pricing Model

Common Questions About QA Testing Costs

Ready for cost-effective QA?