Common questions about QA costs
Methodology for the calculator above. See full pricing.
How does QA Guardian calculate ROI?
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.
How much does manual QA cost compared to automated testing with Guardian?
A single manual QA tester in the US earns roughly $63,000 in base salary. With standard employer overhead (taxes, benefits, equipment) applied at 1.25×, the fully-loaded annual cost is approximately $78,750, or about $6,563 per month. A QA Guardian Starter 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.
How much can a company save by switching from an SDET hire to QA Guardian?
A mid-level Software Development Engineer in Test (SDET) in the US earns approximately $115,000 in base salary. Fully loaded (1.25× for employer taxes, health insurance, and 401k), that's $143,750 per year. A QA Guardian Pro plan covering 50 flows is $5,500/month ($66,000/year). A team replacing one SDET with Guardian's Pro plan saves approximately $77,750 per year — while getting fully managed test maintenance, infrastructure, and CI/CD integration included.
What is a 'Flow' in QA Guardian's pricing model?
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. Multiple simple tests (e.g., three different login roles) can be bundled into one Flow at no extra cost.
Why does QA Guardian charge per Flow instead of per test?
Per-test pricing creates an incentive to write more tests regardless of value — a pattern called 'Test Bloat'. When you pay per test, vendors profit from redundant coverage. QA Guardian aligns its incentives with yours by charging per user journey (Flow). This encourages tests that map directly to real product functionality, keeps maintenance overhead low, and ensures the suite stays lean and meaningful as your application evolves.
How does Guardian compare to hiring a QA automation contractor?
Contractors bill hourly, so they have no financial incentive to fix flaky tests quickly — every debugging hour is billable. With QA Guardian, test maintenance is included in the flat monthly rate. Guardian takes on the risk of flaky selectors, UI changes, and infrastructure failures at no additional cost. You get predictable spending, no recruiting overhead, and a team that stays current with your product without hourly billing surprises.
Does the calculator account for CI/CD compute costs?
Yes. Optional pipeline assumptions can include GitHub Actions ($0.008/minute) and CircleCI ($0.012/minute) based on team size, daily runs, and flow count. Guardian's subscription includes unlimited parallel cloud execution, so those compute line items go away when you switch.
Is QA Guardian's pricing fixed or does it scale with usage?
Guardian's pricing is tiered and additive. The Starter plan ($3,500/month flat) covers up to 20 flows. The Pro plan ($5,500/month flat) covers up to 50 flows. Beyond 50 flows, you pay the $5,500 Pro base plus $110 for each additional flow from 51-100, $105 per flow from 101-200, $100 per flow from 201-300, and $95 per flow for 301+. There are no per-run charges, no compute fees, and no execution overages on any plan.
QA Guardian: one-click export of pure Playwright TypeScript — you own every line. No proprietary runtime. No lock-in, ever.
Ready to run the numbers with us?
Book a 30-min call. Bring these estimates — we'll map coverage and send a free analysis after staging access.
From $3,500/mo · Cancel anytime