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Hiring a developer, an agency, an AI agent on its own, or a lane: what each costs and who checks the code.

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A Ponte Digital lane costs €2,950/month excl. VAT month to month, or €2,450/month excl. VAT on a yearly plan. One of our developers checks every change before you see it.

Book a call See how a lane works

A lane is a fixed-price development subscription for companies that run on their own software. Over a year, it costs €35,400 a year excl. VAT or €29,400 a year excl. VAT, depending on the plan. Every lane starts with the First Issue, one real request for €450 excl. VAT, once. An average developer in the Netherlands costs roughly €63,000 to €76,000 a year with employer costs (Indeed, Ondernemen met Personeel). Filling a technical role takes a median of 76 days from job opening to first hire, about two and a half months (Ashby, April 2026).

A lane starts within days, and we build at AI speed. Your active request comes back within 48 hours on weekdays, counted from when you approve the scope. The work stays in your own Linear and GitHub. A lane takes one request at a time, so it doesn't replace a team. The table compares five options, and below it we say when a lane is the wrong choice.

Five ways to get your requests built, side by side.
Hiring a developer A freelancer An agency An AI agent on its own A Ponte Digital lane
Time to start About two and a half months to first hire (Ashby), then their notice period When one is available When their planning has room Right away, once it's connected Within days, once your preview environment works
Who writes the code Your new employee The freelancer The agency's developers The AI agent Ponte Digital, at AI speed
Who checks the code Another developer, if you have one The freelancer alone, unless you add a reviewer Their developers, if review is in the quote You or your developer, in its pull request A developer checks every change before you see it.
Who tests it before release Your own team Agreed per job Agreed per project You or your team You, in a private preview of your own app
Yearly cost Roughly €63,000 to €76,000 a year with employer costs (Indeed, Ondernemen met Personeel) Hourly or per quote; you manage the review Hourly or per quote; you manage the review A subscription, plus your developer's time to review €35,400 a year excl. VAT or €29,400 a year excl. VAT (pricing)
What you own Everything they build What your contract transfers to you What your contract transfers to you The code in your repository Everything: your code, your Linear, your servers
What happens when they leave or you stop What they know leaves with them What they know leaves with them A handover, if your contract has one Your code stays; the speed goes Nothing breaks. Code, Linear and every record stay yours. What goes is the speed.
The change record a security reviewer asks for Depends on your team's process Depends on their process Depends on their process A pull request; your developer approves it Request, approval, test, review and release, for every change
How you request work However your team works However you agree with them Through the agency's process Assign it a task in Linear A request in your Linear, the way you'd say it

When a lane is the wrong choice.

A Ponte Digital lane fits Dutch SaaS and IT-services companies of about 2 to 20 people with their own platform. They have paying customers and more requests than developers. A lane isn't for unfunded startups. In these four cases, something else fits better.

  • You need three or more full-time developers.

    Hire them. A lane builds one request at a time, so it can't replace a team that size.

  • You don't have a product yet.

    Start with Build & Run: we build the first version and keep it running.

  • You need someone on call around the clock.

    Choose a provider with on-call cover. A lane doesn't include 24-hour support.

  • You want a team on-site.

    Hire locally, or pick an agency that works at your office. We work remotely, in your own Linear and GitHub.

Other coding agents in Linear hand their pull request to your developer. Ours comes with one.

On 15 October 2026, none of the coding agents in Linear's directory said a developer of its own reviews the work before you see it. GitHub's Copilot agent for Linear opens a draft pull request and requests a review from you.

That leaves the checking to your own developer. Veracode has tested more than 100 AI models over four rounds. Given no security instructions, they failed its security check on nearly 44% of tasks.

In a Ponte Digital lane, a developer comes with it. A developer checks every change before you see it. Then you test the real thing in a private preview of your own app, with fake data, and release it yourself.

What the numbers are based on.

Every market figure on this page links to its source. We checked each source on 15 October 2026, and Indeed again on 17 October 2026. The developer cost is a year of Indeed's average salary for a software developer. We add the employer costs from Ondernemen met Personeel, with and without holiday pay. The hiring time is Ashby's median for technical roles at companies that use its recruiting software, worldwide, so it is not Dutch data. The lane cost is a year of our monthly price, on either plan. The First Issue (€450 excl. VAT, once) comes on top in the first year.

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