ENGAGEMENT

Fixed-Price

Signed SoW (Werkvertrag in AT/DE). Vendor is legally bound to deliver the named scope at the named price by the named deadline.

Last reviewed: 2026-05-24 byKevin Riedl wiki β†—

A fixed-price engagement transfers delivery risk from the customer to the vendor. The price is fixed before work starts. The scope is named in writing. The deadline is part of the contract. If the vendor goes over budget or over schedule, that is the vendor’s problem, not yours.

For this to be real and not theatre, the contract has to be a Werkvertrag (under AT/DE law) or its closest local equivalent. "Fixed price" as a verbal promise with a Time & Material contract underneath is not a fixed price; it is a marketing line.

Wavect runs fixed-price for engagements where the scope is well-defined and the discovery work has already happened. For pre-discovery work we run a 2 to 3 week Discovery Phase first, which itself is fixed-price. The cost gets deducted from the build invoice if you continue with us.

Wavect’s fixed-price guarantee means signed SoW (Werkvertrag), legally bound to deliver. It does not mean refund-if-we-miss-the-deadline.

// FAQ

FAQs

FAQs

That the vendor is legally bound to deliver the named scope at the named price. It does not mean a refund if the deadline slips, and it does not mean the vendor cannot raise change requests for new scope. Read the SoW; the guarantee lives in the language, not in the marketing.
When the scope is genuinely uncertain. Forcing fixed-price onto pre-discovery work makes the vendor pad the estimate by 30 to 100% to absorb the unknowns, or cut corners when reality bites. Do discovery first, then fix the price on what you actually know.
Yes. The two failure modes: a vendor underbids and cuts quality to stay in budget, or scope ambiguity in the SoW becomes a change-request war. Mitigate by checking past projects of similar size and by writing acceptance criteria precise enough to be testable.