Your business is growing, the finance topics are getting harder, and you've realised your accountant and your CEO can no longer carry the load alone. You need a CFO. The question is: full-time hire, or Fractional CFO?
This guide breaks down the trade-offs across cost, flexibility, expertise and ROI — and gives you a clear answer based on your stage.
Cost: 50-70% gap
A salaried CFO in France costs €100,000-€213,000/year all-in. A Fractional CFO costs €24,000-€96,000/year for an equivalent senior profile. Read the detailed pricing in our 2026 cost guide.
The cost gap is not just salary — it's also:
- No employer charges (42-45% of gross in France) — disappear entirely with a Fractional CFO.
- No severance risk — if growth slows, a Fractional CFO engagement ends with 30 days notice instead of 6+ months of severance.
- No recruitment friction — CFO searches take 4-6 months. A Fractional CFO is operational in 1-2 weeks.
Flexibility & speed
A salaried CFO is 5 days/week, every week. A Fractional CFO scales: 2 days/month in calm phases, 8+ days/month during a fundraise. You pay for what you use.
This matters because CFO needs are cyclical. A Series A campaign needs 6-8 days/month of CFO bandwidth for 3 months. Once closed, 2-3 days/month is plenty. With a salaried CFO, you pay full-time for both peaks and troughs.
Expertise & perspective
A salaried CFO knows your business deeply but lives in a single-company bubble. A Fractional CFO works with 5-10 companies in parallel, accumulating cross-sector benchmarks that no single in-house operator can match.
This translates into faster diagnosis (you've seen this pattern in 8 other startups), better tool choices (you know which ERP actually scales), and a richer network (you've worked with most VCs, banks and law firms in the region).
When to switch from Fractional to full-time
Three signals say you've outgrown the Fractional model:
- 50+ employees with a real finance team. The complexity now warrants 5-day-a-week leadership.
- Multi-entity / international consolidation. Daily presence across multiple legal entities is hard part-time.
- You've raised a Series B or beyond. Investors expect a full-time CFO in the C-suite seat.
Below that threshold, Fractional almost always wins on ROI. Above it, you should hire — but a Fractional CFO can lead the search and onboard the successor.
Need help deciding?
Every situation is different. Book a free 30-minute diagnostic with one of our Fractional CFOs — we'll tell you straight whether you need us, or whether you're ready for a full-time hire.
