Build the open
future with us.

Open Ladder Studio takes commissioned engineering for nonprofits and reform projects. Everything we build for clients ships back to the public openladder/* repos under MIT or Apache 2.0 unless the engagement specifically requires otherwise.

RATES · 2026

Hourly · engineering

Code review, architecture, hands-on dev.

$300/hr

Project minimum

FOIA pipelines, data dashboards, secure messaging. Multi-week.

$15,000

Retainer · monthly

On-call engineering for one organization. Fractional CTO model.

$8,000/mo

Sliding scale for community-led nonprofits and directly-impacted organizations. Pro-bono work routed through behindbars.tech.

WHAT WE DON'T BUILD

· Risk scoring, recidivism prediction, parole algorithms.
· Surveillance, electronic monitoring, or location-tracking tools.
· Anything for private-prison operators or prison-phone companies.
· Speculative crypto, NFT minting, token-launch infrastructure.
· Generic CRUD-for-hire SaaS not in the justice/reform domain.

BOOK A FIT CALL

Send a fit-call brief

30 minutes. Free. Bring a brief and a repo link if you have one.

Email the studio

hello@openladder.studio · reply window ~48h.

BUY ME A COFFEE

If you've used something we shipped open-source and want to say thanks.

Request a support link →

Build the open future with us.

Build the open
future with us.