In-house vs fractional vs agency vs BI tool
Four ways to get your numbers read Here is what each one actually costs.
Most owners land here after the same thought: we should probably have someone looking at this properly. Four options follow. They run from about $21 a month to more than $130,000 in a first year, and they are not four versions of the same thing.
What each one costs
- Metric Bridge$500 to $2,000a month, fixed
- In-house analystAbout $112,000first year, salary plus super
- Agency or consultancyNot published. You get a quote after a scoping call
- BI tool, run yourselfAbout $21per user per month, Power BI Pro
The four options
What each one buys, side by side.
| Metric Bridge | In-house analyst | Agency or consultancy | BI tool, run yourself | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| What you get | A 14-page report every month: 8 benchmarked KPIs, one headline move, three priorities | 38 hours a week, and someone who knows your business by memory | A team, a scope, and a deck at the end of it | Charts that refresh. You build them and you read them |
| What you do not get | Someone in the building. At Tier 1, no ad-hoc work between reports | Cover when they take leave, and no second opinion | A fixed price. When the scope moves, the invoice moves | Anyone to tell you which chart matters this month |
| Commitment | Month to month, cancel anytime | 12 months realistically, plus the hiring round | Commonly 6 to 12 months on retainer | Monthly licence. The real cost is your time |
| Fits a business that | Turns over $500k to $10m and has nobody reading the numbers monthly | Has roughly 30+ staff, or runs on data all day | Has one large project and a budget to scope it | Has someone who genuinely enjoys building dashboards |
We have left the agency cost blank on purpose. Melbourne analytics consultancies do not publish prices, so any range we printed here would be a guess dressed up as a fact. Ask two of them for a quote and you will know more than this page can tell you.
The number that decides it
What a $100,000 analyst actually costs.
Three sources disagree about the salary, which is the first honest thing to say about it.
What the market says
$95,000 to $115,000
SEEK, Australia
July 2026
Advertised full-time ranges, national
$101,500 median
Glassdoor, Melbourne
June 2026
$83,875 to $120,000 across the middle half, from 408 reported salaries
$107,753 average
Indeed, Melbourne
Updated 28 June 2026
From 44 reported salaries
Take the middle of that and call it $100,000. Salary is not employment cost, so here is the rest of it.
First year, one analyst
The same year, here
- Tier 1 at $500 a month is $6,000 a year.
- Tier 2 at $1,500 a month is $18,000 a year.
Why payroll tax is not in that column
That payroll tax line is not a rounding error we missed. Victoria does not charge payroll tax until a business pays more than $1,000,000 in annual Australian wages, so one analyst is nowhere near it. At the 4.85% metropolitan rate we could have added about $4,850 a year to this column and made ourselves look better. It would have been wrong, and your accountant would have caught it.
The thing no table can price
A new hire is not producing a useful read of your business in week one. They have to learn your products, your seasons and where the data is buried first. Budget for that gap. It is real, it is different in every business, and any consultant who quotes you a precise number for it is guessing.
This is not a like-for-like saving and we are not going to pretend it is. An in-house analyst gives you 38 hours a week and institutional memory. Metric Bridge gives you one report a month. The useful question is not which is cheaper. It is which one your business is currently the right size for.
The disqualifier
When you should not hire Metric Bridge.
Four situations where one of the other three options is the better answer. If you are in one of them, a call will waste both our time.
01
You have roughly 30+ staff, or someone already doing this.
At that size an in-house hire amortises, and you need someone in the building who can be pulled into a meeting. If your ops or finance lead is already building the reports, you need to give them better tools, not a second opinion once a month.
Hire, do not retain.
02
Your question is one-off, not recurring.
A single strategic question, a due-diligence exercise, or a one-time pricing review is a consulting engagement. Paying $500 a month for twelve months to answer a question you have once is a bad trade.
Buy a project.
03
Your data is not in a system yet.
If revenue lives in a notebook and the invoices are in a shoebox, analytics is the second job. The first is bookkeeping. We would spend month one telling you what a bookkeeper would tell you in an hour, and charge you more for it.
Get the books straight first.
04
You want dashboards your whole team logs into daily.
That is a BI tool build, and it is a different shape of product. Tier 2 includes a live dashboard, but it is built for the owner to check weekly, not for twelve people to run their day on.
Buy the tool, or budget for a build.
None of this is modesty. A client who was never the right fit cancels in month three, and a cancelled client costs more than the one we turned away
The decision
Which one fits you.
Two if-then lines, and the section above covers when the answer is none of us. Read the one that describes you.
If you turn over $500k to $10m and nobody reads your numbers monthly
Start with the report. $500 a month, cancel anytime, and the first one is covered by the refund guarantee.
If you need answers between reports and an alert when something breaks
Tier 2 at $1,500 a month adds the live dashboard, daily anomaly alerts and a video walkthrough.
Still not sure which one you areThat is what the call is for.
Fifteen minutes, no deck. We will look at three of your numbers live and tell you honestly whether a monthly report is the right spend, including when it is not.
Read next
Where these numbers come from
- Data analyst salary, Australia: SEEK, Data Analyst salary in AU, July 2026. $95,000 to $115,000.
- Data analyst salary, Melbourne: Glassdoor, June 2026. $101,500 median, $83,875 to $120,000 across the 25th to 75th percentile, from 408 reported salaries.
- Data analyst salary, Melbourne: Indeed, updated 28 June 2026. $107,753 average, from 44 reported salaries.
- Superannuation Guarantee rate: 12% for the 2026-27 financial year, Australian Taxation Office.
- Payroll tax: the Victorian tax-free threshold is $1,000,000 in annual Australian wages for 2026-27, and the metropolitan rate is 4.85%. State Revenue Office Victoria.
- Recruitment agency fees: 15% to 20% of first-year salary is the standard Australian contingency range. Manpower Australia, April 2026.
- Power BI Pro: AU$21.00 per user per month, billed yearly, excluding GST. Microsoft Australia pricing, July 2026. Looker Studio has a free tier.
- Metric Bridge pricing: Tier 1 $500 a month, Tier 2 $1,500 a month, Tier 3 $2,000 a month. Month to month, no lock-in.
Salary figures move. These were checked on 25 July 2026 and the ranges disagree with each other by more than $20,000, which is worth remembering before anyone quotes you a single confident number.