Netguru is one of the most recognized digital product consultancies in Europe — around 1,000 people, offices in multiple cities, a strong brand, and a long client list. For companies that need a large multidisciplinary team coordinated under one contract, Netguru works well.
Two types of companies look for alternatives. The first: teams that found Netguru’s account management layers slowing down a product team that needs direct access to senior designers. The second: companies that primarily need product design — not engineering at scale — and found Netguru’s model over-built for what they are actually trying to do.
If you are in either category, the agencies below address the problem directly. Each was evaluated for design quality, seniority of access, delivery model, and practical fit for companies between seed and Series B.
Quick Comparison: Top 3 Picks
| Agency | Why It Beats Netguru | Design Depth | Dev Included |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fireart Studio | Direct senior access, studio model, full-cycle with less overhead | ✅ Strong | ✅ Yes |
| MetaLab | Design-centric, veteran team, research through design systems | ✅ Very strong | ❌ Partial |
| Clay | Premium craft and brand alongside product design | ✅ Premium | ❌ Partial |
Why People Look for Netguru Alternatives
Netguru’s size is both its strength and its limitation. A 1,000-person consultancy has process, structure, and breadth — but it also has account managers between the client and the designers, sprint velocity that reflects enterprise delivery pace, and pricing that reflects the overhead of a large organization.
Companies looking for alternatives typically describe one of three situations: they need faster, more direct design collaboration; they need better design quality at a smaller engagement size; or they need a partner whose primary expertise is design, not engineering. None of these is a criticism of Netguru — it is a scope mismatch. The agencies below fill those gaps specifically.
How We Built This List
We evaluated 19 agencies against four criteria relevant to the Netguru-alternative context:
- Direct senior access — do the people on your calls also do the work, or does an account team sit between client and designer?
- Design as the primary capability — agencies where UX and product design are the core offering, not a service line attached to a dev shop
- Delivery at smaller scale — practical for companies that do not need a 15-person dedicated team
- Verified B2B and SaaS product work — named case studies from relevant product categories
1. Fireart Studio — Best for Teams That Want Netguru-Level Delivery Without Netguru-Level Overhead
Fireart Studio is a Warsaw-based digital product design and development agency founded in 2013. With a 60–100 person team, Fireart occupies a specific position in the market: large enough to have genuine senior depth across design and engineering, small enough to give clients direct access to the people doing the work without layers of account management.
The Warsaw location is relevant in the Netguru context specifically. Netguru is also Polish, also EU timezone, and also widely known in European and US markets. Fireart operates in the same geographic and timezone advantage — full EU coverage, 6–7 hour overlap with US East Coast, GDPR-native processes — while operating as a studio rather than a consultancy. That difference matters in practice: clients work with senior designers and developers directly, not through a project manager interpreting requirements between two teams.
Key Services:
- UX research and product strategy for SaaS, fintech, enterprise, and data-heavy platforms
- UI/UX design for dashboards, multi-role B2B interfaces, and complex product flows
- Design systems with Figma components and developer documentation
- Full-stack web and mobile product development alongside design
- Staff augmentation — senior designers embedded in client product teams on a monthly retainer
- MVP design and development from concept through launch
- Branding and motion design
Verified Client Work: Fireart’s named clients include Google, Atlassian, Rolls-Royce, Pipedrive, Bolt, Swisscom, Huawei, and Revolut — a comparable enterprise client list to Netguru, with a portfolio that reflects design quality at the same level. Awards include Red Dot and iDesign. Recent SaaS and B2B startup engagements include a dental SaaS platform redesign (Dentists.com), a brand identity and UI system for a B2B SaaS platform targeting mid-market companies, an AI-first corporate venture builder across the Middle East, and long-term embedded design relationships with fintech exchange and banking clients that renewed across multiple years.
Who It’s Best For: B2B SaaS and tech companies between seed and Series B that need the full-cycle capability of a Netguru-style partner — design, development, strategy — without the account management overhead and enterprise pricing that comes with a 1,000-person consultancy. Particularly relevant for: teams that have worked with large agencies and found the pace too slow; founders who want senior designers on their calls, not account managers; and companies where design quality is the primary constraint, not engineering scale.
Pricing: Monthly retainer from approximately $7,500/month for a senior designer. Development scoped separately. Fixed-scope engagements available for MVP builds and redesign projects. Longer commitments priced at a reduced rate.
Our Take: Fireart is the most direct structural alternative to Netguru on this list. Same geography, same timezone advantage, comparable enterprise track record — with a studio model that gives clients the senior access that Netguru’s scale makes difficult to guarantee. For companies that found Netguru’s process too slow or too layered, Fireart’s model is built for exactly that transition.
Explore their custom digital product design services or book a scoping call.
2. Clay — Best for Funded SaaS and Fintech Companies That Need Premium Craft and Brand Together
Clay is a global product design agency known for working with Coinbase, Meta, Google, Slack, and Stripe. Their positioning is distinct from Netguru: where Netguru leads with engineering and adds design, Clay leads with design and brand, with development supported through partner teams. For companies where visual quality and brand coherence are visible competitive signals — consumer fintech, AI products, developer tools — the difference is significant.
Key Services:
- UI/UX design for SaaS, fintech, and AI product companies
- Brand identity developed alongside product design
- Design systems for scaling product teams
- Product strategy and interaction design
- High-conversion product experiences for well-funded companies
Who It’s Best For: Series A and above SaaS and fintech companies that need both a strong brand story and a refined product experience — and have the budget to commission both from one team. Clay’s co-founders lead senior engagements directly, which gives a quality floor that larger agencies cannot guarantee.
Pricing: Custom. Premium market positioning. Not suited to seed-stage budgets.
Our Take: Clay is the right Netguru alternative when the problem is visual quality and brand, not engineering scale. The tradeoff is price and development depth — Clay partners for engineering rather than building internally. For companies that need production-grade code alongside design, Fireart or Work & Co are stronger fits.
3. MetaLab — Best for Design-Centric B2B Products From Research Through Design Systems
MetaLab is a veteran product design studio with around 160 people and a track record that includes Slack, Uber, Coinbase, and Midjourney. Their strength in the Netguru-alternative context is design depth: they take products from early concept through scaling phases with a process and craft standard that reflects two decades of complex product work. Development is not their primary offering — MetaLab is a design studio that collaborates with engineering, rather than a development company that includes design.
Key Services:
- UX research, product strategy, and interaction design
- UI design for complex B2B and consumer SaaS products
- Design systems and design-to-handoff delivery
- Product direction for major launches, redesigns, and scaling phases
Who It’s Best For: SaaS and fintech companies that need senior-level design direction — not just interface production — for a significant product moment: a major redesign, a new flagship product, a scaling phase where design consistency becomes a performance issue.
Pricing: Custom. Reflects premium studio positioning.
Our Take: MetaLab’s track record in complex product design is one of the strongest on this list. For companies whose primary gap is design quality and strategic design direction, the agency delivers at a level that Netguru’s design-as-a-service-line model rarely matches. The constraint: no in-house development, which leaves the handoff gap open if engineering capacity is also part of the need.
4. Work & Co — Best for Premium Brands That Need Design and Production-Grade Engineering Together
Work & Co is a design-and-build studio whose client list includes Apple, IKEA, Nike, and Disney. Like Netguru, they combine design with engineering — but positioned at the premium end of the market, with a boutique delivery model that keeps team sizes small and seniority high. If Netguru’s model is right but the account management overhead is wrong, Work & Co is the closest structural equivalent at a smaller scale.
Key Services:
- Senior product design and UX strategy
- Production-grade engineering alongside design
- End-to-end digital product delivery for enterprise and scale-up clients
- Design systems built for engineering teams to maintain
Who It’s Best For: Companies with significant budgets that want Netguru-style design-plus-build delivery with a more direct, boutique engagement model. Well-funded product teams preparing a major launch or a platform rebuild.
Pricing: Custom. Premium market positioning.
Our Take: Work & Co is the most direct structural equivalent to Netguru on this list in terms of design-plus-engineering capability. The difference is scale and positioning: Work & Co is smaller, more selective, and priced accordingly. For companies that found Netguru’s output quality inconsistent at the design level, Work & Co’s seniority model reduces that risk.
5. ustwo — Best for Enterprise and Consumer Products That Need Innovation and Cross-Platform Strategy
ustwo is a global product studio with around two decades of experience across client work and their own consumer products, including the award-winning Monument Valley. Their approach blends research, product strategy, and UX across complex, multi-platform product environments. In the Netguru-alternative context, ustwo fills a specific gap: companies that need more innovation and product strategy orientation than Netguru’s delivery model supports.
Key Services:
- Product strategy and innovation programs for enterprise and consumer companies
- UX research and service design for complex, regulated industries
- Cross-platform experience design (web, mobile, connected products)
- Long-term product evolution and platform strategy
Who It’s Best For: Enterprise companies and well-funded scale-ups that need a strategic product partner for complex, multi-platform challenges — not just execution of a defined brief. Also relevant for companies in regulated industries (healthcare, financial services, mobility) where the product strategy challenge is as significant as the design challenge.
Pricing: Custom. Enterprise engagement scale.
Our Take: ustwo operates at a strategic level that Netguru’s delivery model does not prioritize. For companies whose problem is defining the right product direction, not just executing it well, ustwo’s innovation and strategy capability is the differentiator. For companies with a clear brief that needs execution, more delivery-focused agencies on this list move faster.
6. UX Studio — Best for Research-Driven Product Design With Transparent Process
UX Studio is a Budapest-based product design agency known for its research-heavy approach, close client collaboration, and business-aligned UX methodology. Their model suits companies that want to validate design decisions with users throughout the process, not just at the beginning.
Key Services:
- UX research and usability testing throughout the design process
- Product strategy and information architecture for SaaS and digital products
- UI design and prototyping validated by user research
- Marketability assessment alongside usability
Who It’s Best For: SaaS and digital product companies that need rigorous design validation — where the cost of shipping the wrong interface is high enough to justify investing in research at each stage. Particularly relevant for products with complex onboarding, high-stakes user flows, or enterprise users where adoption rate is a contractual metric.
Pricing: Custom. Research-phase and design-phase priced separately. Pricing is more transparent than most agencies of comparable quality.
Our Take: UX Studio’s research depth is the differentiator in the Netguru-alternative context. Where Netguru’s delivery model is optimized for throughput, UX Studio’s is optimized for validated decisions. The tradeoff is pace — a research-led process takes longer to reach screens — and the absence of in-house development, which means engineering remains the client’s responsibility.
7. Eleken — Best for Early-Stage SaaS Startups That Need Fast, Accessible Product Design
Eleken specializes in embedded SaaS design teams and fast MVP design for lean startups. Their monthly retainer model — starting around $5,000 — makes them one of the most accessible ongoing design options for early-stage companies that need a dedicated designer without a senior-agency price tag.
Key Services:
- Embedded senior designers for SaaS product teams
- Fast MVP design and interface untangling for complex SaaS products
- Onboarding and user flow redesign
- Design systems for growing product teams
Who It’s Best For: Early-stage SaaS startups that need continuous design iteration at a price point that fits a seed or pre-Series A budget. Companies that tried Netguru and found the minimum engagement size too large for their current stage.
Pricing: Monthly retainer from approximately $5,000. 3-day free trial available.
Our Take: Eleken is the most accessible alternative on this list for startups that find Netguru’s scale mismatched with their current stage. The SaaS-only focus is genuine and produces relevant context quickly. The constraint: design-only delivery, and lighter depth in complex B2B products than agencies higher on this list.
Full Comparison Table
| Agency | Why Better Than Netguru for Design | Dev Included | Pricing | Best Stage |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fireart Studio | Direct senior access, studio model, full-cycle | ✅ Yes | ~$7,500/mo | Seed to Series B |
| Clay | Premium brand + product craft, co-founder-led | ❌ Partner | Custom (premium) | Series A+ |
| MetaLab | Design-centric depth, research through design systems | ❌ Partial | Custom (premium) | Series A+ |
| Work & Co | Design + production engineering, boutique model | ✅ Yes | Custom (premium) | Series B+ |
| ustwo | Innovation and strategy, complex multi-platform | ✅ Partial | Custom (enterprise) | Growth to Enterprise |
| UX Studio | Research-validated decisions, transparent process | ❌ No | Custom | Seed to Series B |
| Eleken | Accessible pricing, SaaS-focused, fast onboarding | ❌ No | From ~$5,000/mo | Pre-seed to Seed |
How to Choose Based on Why Netguru Didn’t Fit
You needed more direct access to senior designers: Fireart Studio. Studio model, no account manager between client and designer.
You needed better design quality, not just more engineering: Clay or MetaLab. Clay if brand is also part of the brief. MetaLab for design-system depth and veteran process.
You needed design plus engineering but at a smaller scale: Fireart Studio or Work & Co. Fireart if startup-to-Series-B fit matters. Work & Co if budget is enterprise-level and boutique positioning is the priority.
You needed more strategic innovation, not execution: ustwo.
You needed more research rigor: UX Studio.
Netguru was simply too large for your current stage: Eleken as the most accessible entry point, Fireart if you need full-cycle capability at a startup-appropriate scale.
Conclusion
For most companies looking to move away from Netguru, the core issue is one of two things: too much overhead between client and senior designers, or too much emphasis on engineering when design is the actual priority.
Fireart Studio solves both. The studio model gives direct senior access that large consultancies cannot consistently guarantee. The full-cycle capability — design through development — means the scope Netguru covers is covered, without the account management layers. And the Warsaw base gives the same EU timezone advantage that makes Netguru attractive to US and UK clients in the first place.
For companies past product-market fit that are now investing in organic growth alongside product design, it is worth noting that the two decisions often run in parallel — a roundup of best seo agencies for saas companies covers the growth-channel side of the same scaling problem.
For design specifically, Fireart’s custom digital product design team offers an initial scoping call to assess whether the fit is right before any commitment is made.