The transparency gap: 17% of US growth agencies won’t publish an hourly rate

Across 1,738 US growth vendors with public engagement profiles, 298 decline to disclose an hourly-rate band and 90 publish no minimum project size — a gap buyers can read as information.

Most US growth vendors publish their commercial terms. Across the 1,738 listings in The Wall's index with provider-declared engagement data, 1,440 disclose an hourly-rate band and 1,648 disclose a minimum project size. The remainder — 298 firms without a published rate (17.1%) and 90 without a published minimum (5.2%) — are the market's transparency gap.

Why firms withhold

Non-disclosure is not inherently a red flag. Firms that price by deliverable or by value rather than by hour have no honest band to publish; large consultancies often scope every engagement custom. But non-disclosure is also the natural home of rates that would filter a firm out of consideration early — which is precisely why the disclosing majority publishes: a stated band pre-qualifies buyers and saves both sides the discovery call that was never going to close.

How the index treats it

The Wall records what a firm publishes and does not fill the gap with estimates — a profile with no declared rate shows no rate, under the index's no-fabrication standard. For buyers, the practical guidance the data supports: treat an undisclosed rate as a question to ask in the first conversation, and use the market distribution as the reference point for the answer. A firm quoting far outside the $100–$199 band that two-thirds of the disclosed market occupies should be able to say why.