The pattern repeats often enough to be a specialism. A company sells well to small customers, starts chasing enterprise accounts, and discovers that the brand, the product interface and the marketing site all now read as too small to trust with a serious contract. Clay handles all three in one engagement, which is the only sensible way to fix it, because staggering them across three vendors produces three different answers. Sector depth runs through B2B, SaaS, AI and fintech, and the roster includes Coinbase, Marqeta and Credit Karma at the point where each was scaling rather than starting. Teams are led by the co-founders, and the work tends to last, with products and sites still in service years after handover.
For scaleups • 10 studios
The 10 Best Product Design Agencies for Scaleups
Scaleups hire agencies for different reasons than startups do, and the reasons are unglamorous. The product works, the growth is real, and something underneath it has started to break. Usually it is the design system that never existed, the activation funnel nobody has looked at since launch, or an enterprise buyer asking questions the interface cannot answer.
Every studio below has done that work at companies past product-market fit, and each entry says which of those problems it is actually built for.
Start with your problem
Best forOne product became three, and consistency is now an operational cost. This needs a systems specialist and a governance plan, not a redesign.
Acquisition spend keeps working and none of it sticks — a design problem disguised as a marketing one. This needs research and behavioural thinking.
Procurement wants SSO, audit logs, role permissions and an interface that no longer looks seed-stage. The brand usually needs work at the same time.
Nothing is broken — there is simply more design work than people, and hiring takes two quarters. Subscription and embedded models beat projects here.
The Complete Rankings
Full agency profiles02
Metalab
metalab.com ↗
Best for
Consumer-facing scaleups where interface quality is a competitive position.
Twenty-four of this studio's clients have become unicorns, which is the number that matters at this stage, because it means Metalab has repeatedly been in the room while a company went from promising to large. Roughly 475 products shipped since 2006, from a team distributed across about nineteen countries. Coinbase, Robinhood and Loom all came back for more work after the first engagement, which is a more useful signal than any single case study. The studio also runs a venture fund, so it thinks about outcomes past launch as a matter of self-interest.
03
ustwo
ustwo.com ↗
Best for
Products where growth has stalled on retention rather than acquisition.
The differentiator is a working theory about why people come back, borrowed from game design and applied to software that is not a game. For a scaleup burning money on acquisition while month-two churn stays flat, that is the right conversation to be having. Employee-owned, a certified B Corp, running since 2004 with studios in London, New York, Malmö, Sydney, Tokyo and Lisbon, which matters if you are launching into new markets and need people who have done it. Cross-functional teams take work from discovery through to shipped code.
04
Bakken & Bæck
bakkenbaeck.com ↗
Best for
Scaleups adding AI features that have to work, not just demo.
Around seventy people with several computer science PhDs among them, which changes the kind of engagement this is. Most studios asked to design an AI feature will produce screens and hand the hard part to your engineers. This one can reason about model behaviour, latency and failure states while the interface is still being drawn, which is where AI products actually go wrong. Offices in Oslo, Amsterdam, London, Bonn and Barcelona operating as a single team. Independent, so there is no parent company deciding which accounts get the senior people.
05
Elsewhen
elsewhen.com ↗
Best for
Scaleups in regulated markets where the interface has to satisfy a compliance officer.
London, running since 2011, now positioned around AI with strategy, design and engineering under one roof. The relevant strength for a growth-stage company is that the hard problem in regulated software is rarely visual. It is reconciling what the regulator requires, what the legacy system permits and what the user can tolerate, and that needs consulting capability rather than craft alone. Engagements come in defined blocks rather than open retainers, so there is a date by which you have an answer.
The moment a scaleup goes from one product to three, consistency stops being a taste question and becomes an operational cost. Rangle built Sanofi's Elements design system in ten months across a global brand, which is the relevant proof, because most studios have built a component library and very few have built one that survived multiple teams and a governance process. Toronto since 2013 with a second office in Amsterdam. The firm restructured in 2026 around agentic development, running small teams of one to four engineers alongside AI agents, so delivery is fast and engineering-led.
07
Netguru
netguru.com ↗
Best for
Scaleups that need capacity in both disciplines without running two procurement processes.
The largest team on this list, roughly 450 to 500 people from Poznań including around sixty designers, and publicly listed, which brings a level of reporting discipline that private studios do not have. Booksy is the case worth reading, a consumer booking app rebuilt into a B2B operations platform, which is exactly the kind of scope change that arrives at Series B and breaks smaller partners. Fintech runs deepest, with Moonfare, Spendesk and Solaris, and commerce and health follow. Documented minimum sits around $50,000, which puts it squarely at this stage rather than earlier.
The specialism is making difficult software legible, which becomes a revenue problem rather than an aesthetic one once you have enough users to measure it. AI research tools, fintech dashboards and analytics platforms are the recurring territory. The studio works with companies from early stage through Series D, so it has watched products get more complicated and dealt with the consequences rather than handing over at v1. More than 120 awards including multiple Webby wins, which for a team this size is unusual. Work on Peel preceded a $5 million raise and an acquisition by Shopify.
Reporting modules, integration builders, permission matrices and admin panels are the unglamorous surfaces where most B2B scaleups actually lose users, and this team has spent years on exactly those. Leadership sits in the US and Canada with the design bench in Europe. Monthly retainers run roughly $8,000 to $20,000, which is affordable enough to keep a team engaged continuously rather than in bursts. The honest limitation is strategic. Cieden executes a product direction well and works best when you arrive with one, so if the real question is what to build rather than how to design it, sort that out first.
10
Eleken
eleken.co ↗
Best for
Covering a design shortage while you hire, without a project-shaped contract.
Scaleups often do not have a project. They have a permanent deficit, a backlog that grows faster than the team, and six months of hiring ahead of them. A monthly subscription with one dedicated designer embedded in your Slack fits that shape better than a scoped engagement you will renegotiate twice. Eleken works only with SaaS and refuses branding, marketing and e-commerce work, so the designers have spent their careers on activation, onboarding and dashboards. Hubble Network's satellite data dashboards preceded a $70 million Series B. Nearly 120 verified reviews at 4.9 out of 5, the largest review base in this category.
Compare the ten
Facts, not scoresNo rankings by number here — name your problem and the list narrows itself. Compare whether they build, where the team sits, and how you pay.
| Studio | Best for | Team & base | Designs & builds? | Budget signal |
|---|---|---|---|---|
 Clay Global | Product outgrew the brand | Remote-first, SF HQ | Design + front-end | Mid–upper |
| Metalab | Consumer interface quality | Distributed, ~19 countries | Design-led | Premium |
| ustwo | Retention, not acquisition | 6 studios | Design + build | Upper-mid–enterprise |
| Bakken & Bæck | AI features that work | ~70, 5 EU cities | Design + build (ML) | Mid–upper |
| Elsewhen | Regulated markets | London | Strategy → engineering | Mid–upper |
 Rangle | Design systems, many teams | Toronto + Amsterdam | Engineering-led | Enterprise project |
| Netguru | Capacity in both disciplines | Poznań, ~450–500 | Design + full-stack | From ~$50k, below US/UK |
 Lazarev | Complexity costing customers | SF HQ, distributed | Design only | Mid-range |
 Cieden | Complex B2B logic | US/Canada + EU bench | Design execution | ~$8k–$20k/mo retainer |
| Eleken | Cover a design shortage | Subscription, dedicated | Design only (SaaS) | Monthly subscription |
The four problems that bring scaleups to an agency
Name yoursAlmost every engagement at this stage traces to one of these, and naming yours narrows the list faster than any comparison table.
No design system, three product teams
Every team invents its own patterns, engineering rebuilds the same component four times, and the product starts feeling like four products. This needs a systems specialist and a governance plan, not a redesign. Rangle and Bakken & Bæck both work at this level.
Activation and retention have gone quiet
Acquisition spend keeps working and none of it sticks, which is a design problem disguised as a marketing problem. This needs research and behavioural thinking rather than a visual refresh. ustwo and Lazarev come at it from different angles, one behavioural and one clarity-driven.
Enterprise buyers have started asking questions
Procurement wants SSO, audit logs, role permissions and an interface that does not look like a seed-stage product. The brand usually needs work at the same time, because the two problems have the same root. Clay and Elsewhen both live here.
The backlog is beating the team
Nothing is broken, there is simply more design work than people, and hiring takes two quarters. Subscription and embedded models solve this better than projects. Eleken and Cieden are built for it, Netguru if the shortage extends to engineering.
Agency or in-house, at this stage
The real questionThis is the real question at Series B, and the answer is usually both, in a particular order.
Hire in-house for the work that compounds. Someone has to hold product context across releases, argue with the roadmap, and know why a decision was made eighteen months ago. No agency does that well because no agency is in the room for it.
Bring an agency in for the work that spikes. A design system built once, a research programme with a defined question, a replatform, a new market launch. These need more capacity than your team has and less than a permanent hire justifies.
The failure mode is using an agency as permanent staff. It is more expensive than hiring, the knowledge leaves when the contract ends, and your own designers slowly become project managers. If an engagement has run continuously for eighteen months with no defined outcome, that has already happened.
What to check before signing at this stage
Due diligenceWho is on the team, in writing
At scaleup budgets the pitch team and the delivery team diverge more often than anyone admits. Ask for names and seniority, and ask what happens if someone leaves mid-engagement.
What you get at handover
Source files, design system components, documentation, tokens, and whether the system is usable by your engineers without the agency present. Get this in the contract rather than the proposal.
Whether they will work inside your process
Some studios need to run their own sprint cadence and will struggle inside yours. At this stage you have a process and it is not moving, so find out early.
How they measure the work
Ask any studio to show a product they redesigned and state the activation or retention impact. The ones who answer with numbers are thinking about outcomes. The ones who answer with portfolio shots are thinking about their next pitch.
Frequently asked questions
FAQHow much does a scaleup design engagement cost?
A design system for several product teams runs $75,000 to $250,000 depending on scope and governance needs. A research-led redesign of a core product sits between $100,000 and $300,000. Ongoing embedded support through subscription or retainer runs roughly $5,000 to $20,000 a month per person. European teams deliver comparable scope meaningfully below US and UK rates.
How long does a design system actually take?
Six months is realistic for a system serving multiple teams, and Rangle delivered Sanofi's in ten. Anything promised in six weeks is a component library, which is useful but not the same thing. The difference is governance, documentation and adoption, and those consume more time than the components do.
Should we use the same agency that built our first product?
Often not. The skills that get a product launched are not the skills that scale one, and a studio optimised for speed at pre-seed may not have systems or research depth. Loyalty is cheap to feel and expensive to act on. Rerun the shortlist properly when the questions change.
Our in-house team is worried about being replaced. How do we handle that?
Reasonably, because the concern is not irrational. Be explicit about why the agency is there, what it will not touch, and what happens at the end. The engagements that go badly are almost always the ones where nobody told the internal team what the scope was. Studios that mentor as part of the work make this easier.
Can an agency help us hire our first design leader?
Some will, informally, and a few offer fractional leadership as a service while you search. It is worth asking, because a studio that has worked inside your product for three months knows what the role needs better than a job description does.
What if our product is too complex to explain quickly?
That is the normal condition at this stage and it is a reason to weight domain experience heavily. Cieden and Elsewhen both compete on speed of comprehension in complicated verticals. Ask any candidate how long onboarding takes and what it costs you, because a month of teaching an agency your business is a month you paid for.
How do we avoid a redesign that breaks what already works?
Insist on research before design, instrument the current product properly first, and ship changes behind flags rather than as a launch. Scaleup redesigns fail when a team rebuilds an interface without knowing which parts were carrying the numbers.
Is offshore viable at this stage?
More so than at any other, because you now have process, documentation and product managers, which is what distributed work actually depends on. Poland and Ukraine both have strong benches at rates well below US equivalents. The trade is timezone overlap, and at scaleup scale you have enough asynchronous discipline to absorb it.