Code audit & technical due diligence
Know exactly what you own
before you bet on it
An independent, expert code audit of your existing, inherited or legacy codebase — judged by engineers who have built and inherited real systems, not just an automated scan. You walk away with a clear, prioritized findings report and a remediation plan you can act on — ideal for technical due diligence before you buy, invest or scale.
Why a code audit
Straight answers about the code you actually have
Less time guessing, more time deciding
Hand us read-only access and a short walkthrough, and we turn a black box into a clear picture of what is solid, what is risky, and what to fix first — an expert code review of your actual code, not an automated scan. Every engagement ends in a written report and a walkthrough call, not a vague verbal opinion.Avoid a six-figure mistake
A wrong rewrite-versus-refactor call, an acquisition priced on a shaky codebase, or a security gap found in production all cost far more than a few days of expert review. We surface the costly surprises while they are still cheap to act on.
Genuinely independent
We have no stake in defending the code, the team that wrote it, or a sunk cost — and we are not bidding to rebuild it either. You get our honest read, even when the honest answer is that the codebase is in better shape than you feared.
A deliverable you can act on
You get a prioritized findings report and a remediation plan in plain English — severity-ranked, with rough effort attached. Something a founder, a CTO and a board member can all read and budget against.
What we audit
Four lenses on the code you depend on
A deep, expert review across the things that decide whether a codebase is an asset or a liability — each ending in concrete, prioritized findings.
Code quality & maintainability
We read the code the way the next engineer to touch it will. We look at structure, readability, consistency, dead code, duplication and documentation, and we surface the tech debt and key-person risk hiding in the parts only one person understands. The question we answer: how hard and how risky is this to change?
- A clear read on code quality, consistency and how maintainable the codebase really is, worst offenders named
- Tech debt mapped and ranked by how much it is slowing you down
- Key-person and bus-factor risks flagged — the code only one person can safely touch
- Concrete, prioritized fixes to make the code safer and cheaper to change, with rough effort
Architecture & scalability
We map how the system is actually put together — services, data flows, dependencies and the choices baked in years ago. Then we tell you honestly where it will hold up under growth and where it will crack first. The question we answer: will this carry you to the next order of magnitude, or stop you?
- A plain-English map of the architecture as it really is, not as documented
- The bottlenecks and single points of failure that will bite as load and team size grow
- An honest call on which parts are sound and which are liabilities
- A clear, evidence-based view on rewrite versus refactor, and a sequenced plan for where to start
Security
We review the code and configuration for the security weaknesses that matter — exposed secrets, weak authentication and access control, unsafe data handling, injection risks, and out-of-date dependencies with known vulnerabilities. This is an expert review of your actual code, not a checkbox scan run from the outside.
- Severity-ranked security findings, from critical to nice-to-fix, with real-world exploitability
- Authentication, access control, data handling and secrets management reviewed in the actual code
- A dependency review covering known vulnerabilities and unmaintained packages
- A prioritized fix list, so you tackle the dangerous issues first
Test coverage, CI/CD & reliability
We assess how confidently you can ship and how well the system behaves once it is live. That means real test coverage, the build and deployment pipeline, observability, and the recurring bugs or outages behind your worries. The question we answer: can you change this code without breaking production?
- An honest read on test coverage — the numbers and what they actually protect
- A review of your CI/CD pipeline, build and release process and its gaps
- Reliability gaps assessed — monitoring, error handling and the sources of recurring incidents
- Practical steps to ship faster with far less fear of breaking things
From black box to clear picture
A focused engagement designed to get you something useful fast — read-only access, no disruption to your team, and no obligation to have us fix anything afterwards.
Share the context
Tell us why you are commissioning the review and what is keeping you up at night. We agree the scope, the questions you need answered and exactly what you will receive — so there are no surprises and the team knows what to expect.
Read-only access & a short walkthrough
You grant read-only access to the repository and we ask for one short walkthrough of how the system runs. That is the only call your team needs to join. We work from the side; your engineers keep shipping.
Expert engineers assess it
Our expert engineers go deep across all four areas — quality, architecture, security, and testing and reliability — reading the code, tracing the data flows and stress-testing the architecture against where you are heading. We move fast and ask the focused questions a scan never will.
You get the report & a walkthrough
You receive a prioritized findings report and a remediation plan in plain English — findings ranked by severity, rewrite-versus-refactor called honestly, fixes sized by rough effort — followed by a call to walk you through it so nothing gets lost in translation.
When to bring us in
The moments an honest assessment pays for itself
If any of these sound familiar, a few days of expert review now will save you far more time, money and stress later.
Inheriting or acquiring a codebase
You are taking over software you did not build and cannot yet trust. We assess what is actually under the hood, so you know what you own before it becomes your headache.
Technical due diligence before investing or buying
Before you write the check, you want an independent read on the tech, the choices made and the real engineering risk. We give investors and acquirers a clear, honest verdict on what sits behind the pitch deck.
Facing a rewrite-versus-refactor decision
A full rewrite is the most expensive bet in software, and it is usually proposed by the people who would do it. We tell you honestly whether your codebase needs rebuilding or just disciplined repair — and where to start either way.
Before scaling an existing product
What got you here will not get you to the next order of magnitude. We assess where the architecture will crack under growth and what to fix first, before your users feel it.
Recurring bugs, outages or security worries
The same incidents keep coming back and you have a nagging feeling about security. We trace the symptoms to their root causes, rank them by severity, and tell you what to fix before the next outage.
Onboarding a new team onto unfamiliar code
A new team is about to take ownership of code nobody on it wrote. We give them a documented map of the system and the risks, so they ramp up in days instead of months.
FAQs
Code audit FAQs
The questions clients usually ask before commissioning a review.
How long does a code audit take, and how does pricing work?
Most assessments run from a few days to a couple of weeks, depending on the size and age of the codebase. Pricing is straightforward — a fixed fee for a defined deliverable, agreed before we begin, with no open-ended hourly meter. You know exactly what you are getting, when, and what it costs before we start.
What access do you need, and will it disrupt our team?
Read-only access to the repository and one short walkthrough of how the system runs. That is it. We work independently from the side and never push changes, so your engineers keep shipping — the review is designed to take almost nothing off their plate beyond the occasional focused question.
What does the deliverable actually look like?
A focused written report in plain English: a prioritized findings report covering code quality, architecture, security, and testing and reliability, plus a remediation plan with severity-ranked issues and rough effort attached. It comes with a call to walk you through it. No jargon walls, no vague slide decks, no raw tool output dumped on you.
Do you fix the issues afterwards?
We can, if it is a good fit — we build and maintain SaaS products, custom software and games. But there is no obligation, and we never inflate findings to win a build. Plenty of clients take our report and remediation plan and execute with their own team or another vendor, and we are happy to advise while they do.
Rewrite or refactor — will you tell us honestly?
Yes, and that is the whole point of an independent review. A full rewrite is the most expensive bet in software and usually the wrong one — and it is usually proposed by the people who would do it. We have no stake in selling you one, so we will tell you plainly whether the code needs rebuilding or just disciplined repair, with the reasoning to back it up.
Is everything confidential, and will you sign an NDA?
Yes. We are glad to sign your NDA before we see a single line of code, and we treat your codebase, plans and commercial details as confidential by default. If you do not have an NDA, we can provide one — independence and discretion go together.
Find out what you are really
sitting on
Tell us about the codebase and the decision riding on it, and we'll propose a quick, focused assessment with a report you can act on.No commitment — just a straight conversation with people who have inherited code like yours before.