A company profile lists startup among the client stages it serves. If the same profile also lists enterprise, does that change what the startup tag is telling a founder?

Not by itself. Client stage is self-reported, and nothing in the catalog checks a claimed stage against a named client or a case study for that stage, so a company can record both startup and enterprise as served stages at no cost to either claim. A founder reading the startup tag cannot tell whether the company treats an early engagement as a core line of work or as one stage among several it lists. Asking for a startup-specific reference is the only way to tell the two apart.

This page groups companies under nine applicability tags. Does any one of them show that a company is well suited to a startup budget or timeline?

No single tag does. The nine tags on this page test a case-study metric, a security credential, a delivery region or a device inventory, and every company here already qualifies for the page through one field: startup listed among the client stages it serves. A company holding four tags and a company holding none both qualify the same way. Filtering by tag narrows the composition by delivery or technical profile. Whether a company fits an early-stage budget or timeline is a question no tag on this page answers.

How much should a startup weigh an unfilled certificate field when screening this composition?

Less than a corporate compliance team would. A confirmed certificate mainly answers a procurement question that arises before a compliance sign-off, a step most startups evaluating a short engagement have not yet reached. Only 3 of the 24 companies in this composition carry a confirmed certificate, and the field sits empty more often than any other field here apart from the one recording a signed data-protection agreement. An empty certificate field records only that no certificate has been verified for that company; the security practices it follows outside a certification program are a separate matter the field does not describe.

This page prints one blended hourly rate per company. Does that rate price the short, specific engagement a startup is likely to commission first?

Not directly. The published rate is a single blended figure per company, spanning a mix of seniority levels and roles instead of pricing the one bounded task a startup often commissions first, such as a short usability pass or an initial automation setup. 19 of the 24 companies in this composition publish that figure, and it works as a general reference for a company's overall pricing level. A quote for a scoped, time-boxed piece of work is a separate figure that a blended rate does not provide.

Best QA companies for startups in 2026

QA Rating is published independently, and its publisher owns no company listed in this catalog.

24 testing companies in this catalog name startups among the client stages they serve. They are grouped below by what each is best suited for, in 9 groups. 3 of them hold a certificate confirmed by a register entry and 19 publish a rate card. Composition and order last changed on September 6, 2026.

24 companies. Ordered by the number of verified reviews on external platforms, highest first. Companies with an equal count are ordered by name.

The companies

Startups: 24 companies, grouped by what they are best suited for.
#	Company	Published rates	Minimum project	Onboarding	Reviews
Nearshore for the EU At least one delivery location in the EU or the EEA, or in Ukraine, Georgia, Serbia or Moldova.
1	ScienceSoft	Blended $50-99/hclutch.co	$5,000clutch.co	Not published	85
2	QA Madness	Blended $25-49/hclutch.co	$1,000clutch.co	Not published	44
3	TestFort	Blended $25-49/hclutch.co	$10,000clutch.co	Not published	32
4	Luxe Quality	Blended $25-49/hclutch.co	$10,000clutch.co	Not published	21
5	Iterasec	Blended $50-99/hclutch.co	$5,000clutch.co	Not published	19
6	QAwerk	Blended $25-49/hclutch.co	$10,000clutch.co	Not published	13
7	Savarian.tech	Blended $25-49/hclutch.co	$1,000clutch.co	Not published	8
8	AskYourQA	Blended $25-49/hclutch.co	$5,000clutch.co	Not published	7
9	QA Mentor	Blended up to $25/hclutch.co	$1,000clutch.co	Not published	7
10	Codoid	Blended up to $25/hclutch.co	$5,000clutch.co	Not published	5
11	BetterQA	Not published	Not published	Not published	0
12	Ethiack	Not published	Not published	Not published	0
13	sepp.med gmbh	Not published	Not published	Not published	0
14	SQA Service	Not published	Not published	Not published	0
Automation first Test automation is offered as a service, and at least one published case study reports a coverage or regression time metric.
1	ScienceSoft	Blended $50-99/hclutch.co	$5,000clutch.co	Not published	85
2	QA Madness	Blended $25-49/hclutch.co	$1,000clutch.co	Not published	44
15	QualityLogic	Blended $25-49/hclutch.co	$5,000clutch.co	Not published	37
16	QASource	Blended $25-49/hclutch.co	$25,000clutch.co	Not published	29
4	Luxe Quality	Blended $25-49/hclutch.co	$10,000clutch.co	Not published	21
6	QAwerk	Blended $25-49/hclutch.co	$10,000clutch.co	Not published	13
17	QAble	Blended up to $25/hclutch.co	$5,000clutch.co	Not published	8
7	Savarian.tech	Blended $25-49/hclutch.co	$1,000clutch.co	Not published	8
18	Moolya	Blended $25-49/hclutch.co	$5,000clutch.co	Not published	7
10	Codoid	Blended up to $25/hclutch.co	$5,000clutch.co	Not published	5
11	BetterQA	Not published	Not published	Not published	0
Embedded team model The dedicated team engagement model is offered, and at least one published case study.
2	QA Madness	Blended $25-49/hclutch.co	$1,000clutch.co	Not published	44
3	TestFort	Blended $25-49/hclutch.co	$10,000clutch.co	Not published	32
16	QASource	Blended $25-49/hclutch.co	$25,000clutch.co	Not published	29
6	QAwerk	Blended $25-49/hclutch.co	$10,000clutch.co	Not published	13
17	QAble	Blended up to $25/hclutch.co	$5,000clutch.co	Not published	8
Security focus Security testing is offered, together with either penetration testing or a verified ISO/IEC 27001 certificate, and at least one published case study.
1	ScienceSoft	Blended $50-99/hclutch.co	$5,000clutch.co	Not published	85
2	QA Madness	Blended $25-49/hclutch.co	$1,000clutch.co	Not published	44
19	Qualysec	Blended $25-49/hclutch.co	$1,000clutch.co	Not published	31
6	QAwerk	Blended $25-49/hclutch.co	$10,000clutch.co	Not published	13
11	BetterQA	Not published	Not published	Not published	0
Performance engineering Performance testing is offered as a service, and at least one published case study reports a throughput or latency metric.
15	QualityLogic	Blended $25-49/hclutch.co	$5,000clutch.co	Not published	37
3	TestFort	Blended $25-49/hclutch.co	$10,000clutch.co	Not published	32
16	QASource	Blended $25-49/hclutch.co	$25,000clutch.co	Not published	29
20	PFLB	Blended $50-99/hclutch.co	$5,000clutch.co	Not published	6
Nearshore for the USA At least one delivery location in Canada, Mexico, Central America or South America.
1	ScienceSoft	Blended $50-99/hclutch.co	$5,000clutch.co	Not published	85
16	QASource	Blended $25-49/hclutch.co	$25,000clutch.co	Not published	29
14	SQA Service	Not published	Not published	Not published	0
Device lab coverage A published device lab of 100 real devices or more, with a source.
15	QualityLogic	Blended $25-49/hclutch.co	$5,000clutch.co	Not published	37
21	PLUS QA	Blended $50-99/hclutch.co	$1,000clutch.co	Not published	8
Accessibility specialists Accessibility testing is offered as a service, and at least one published case study reports an accessibility conformance metric.
22	Vervali Systems	Blended $25-49/hclutch.co	$25,000clutch.co	Not published	11
Regulated industries At least two verified certificates from ISO 13485, HITRUST CSF, PCI QSA and ISO/IEC 27001.
11	BetterQA	Not published	Not published	Not published	0
Other companies in this axis No applicability tag met its criterion for these profiles.
23	iBeta Quality Assurance	Blended $50-99/hclutch.co	$1,000clutch.co	Not published	4
24	Secuna	Not published	Not published	Not published	0

Automation first and Nearshore for the EU overlap by seven companies

11 of the 24 companies in this composition carry the Automation first tag. 14 of the 24 carry Nearshore for the EU. Seven companies hold both: ScienceSoft, QA Madness, Luxe Quality, QAwerk, Savarian.tech, Codoid and BetterQA. Four more companies carry Automation first without any nearshore tag on this page: QualityLogic, QASource, QAble and Moolya. The remaining seven companies with Nearshore for the EU carry it without Automation first: TestFort, Iterasec, AskYourQA, QA Mentor, Ethiack, sepp.med gmbh and SQA Service.

Five companies carry four applicability tags each, the highest count in this composition

Five companies hold four tags apiece, more than any other row in this composition: ScienceSoft, QA Madness, QAwerk, QASource and BetterQA, all named above. ScienceSoft combines Automation first, Security focus, Nearshore for the EU and Nearshore for the USA. QA Madness and QAwerk each combine Embedded team model, Automation first, Security focus and Nearshore for the EU. QASource is the one of the five that reaches four tags without Security focus, combining Embedded team model, Automation first, Performance engineering and Nearshore for the USA. BetterQA combines Regulated industries, Automation first, Security focus and Nearshore for the EU; on this page, Regulated industries reaches only BetterQA, read from certificates. Security focus reaches five of the 24 companies in total. Four of its five holders are named in this section; the fifth, Qualysec, carries no other tag on this page.

Embedded team model reaches five companies, Performance engineering four

Embedded team model reaches five of the 24 companies. Besides QA Madness, QAwerk and QASource, named above, it applies to TestFort and QAble, both also named above. Performance engineering reaches four: QualityLogic and QASource, both named above, plus TestFort and PFLB. Two of the four, QualityLogic and QASource, also carry Automation first. PFLB carries no other tag on this page.

Nearshore for the USA reaches three companies, one of them without any EU delivery tag

Nearshore for the USA reaches three of the 24 companies: ScienceSoft and QASource, both named above, and SQA Service, also named above. The USA and EU nearshore tags read separate delivery-location fields, so a company can carry one, both, as SQA Service does here, or neither.

Device lab coverage reaches two companies, two tags reach exactly one company each, and two companies carry none

Device lab coverage now reaches two of the 24 companies, read from a published device inventory: QualityLogic, named above, and PLUS QA. Accessibility specialists belongs to Vervali Systems, read from a service paired with a case-study metric. Regulated industries is the second tag reaching exactly one company, already covered above. Two of the 24 companies carry none of the nine applicability tags used on this page: iBeta Quality Assurance and Secuna.

Case studies are missing for four companies, and headquarters span ten countries

20 of the 24 companies in this composition list at least one published case study, and the four without one still sit in different places on the tag map: two of them carry Nearshore for the EU, which is read from delivery geography and needs no case study, one carries Device lab coverage, read from a device inventory rather than a case study, and the fourth carries no applicability tag at all. Five of the nine tags on this page do read a case study, so a blank there closes those five routes and leaves the geography routes open. Headquarters in this composition span ten countries: eight of the 24 companies are headquartered in the United States, five in India, three in Poland, two in Romania, and one each in the United Kingdom, Ukraine, Portugal, Germany, Bulgaria and the Philippines. A headquarters country records where a company is incorporated, not where its delivery team sits, and the nearshore tags described above rest on that separate delivery-location field instead.

How this ranking was put together

Membership is computed from the profile, not chosen: companies appear here when they name startups among the client stages they serve, as their own profile states. Position in a ranking cannot be bought. Paid options are limited to the extended profile, labelled sponsor slots and lead forms, and none of them affect tags or order.

The table compares the fields that decide this axis: published rates, minimum project, onboarding, plus the number of verified reviews on external platforms. Rates, minimum project size and onboarding time carry the source they came from next to the value.

Nearshore for the EU: At least one delivery location in the EU or the EEA, or in Ukraine, Georgia, Serbia or Moldova.
Automation first: Test automation is offered as a service, and at least one published case study reports a coverage or regression time metric.
Embedded team model: The dedicated team engagement model is offered, and at least one published case study.
Security focus: Security testing is offered, together with either penetration testing or a verified ISO/IEC 27001 certificate, and at least one published case study.
Performance engineering: Performance testing is offered as a service, and at least one published case study reports a throughput or latency metric.
Nearshore for the USA: At least one delivery location in Canada, Mexico, Central America or South America.
Device lab coverage: A published device lab of 100 real devices or more, with a source.
Accessibility specialists: Accessibility testing is offered as a service, and at least one published case study reports an accessibility conformance metric.
Regulated industries: At least two verified certificates from ISO 13485, HITRUST CSF, PCI QSA and ISO/IEC 27001.

The criteria for this axis are on the methodology page, together with field definitions and the rule for editorial order. Changes of order are recorded in the changelog.

Questions

A company profile lists startup among the client stages it serves. If the same profile also lists enterprise, does that change what the startup tag is telling a founder?: Not by itself. Client stage is self-reported, and nothing in the catalog checks a claimed stage against a named client or a case study for that stage, so a company can record both startup and enterprise as served stages at no cost to either claim. A founder reading the startup tag cannot tell whether the company treats an early engagement as a core line of work or as one stage among several it lists. Asking for a startup-specific reference is the only way to tell the two apart.
This page groups companies under nine applicability tags. Does any one of them show that a company is well suited to a startup budget or timeline?: No single tag does. The nine tags on this page test a case-study metric, a security credential, a delivery region or a device inventory, and every company here already qualifies for the page through one field: startup listed among the client stages it serves. A company holding four tags and a company holding none both qualify the same way. Filtering by tag narrows the composition by delivery or technical profile. Whether a company fits an early-stage budget or timeline is a question no tag on this page answers.
How much should a startup weigh an unfilled certificate field when screening this composition?: Less than a corporate compliance team would. A confirmed certificate mainly answers a procurement question that arises before a compliance sign-off, a step most startups evaluating a short engagement have not yet reached. Only 3 of the 24 companies in this composition carry a confirmed certificate, and the field sits empty more often than any other field here apart from the one recording a signed data-protection agreement. An empty certificate field records only that no certificate has been verified for that company; the security practices it follows outside a certification program are a separate matter the field does not describe.
This page prints one blended hourly rate per company. Does that rate price the short, specific engagement a startup is likely to commission first?: Not directly. The published rate is a single blended figure per company, spanning a mix of seniority levels and roles instead of pricing the one bounded task a startup often commissions first, such as a short usability pass or an initial automation setup. 19 of the 24 companies in this composition publish that figure, and it works as a general reference for a company's overall pricing level. A quote for a scoped, time-boxed piece of work is a separate figure that a blended rate does not provide.

Other axes these companies appear on

Industry: Ecommerce 20 of these 24 companies also stand there
Industry: Healthcare 19 of these 24 companies also stand there
Type of testing: Test automation 18 of these 24 companies also stand there
Type of testing: Performance testing 16 of these 24 companies also stand there

How to choose a vendor on this axis

Published by QA RatingPublished on September 3, 2026Updated on September 5, 2026

Every fact about a company comes from a listed source. A field without a source stays empty. A certificate counts as confirmed only when a registry, certificate or auditor report backs it; a certificate the company only claims about itself is published separately, under that label. Vendors can request a correction at hello@qa-rating.com. A correction is applied when it comes with a public source.