Twenty weighted checks score your exposure to scope creep, 0 to 100.
20 checks, 3 minutes → your exposure score and the contract clauses that close the gaps
Score My Exposure3 minutes · no signup · nothing leaves your browser
Exposure score — higher is worse
0
0 contained · 100 unpriced
Not started
Answer the checks on the left. Every check answered No or Not sure adds exposure — the fix list below reorders itself around whatever is missing.
Exposure matrix — by dimension and severity
Each cell is one or two checks, grouped by how many points they're worth. Hover or focus a cell to see the clause it produced.
| Dimension | Minor2–3 pts | Moderate4 pts | Material5 pts | Serious6–7 pts | Critical8 pts |
|---|
Not yet answered Contained (all Yes) Exposed — darker is worse
The order to fix it in, and the wording to do it with
Your exposure, clause by clause
Every check that isn't a clean Yes appears below, ranked by what the gap is worth divided by what it costs to close — with the actual clause or question to send today. Risk and remedy, in the order they surface.
Answer a few checks and the document starts writing itself here, highest-exposure first.
Method
How this is calculated
A self-assessment, weighted like a risk register rather than a personality quiz. Nothing about your project is inferred — you tell it what's true, and it does the arithmetic.
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01
Twenty checks, weighted by how much exposure each one represents
Each check carries a weight from 2 to 8 points. The five dimensions — Definition, Change control, Boundaries, Commercials, Client signals — sum to 100, so the final score always reads as a percentage of maximum possible exposure.
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02
Only
Yescounts as protectedPartlyandNot surescore exactly likeNo— half-protected and unverified are both, in practice, unprotected. That's deliberate: a clause you're not sure exists doesn't hold up when you need it to. -
03
Exposure = the sum of weight × risk, across all twenty
Answer
Yesto everything and the score is exactly 0. AnswerNoto everything and it's exactly 100. There is no floor, no curve, and no way to score well by being vague — vague scores badly by design. -
04
The matrix and the fix list rank by leverage, not by what's easy to sell
Priority is a check's weight, multiplied by how much risk it's currently carrying, divided by how long it takes to fix. A cheap, high-weight gap — a revision cap, an exclusions list — usually outranks an expensive one, and the ranking recalculates every time you answer another check.
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05
Bands turn the number into a next action
Contained, Watchful, Exposed, Bleeding, Unpriced — each band carries a specific verdict, not just a colour. The point is to tell you what to do next, not just how worried to be.
Where these twenty checks come from
- Change-control discipline — the describe-estimate-confirm sequence behind the change-request clause is a plain-English version of standard project change-management practice, the kind documented in the Project Management Institute's PMBOK Guide (7th edition, 2021) and taught in every project-management course that covers scope baselines.
- Deliverables, exclusions and acceptance criteria — reflects the structure used in standard services agreements such as the AIGA Standard Form of Agreement for Design Services, and in the contract templates published by freelance and self-employed bodies including IPSE (UK) and the Freelancers Union (US), checked current as of 2026.
- Commercial protections — deposits, milestone payment and late-fee clauses are standard advice across freelance-business literature; the figures used in the example clauses (50% deposit, 14-day notice) are common defaults, not a rule — adjust them to your market and your leverage.
This is a self-assessment of your paperwork and your relationship with one client, not legal research. The clause wording throughout this tool is a practical starting point written for clarity, not legal advice — it is not drafted for any particular jurisdiction, and anything with real money attached should be reviewed by a lawyer who knows your contract law before you rely on it.
Questions people ask about scope creep
What is scope creep?
Scope creep is what happens when a project keeps growing past what was originally priced, one small request at a time. Each addition feels reasonable in isolation — a tweak, an extra page, one more revision — which is exactly why it's dangerous: no single request feels worth refusing, but the total is a project you're now delivering for less than you quoted. It's a definition problem, not a character problem. Vague scopes invite it; specific ones don't.
How do I stop scope creep without annoying the client?
You stop it before it starts, not mid-argument. Scope creep is a definition problem, not a personality problem — clients push against vague boundaries because vague boundaries invite it, the same way water finds a gap in a wall. A written change-request process, agreed before work begins, is the friendliest thing you can do for the relationship: it turns a confrontation into "sure, here's the estimate" instead of a resentful yes you'll regret by milestone two.
What should a statement of work include?
Four things, at minimum: countable deliverables — a number, not an outcome — an explicit list of what's excluded, acceptance criteria that define "done" per deliverable, and a change-request process with a stated out-of-scope rate. Add a payment schedule tied to milestones rather than completion, and a single named approver on the client side. If a request arrives and the SOW can't tell you whether it's in scope, the SOW was too vague to begin with.
How do I say no to an out-of-scope request?
Point at the exclusions list, not at the client. "That's not in the scope we agreed — here's what it would cost and how long it adds" does the job without a confrontation, because the boundary was set in writing before either of you was under pressure. Saying no gets easy exactly to the extent you did the defining work earlier. Without it, every no sounds personal, because there's nothing else to point to.
What are the red flags in a new client?
No single decision maker, so a yes from one person gets quietly overruled by another. Vague or evasive answers about why the last supplier left. No urgency about getting a scope signed, but plenty about getting started. Verbal "let's just crack on" energy instead of a written brief. None of these disqualify a client alone — but two or three together predict a project that creeps regardless of how good your contract is.
Common follow-ups
Does anything I type here get stored or sent anywhere?
No. The auditor is a single JavaScript file running in your browser. There's no server call, no account, and no storage beyond your own device. If you copy the result link, your answers are encoded in the URL itself — so treat that link the way you'd treat the answers.
Is the clause language legally binding as written?
Not as written — it's a starting point, not a finished contract. Every clause here has bracketed placeholders you need to fill in with your real numbers and your real client's details, and none of it is drafted for a specific jurisdiction. Anything with real money attached should go past a lawyer who knows your contract law before you rely on it.
What if my client already insists on using their own contract?
Most of this still works as an addendum or a confirmation email, not a full rewrite. The exclusions list, the change-request steps and the revision cap can all be sent as "to confirm our understanding of scope" before the client's own paperwork is signed — it's evidence of what was agreed either way.
Why do "Partly" and "Not sure" score the same as "No"?
Because from a risk standpoint, an unclear protection isn't a protection. A change process you "sort of" have, or aren't sure you have, will not hold up the day a client pushes on it — it only holds up when you can point to it. This tool scores what would survive a dispute, not what would survive a friendly conversation.
Next
Knowing your exposure is half of it. Pricing for it is the other half.
A tight scope protects the work you already quoted. The Rate Floor tells you whether that quote was ever high enough to survive scope creep in the first place.