"The market for vibe code and its fixes is just beginning." Why Ukrainian IT professionals are ready to take on AI code cleaning and how much they can earn vibe code cleanup specialists

Full Stack Developer, who calls himself Vibe Code Cleanup Specialist, Alexei Morozov told dev.ua that he gave himself such a title because vibecode is quite popular now and in the current position you have to both vibecode and clean up afterwards. «And secondly, it’s following trends on LinkedIn, I noticed that more and more people are signing up with such a title and there is an opportunity to increase the popularity of the profile, which is always a good decision,» he noted.

Currently, Oleksiy admits, there are not many customers for the code cleaning service. «Not many yet, but I think there will be more over time, because the market for vibecode and its fixes is just beginning its journey,» the IT professional explained.

At the same time, the cost of such a service is formed chaotically, says Oleksiy. «It is difficult to name a universal price, since each project is unique. It all depends on the technology stack, the size of the code base, and how much „vibe“ code has been included in the project. Usually, I discuss such things individually after analyzing a specific situation,» he explains. According to the specialist, he currently charges customers a regular hourly rate, and will then look at the market price. «I expect that over time it will become a little more than a typical hourly rate for a developer,» says Morozov.

The DevOps Engineer, who also has the title of a code cleaner in his profile, asked not to be named, but said that he called himself that recently, and has already received his first request for code cleaning. «I had 1 request, but they were looking for a programmer, not a DevOps specialist,» he said. According to the IT engineer, his code cleaning services will cost more than the work of a DevOps specialist. «I plan to set a higher price than usual, during the hype, the price can be raised,» he said.

Another IT developer, who also wished to remain anonymous, told dev.ua that he doesn’t see much professional sense in subtitling himself with a vibecode-klinemo. «It’s more of a humorous approach to make it look creative, not like a bot,» he explained. At the same time, he notes that sometimes he and his colleagues get requests for similar services.

In turn, Project Manager Andriy Yuryev quite clearly names the prices for code cleaner services in his LinkedIn post. «More and more specialists are appearing on LinkedIn who „clean“ code for vibe coders, i.e. people like me, or after AI intervention. And this is great, because vibe coding is 15-50% cheaper than traditional coding even taking into account cleanup costs. In Ukraine, this difference is 30-50%, which makes vibe coding economically profitable for MVPs and prototypes. Cleanup costs $5,000-60,000 depending on the complexity, but pays for itself in 2-8 months due to a 20-55% increase in productivity,» Yuryev is convinced. According to him, vibe coding is changing the economics of software development, especially in regions with lower labor costs. «With proper planning of cleanup costs, this approach provides significant savings and accelerates time-to-market even for complex projects,» the specialist notes.

Developer Hamid Siddiqui, meanwhile, has been offering a «fix your vibe code» service on Fiverr for two years. He has 15-20 regular clients and dozens of one-off projects. «I’ve seen teams struggle to get AI code to work — it works, but it looks raw. I help make it usable for users,» he says. Among the problems: crooked UI/UX in generated interfaces; unoptimized code that slows down the application; poor color schemes, animations, and branding; features that seem to be there but work «by force.»

Entire companies already offer a «code cleaning service.» The Polish Ulam Labs directly writes on its website: «We clean up after vibe coding. Literally.» They explain: when an MVP has to be released in a week, everyone sacrifices quality. Then technical debt begins: there are no tests, the architecture is shaky, every change is like defusing a bomb. That’s when the «cleaners» are called in. And entrepreneur Swatantra Sohni created the VibeCodeFixers.com platform, where almost 300 developers have already registered. So far, it has connected only a few dozen clients with developers, but the founder is confident that demand will grow.

Sokhni admits that he started with vibe coding and constantly turned to experienced colleagues to «fix» his projects. In March, his website took off on social media, and now he is developing a community.

«These specialists are like superhero janitors in the programming world.» A new profession is emerging in IT — vibe core cleaner: who is it and how many of them are there

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«These specialists are like superhero janitors in the programming world.» A new profession is emerging in IT — vibe core cleaner: who is it and how many of them are there

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