What does custom software cost?

An honest price range, the factors that drive it, and the cases where custom software is not worth your money. From someone who builds it.

The question everyone asks and almost no builder answers up front: what does it cost? Here is the range we use ourselves, the factors that drive it, and, just as important, the cases where you should not start at all.

The honest price range

As an indication, in round numbers:

• A small tool that solves one task: from €500. One screen, one clear job, deployed properly.
• A small internal tool or a first working version: €500 to €2,500. One clear process, a handful of screens, one or two integrations.
• A full web application: €2,500 to €15,000. Multiple user roles, integrations with your other systems, and the reliability that belongs to software your business leans on.
• Above that sits software carrying a core process of a larger company. That is a different conversation, and whoever is there usually knows it.

Individual pieces have their own prices: an integration between two systems starts around €500, and so does automating one well-scoped process.

Any vendor who names an exact figure without a conversation is guessing. The range above is where serious projects land in practice.

What drives the price

Four factors do most of the work:

Screens and roles. Every screen is design, build and test work. A tool for three colleagues with identical permissions is fundamentally cheaper than a portal with customers, administrators and reporting.

Integrations. Every connection to another system, your accounting software, your webshop, your CRM, brings that system’s quirks with it. Integrations are often half the work and the source of most surprises; price them explicitly.

Uncertainty. “We know exactly what it should do” and “we will figure it out as we go” can differ by a factor of two. Every open question gets answered during the build, and build hours are the most expensive place to answer questions.

The bar. Software ten colleagues use internally can afford less than software your customers log into. Availability, security and auditability are not checkboxes but work.

What comes after the build

The purchase price is not the whole price. Running software has to be kept up: updates, backups, monitoring, small improvements. Budget a small fixed amount per month, rising with how critical the software is to your business. A builder who does not raise this is letting you discover it yourself, at the worst possible moment.

Also ask who owns the code. Our answer is: you do. That should be the standard, because it decides whether you can switch vendors later or are stuck with the incumbent.

When custom software is not worth your money

Honesty obliges, because a builder of custom software is writing this:

• A package exists that does 95 percent. Take the package. The last five percent is almost never worth €2,500, and a package gets updates you do not pay for.
• The process changes every month. Software freezes a way of working. As long as the way of working is still fluid, a spreadsheet is your friend; build once the process has settled.
• It saves less than it costs. The maths is simple: hours per week times hourly cost times 52, set against build sum plus maintenance. If no convincing number comes out, walk away.
• The budget only covers the build. Without room for maintenance you are buying software that starts ageing on day one.

We have told prospective clients not to commission custom software. It cost us a project and earned the trust the next assignment came from.

How to keep the project in hand

Start small: the smallest version that solves the real problem, in production, with real users. Then grow it based on what proves to work. Every step scoped, every step priced up front. Each decision stays reversible, and the risk of a failed big project simply does not exist, because there is no big project.

Want to know where your idea lands in the range? Describe it to us via /en/contact; within two working days you get an honest first estimate. More about our approach is on custom software development.