What does custom software actually cost in 2026?
Indicative market ranges for a custom build, the five things that move an estimate more than the feature list, and what to ask whoever quotes you.
For anyone about to ask three suppliers for a number and wondering how to tell a real estimate from a hopeful one.
- 4Indicative market bands
- 5Things that move the number
- 0Prices of our own
We do not publish a price, and this page does not sneak one in
Every figure below is a band the market publishes, not ours. We scope each engagement against the actual problem, because the honest number depends on things that do not exist until they are defined, and a number published before that is a guess wearing a suit.
The bands are still useful. They tell you whether what you have in mind is a $20,000 conversation or a $200,000 one, which is usually the thing you actually wanted to know.
What the market charges
Indicative ranges, rounded on purpose. They tell you which conversation you are in. They are not quotes, ours or anyone else's, and no supplier should be held to them.
Under $15,000
A single workflow, an integration between two systems that both already exist, or a small internal tool. Rarely a product.
Worth asking: At this size the risk is not the build, it is discovering the scope was three times bigger once someone opened the API docs.
$15,000 – $60,000
A first production version of a real product, or a serious internal system. Where most SMB and funded-startup work lands.
Worth asking: The band most often quoted as a fixed price, and the one where fixed pricing goes wrong most often.
$60,000 – $150,000
A product with several user types, real integrations, and a compliance surface. Multiple engineers over several months.
Worth asking: Ask what happens at the end of phase one. If the answer is "we deliver everything", nobody has planned for being wrong.
$150,000+
Enterprise delivery, regulated environments, or replacing a system a business already runs on.
Worth asking: Procurement and security review are a real share of the cost here, and rarely appear in an estimate.
Five things that move the number more than the feature list
How much already exists
A build on a working backend costs a fraction of one that has to replace it. The most expensive assumption in software estimating is that existing code will cooperate.
Integrations you do not control
One line on a feature list. An API that returns different shapes for the same call, rate limits nobody documented, and a sandbox that behaves differently from production is three weeks.
Number of user types
Every distinct role is another set of permissions, another set of screens, and another set of states to test. Three portals is not three times one portal, but it is not one either.
The compliance surface
HIPAA, SOC 2, PCI-DSS and GDPR change architecture, not just paperwork. Retrofitting access control, encryption and audit logging costs far more than building with them.
Who owns it after launch
The build is the cheaper half. A product with real users needs releases, fixes and someone answering when it breaks. An estimate that stops at launch is describing half the cost.
Five questions for whoever quotes you
Including us. If a supplier cannot answer these, the number is not an estimate, it is a hope.
- 1.What are the non-goals of this phase? A list of what is excluded is worth more than any amount of detail about what is included.
- 2.What specifically would make this estimate wrong? A good answer names things. A reassuring answer becomes a change order.
- 3.Which parts have you already checked, and which are assumptions? The unchecked ones are where the overrun lives.
- 4.What does this not include after launch? Hosting, support, and the fixes for what real users find are costs whether or not they are quoted.
- 5.Who owns the code and where does it deploy? If the answer is not "you, in your own accounts", the price is not the whole price.
We wrote more about why the second question matters in why we stopped selling fixed-price MVPs.
Want a number for your actual project?
Tell us what exists and what you are trying to build. You will get a real read from the engineers who would do the work, not a band off a page.
Book a call