What Does Custom Software Actually Cost? An Honest Breakdown

"How much does it cost to build an app?" is the question every agency dodges with "it depends." It does depend — but that's often a way to avoid giving you anything useful. So here's an honest breakdown with actual ranges, what moves the number, and the red flags that mean a cheap quote will cost you double.

Ranges below are realistic European market figures for quality work as of 2026. Your mileage will vary — treat them as ballparks for budgeting, not quotes.

Rough ranges by project type

Marketing website / landing page — €2k–10k

A professional, fast, multi-page site with a CMS and good SEO. The low end is a polished template build; the high end is bespoke design, animation, and multi-language. Cheaper exists (€500 freelancer specials) but you usually get what you pay for in speed, SEO, and maintainability.

MVP / first version of a product — €15k–50k

A real, working first version of a web app or SaaS with core features, auth, payments, and a database. The point of an MVP is to validate the idea, so scope discipline is everything — every "wouldn't it be nice" feature pushes the number up.

Mobile app (iOS + Android) — €25k–80k+

Cross-platform (React Native / Flutter) keeps costs lower than two native codebases. Price scales with complexity: offline mode, real-time features, payments, integrations, and polish all add up. App store presence, push notifications, and ongoing OS updates mean an app is a commitment, not a one-off.

AI automation / chatbot / RAG system — €8k–40k

A custom AI assistant trained on your data, or an automation that removes a real manual workflow. The model is cheap; the value (and the cost) is in the integration, the data pipeline, the guardrails, and getting the accuracy high enough to trust. Simple chatbots are at the low end; agentic automations that take real actions are at the high end.

IoT rollout — €15k–60k+ (plus hardware)

Connecting physical devices to dashboards and automations: device provisioning, secure ingestion, time-series storage, and the dashboards your team actually uses. Cost depends heavily on how many device types, whether the hardware exists, and how much security and reliability the use case demands.

Custom business software (ERP, internal tools) — €20k–100k+

Replacing spreadsheets and disconnected tools with something built around your actual workflow. Cost scales with the number of workflows, integrations with existing systems, and how many user roles and edge cases are involved.

What actually drives the number up or down

• Scope clarity. A vague brief is expensive — it means rework. The single biggest cost-saver is knowing what you actually need before you start.
• Integrations. Every external system you connect to (payment, CRM, accounting, a legacy API) adds work and risk. Three clean integrations can cost more than the core app.
• Design fidelity. "Functional" is cheaper than "beautiful and on-brand." Both are valid — just decide which you need.
• Compliance and security. Handling sensitive data, payments, or operating in a regulated space (GDPR, the AI Act, ISO) adds real, necessary cost.
• Non-functional requirements. "It works" is cheap. "It works for 10,000 concurrent users, with 99.9% uptime, audited and monitored" is not.

Red flags in a cheap quote

A quote that's a fraction of everyone else's isn't a bargain — it's a warning. Watch for:

• No discovery phase. If they quote a precise number before understanding your problem, they're guessing — and you'll pay for the guess in change requests.
• No mention of testing, security, or maintenance. These aren't optional extras; leaving them out is how the price looks low.
• You don't own the code. Some cheap builds trap you in a proprietary platform you can never leave. Always confirm you own the source.
• No clear scope or milestones. "We'll build your app for €5k" with no spec means the cheap number covers a fraction of what you imagine.

The expensive version of cheap software is the rebuild you pay for eighteen months later when the first one can't be maintained.

How to get an accurate number

1. Write down the problem you're solving — not the features you imagine.
2. List your must-haves vs. nice-to-haves. Be honest about which is which.
3. Name the systems it has to integrate with.
4. Decide your non-negotiables on security, scale, and timeline.
5. Then ask a partner for a discovery or scoping engagementfirst — a small, fixed-cost piece of work that produces a real estimate, a plan, and a prototype before you commit to the full build.

The bottom line

Good custom software is an investment with a wide price range — and the right number depends far more on scope and quality requirements than on who you hire. The cheapest quote almost never wins on total cost; the clearest scope almost always does.

If you have an idea and want an honest estimate — including whether you should build it at all — that's exactly what a discovery sprint is for. We'll give you a real number, a plan, and a straight answer, before you spend the big money.