Custom Software Development Cost in 2026: Real Numbers From Our Projects
Quick answer: Across our recent delivered projects, working first versions ran from $13,000 for a focused single-purpose platform to $93,000 for a full product with backend, web, and native mobile apps, with year-one maintenance around 20 percent of build cost. The honest answer to “what does custom software cost” is not a range copied from other agencies’ blogs. It is arithmetic from real projects, which is what this page is.
On this page
How much does custom software development cost in 2026?
From our delivered work: focused MVPs ran $13,000 to $24,000; full products spanning web and mobile ran $40,000 to $93,000; evolving products with continuous change ran higher, in one case five times the original scope. These are our delivered examples, not market-wide averages, and that distinction is the point of this page.
Project type | Our observed delivered range |
|---|---|
Focused MVP | $13K to $24K |
Full product (web + mobile) | $40K to $93K |
Continuously evolving build | Can multiply; one $25K scope delivered near 5x |
Year-one maintenance | ~20% of build cost |
Real projects, real numbers
Agencies routinely publish cost ranges based on “hundreds of engagements.” Here are the actual numbers behind ours.
Project | Scoped | Delivered | What moved the number |
|---|---|---|---|
Kargonetix (freight marketplace MVP) | $15,000 | $24,000 | Client added route planning, moderation, payment collection after seeing v1. A legitimate scope increase, priced as one |
Creator platform (first version) | $13,000 | $13,000 | Ruthless scope discipline. It went on to support $8M+ in sales |
Unnamed application (2024) | $25,000 | ~5x scoped | Continuous new ideas for months with rework on built features. Scope grew 40 to 50 percent; cost grew 400 percent |
Education organization build | Fixed budget | +20% | Held to budget on minor changes; a late batch of ideas that could not wait for Phase 2 added the rest |
Hotel eConcierge (web + iOS + Android) | $40,000 | $40,000 | India-based engineering with US presence; a comparable US-only engagement would likely have run $100,000 or more |
Vayco Plus (backend, web, mobile) | $40,000 / 800 hrs | 950 hrs, same price | Scope changes and ambiguity; fixed price meant we absorbed the difference |
StatClub (backend, web, native iOS + Android) | $93,000 | $93,000 | On budget because scope changes surfaced during design and prototyping |
Three patterns worth more than any range. First, the projects that stayed on budget resolved their changes in design, not in development. Second, the expensive failure mode is not adding features, it is reworking built ones. The 5x project grew scope by half and cost by five times; rework was the difference. Third, fixed price transfers scope risk to us, which is why fixed-price scoping is slower and stricter. You are paying for certainty either way; the only question is whether you see it itemized.
The number nobody publishes: software maintenance cost
Our standard maintenance model is 20 percent of the original build cost, billed annually. A quarterly billing option runs 6 percent of build cost per quarter, which annualizes higher (24 percent) in exchange for smaller, spread-out payments. Coverage: dependency updates, OS and browser compatibility, security fixes, store requirements, bugs, monitoring, and small improvements. We also offer prepaid hour blocks, such as 100 hours, for founders whose needs vary by quarter.
If an agency quotes you a build with no maintenance conversation, add roughly a fifth of the build cost per year yourself, because most production software needs ongoing maintenance whether anyone budgeted it or not.
What AI changes about custom software pricing, honestly
Planning has compressed dramatically: we can now plan a strong MVP and produce a prototype in one to two days, versus one to two weeks before, and we often provide the prototype at no cost. Engineering is faster too. What has not compressed is everything around engineering: in one recent project, approval took four months, development took six weeks, review took two to three more, and the pilot slipped two months. AI shortens the build. It does not shorten your board’s calendar.
AI features themselves add cost, not just savings: data preparation, evaluation against real examples, and guardrails are engineering work. See the AI development cost guide for the breakdown.
When you should not build
If your workflow is genuinely standard, buy the SaaS. If your budget can’t survive the delivered-cost column above, wait, or start with a $13K-style ruthlessly scoped version and prove demand first, the way the creator platform did. And if what you want is a prototype to test an idea, ask us for one; since AI compressed planning, that often costs you nothing.
Because "the same spec" isn't. The difference is usually what happens to auth, payments, error handling, QA depth, and post-launch support. Cheap quotes defer those; they arrive later as invoices.
Fixed price buys certainty and slower scoping; it also means the vendor absorbs overruns, as we did on Vayco Plus. Time and materials moves faster and shifts risk to you. Neither is wrong; unpriced ambiguity is wrong.
Plan on roughly 20 percent of build cost per year. Ours is exactly that, billed annually, with a quarterly option at 6 percent per quarter.
Sometimes. The $13K platform did, by giving up everything nonessential. Ask what you're willing to not build.
Want your number instead of a range? Send us what you’re building and we’ll tell you what it actually costs, and whether we’d build it at all.
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