What does custom software cost?

The short answer

Our hourly rate is €110 per hour, excluding VAT. That covers development, consultation and everything in between. No separate rates for seniors, no surcharge for rush work, no markup on hours someone else worked.

With that one number you can do the math yourself. Custom software is not sold in packages, it is built in hours. If you know what an hour costs and you have a sense of the scope, you have a range. Below are the ranges we see in practice:

These are ranges, not quotes. They come from projects we have done before and they say something about the order of magnitude, not about your specific case. But at least you now know whether you are in the thousands or in the tens of thousands, and that is exactly what you want to know before you start a conversation.

Why we publish our rate

Search for "software development cost" and you will find dozens of pages explaining that it depends. That is true. But it is also a convenient way of not giving an answer, and it costs you a few phone calls before you know whether a party even fits your budget.

We find that awkward, for you and for us. If our rate does not suit you, you want to know that before you spend an hour of your day on an introduction. And we would rather talk to people who know what they are getting into. Which is why the number is simply there.

It has a flip side that we should mention: €110 is not the cheapest rate in the Netherlands. You can find developers for €60 or €70 per hour, especially if you look abroad. What you get with us is someone who remembers your project, who speaks Dutch, who is reachable when something breaks and who is still there in two years. Whether that is worth the difference is up to you.

Hourly rate or fixed project price

We work in two ways. Both have their moment.

By the hour. You pay for the hours we work, at €110 per hour. Every month you get an invoice with a specification: which hours, on which day, spent on what. So you see exactly where your money goes and you can adjust course or stop at any moment. This works well when the scope is still moving, when you want to be able to choose along the way, or when it is an ongoing collaboration.

A fixed price per project. We agree an amount in advance for a defined result. You know what it costs, we carry the risk if it turns out harder than expected. This only works if the scope is sharp, because otherwise a fixed price is a fiction that is going to hurt one of us. For a clearly described first version it is often the most comfortable form.

What we do not do with a fixed price is specify the hours. That is the whole idea: you buy a result, not hours. With hourly billing you always get that specification.

In both cases the same principle applies: as long as the scope does not change, the budget does not change. That is not a guarantee in the legal sense, it is how we work. If you come up with something new halfway through, we discuss what it costs before we build it. You will not run into a surprise at the end of the project.

What a project roughly costs

The table at the top is the short version. Here is what is behind those numbers.

AI integration into existing software, 40 to 120 hours. You already have a system and you want to add something smart to it: summarizing documents, automatically categorizing requests, a search function that understands what people mean. The low end is a defined feature in one place. The high end is several integrations, your own data that first has to be cleaned up, and a fallback scenario for when the model does something strange.

Simple internal tool or first version, 80 to 150 hours. A tool that takes over one process from the Excel files currently lying around. Registering, keeping an overview, exporting. This is also the range most first versions fall into: the smallest form that is already usable for your team.

Dashboard with integrations, 100 to 250 hours. Building the dashboard itself is not the expensive part. The expensive part is the integrations: pulling data out of systems that were never meant to talk to each other, and keeping that reliable when something changes on the other side. Count roughly 20 to 60 hours per integration, depending on how good the documentation is.

Client portal or business app with login, 150 to 300 hours. As soon as your clients log in themselves, a layer is added that you do not have with internal tools: accounts, passwords, permissions, and the question of who gets to see what. That is not exciting work but it has to be right, because this concerns other people's data.

Native app for iOS and Android, 300 to 600 hours. This is roughly double the same app as a web app, and that is no coincidence. In practice you build two applications, you test both, you publish both in a store with an approval process, and you maintain both when Apple or Google changes something. So the difference of tens of thousands of euros sits in the build, and it then continues for years in maintenance.

Platform with payments and integrations, 400 to 900 hours. Multiple parties, money going from A to B, and many users at once. Payments themselves are quite doable, the complexity is in everything around them: failed transactions, chargebacks, invoices, and what has to happen when one of the systems does not respond for a moment.

What pushes the price up or down

Four things weigh the most, and with all four you can turn the dial yourself.

The number of features. Every screen, every button and every exception costs time to build and then to test. A list of fifteen features of which you really use four is the most expensive way to start. Count 6 to 16 hours for an average screen.

The complexity of those features. Showing an overview is simple. Processing payments, integrating with an existing package or generating documents that have to meet requirements is not. The difference between "a form" and "a form that updates three other systems after submission" is easily a factor of five.

The number of users and the amount of data. Software for ten colleagues is allowed to hiccup once. Software with a thousand customers on it at the same time has to make different choices in its setup, and those choices cost hours. This is also why we ask how big you expect it to become, not out of curiosity but because it determines the build.

How finished it has to be at delivery. An internal tool used by five people is allowed to look functional. Something your customers see asks for attention to design and behavior on every screen size. Count 15 to 30 percent on top of the build for that.

The biggest saving is not in building cheaper but in building less. Almost every project we do starts smaller than the original idea. Not because we want to squeeze the budget, but because you only know which features you really need once something is running.

Worked example: a client portal from idea to launch

This is what such a range looks like in practice. This is a portal where clients log in, view their file and download documents, linked to an existing administration system.

What stands out when you break this down: the integration is the most expensive single component, more expensive than the design. That often surprises people. And the 16 hours of intake seem a lot for "talking", but it is the part that prevents you throwing away 40 hours later because we understood it wrong.

Want to stay below €19,250? Leave the integration out in round one and have staff prepare the files manually. Then you are at 130 hours, or €14,300, and you can add the integration as soon as it turns out clients really use the portal.

What does app development cost?

Apps deserve their own section. One choice at the start makes a difference of tens of thousands of euros here: whether you build it as a web app or as a native app.

A web app runs in the browser. You build and maintain one version, and it works on phone, tablet and desktop. A native app you build separately for iOS and for Android, you publish it in two stores and you maintain it in two places. That is why the range for native is roughly double that of the same functionality as a web app.

The calculation people usually skip is the one over three years instead of over the first delivery:

The numbers are indicative, but the ratio matches what we see in practice. Maintenance doubles along with it, because every change has to be made twice and tested twice.

When is native the right choice then? If you need to go deep into the camera, bluetooth or sensors, if the app has to work heavily offline, or if push notifications are really the heart of your product. In those cases the money is well spent. But that is a minority of the requests we get, and for the rest the web route is faster to launch and cheaper for years.

A more extensive consideration of both routes is on our page about app development in Amsterdam.

There is no minimum project size

Many agencies only start at €10,000 or €25,000. We have no lower limit. If your question can be solved in twelve hours, we do it for twelve hours.

That is not charity. Small jobs are a fine way to get to know each other without either of us committing to something big. A number of our longest-running collaborations started with an afternoon of work on something that was broken.

What you pay monthly after launch

Software is not a one-off purchase. After launch, two things keep running.

Hosting. We host ourselves, so you do not need a separate party that points at us when something goes wrong. What it costs depends on what has to run: an internal tool for twenty people requires something very different from a platform with thousands of visitors a day. We calculate it based on what your application actually needs and tell you the amount before you go live, not after. You can read more about how we set that up on the page about managed hosting.

Maintenance and further development. Here too the hourly rate of €110 applies. Most clients sit between 2 and 8 hours per month, so roughly €220 to €880, and that goes on updates, small improvements and the occasional thing that broke. You are not tied to anything: if you use nothing for a month, you pay nothing.

What we do not do is a mandatory maintenance contract with a fixed fee that you never see any return on.

How we keep the budget in check

The problem with software projects is rarely the hourly rate. The problem is that halfway through you do not know where you stand. We have three things for that.

A weekly update. No ten-page reporting, but a message saying what is done, what we are working on and whether there is anything we are running into. If something runs over, you hear it in week three and not on the final invoice.

A monthly invoice with a specification. With hourly billing you get which hours were spent on what. You can check it and you can have an opinion about it. That keeps us sharp too.

A fixed budget as long as the scope is fixed. If nothing changes in what we agreed, nothing changes in the amount. If you want to add something along the way, we first say what it costs and you decide. It is that simple, and it works because we take the scope seriously at the start instead of rushing through it.

Frequently asked questions about the cost

What is the hourly rate of a software developer?

With us, €110 per hour excl. VAT. In the Netherlands the market runs roughly from €75 to €150 for an experienced developer, depending on specialty and whether you work with an agency or a freelancer. Below €75 you are usually paying for a junior or for someone abroad.

What is the average cost of custom software?

If you lump all projects together, the average comes out somewhere around €20,000. But that average is nearly useless, because the spread runs from a few thousand to well above a hundred thousand. The ranges per project type above tell you more.

What does it cost to have an app built?

A defined first version as a web app costs 80 to 150 hours, or €8,800 to €16,500 excl. VAT. A business app with login and an integration sits at 150 to 300 hours. A native app for iOS and Android starts around €33,000, because you build and maintain two applications.

Is a web app cheaper than a native app?

Yes, and the difference grows after delivery. In the build it differs by roughly a factor of two. In maintenance again, because with native you make every change twice. Counted over three years, a web app in our example above is about a third of the cost of the same native app.

Why does software development cost so much?

Because it is manual work and it does not scale. There is no existing product that we adapt for you, every feature is made, tested and later maintained. The comparison with a standard package of €50 per month falls short: that package has been sold thousands of times, your software once.

Can I pay in phases?

Yes. With hourly billing we invoice monthly, so that happens automatically. With a fixed project price we usually agree three moments: at the start, at a working intermediate version and at delivery.

What if it becomes more expensive than agreed?

With a fixed price that is our problem, not yours. With hourly billing you see it coming in the weekly update and we can adjust course together, for example by taking something out of the first version. What does not happen is that you get an invoice at the end that you did not expect.

Does a first conversation cost anything?

No. The first conversation is free and without obligation, even if it turns out that custom software is not the smartest route for you.

Work out what your idea costs yourself

You now have enough to make an estimate: the hourly rate, the ranges per project type and a worked example. If you cannot work it out yourself, that is exactly what that first conversation is for.

Tell us briefly what you are running into and what you have in mind. We translate that into a range in hours, with the reasoning included, so you can judge whether it is right. That costs you nothing.

Want to read more about how we work? Have a look at the page about custom software, about web applications, or about software development in Amsterdam. Or get in touch directly.

Written by Zander van der Meer, founder of Meer Development. Since 2019 he has been building custom software for Dutch companies and writing the quotes that are explained in this article. You can read more about the approach on the about page.