Insights · 5 min read
Real price ranges for custom software in 2026, the four factors that move the cost, and how offshore rates change the math, from a team that has shipped 300+ projects.
By GGP Editorial
When a founder asks me what custom software costs, I usually start with the answer nobody wants to hear: it depends. That is annoying, but it is also honest. A trading platform and a restaurant POS system are not the same job, and any firm that quotes a flat price before understanding the scope is guessing.
You can still pin down real ranges. Most custom software we build at GlobeSoft, from a small internal tool up to a multi-market trading system, lands between US$25,000 and US$250,000. A small proof-of-concept runs lower. An enterprise platform with integrations and compliance work runs higher. Here is how those numbers break down.
The biggest cost is developer time. A project is, at its core, engineering hours multiplied by an hourly or monthly rate. Rates vary a lot by region, and that one variable explains most of the price difference between quotes.
| Project type | Typical build time | Typical cost, offshore team |
|---|---|---|
| Landing page or simple website | 2-4 weeks | $3,000-8,000 |
| Mobile app, single platform | 3-5 months | $25,000-60,000 |
| SaaS MVP | 3-6 months | $40,000-90,000 |
| Trading or FinTech platform | 6-12 months | $100,000-250,000+ |
| Enterprise system with integrations | 9-18 months | $150,000-400,000+ |
These ranges come from real projects, not brochure numbers. The trading platform we built for a client who needed Hong Kong, US and A-share coverage ran past a quarter million, because of the data feeds, order routing and compliance checks involved. A self-ordering kiosk with a POS backend costs far less, because the scope is smaller and well understood.
Four things matter more than everything else combined.
Scope is first. Every screen, integration and edge case adds hours, and hours are the unit you are buying. Second is complexity. Anything touching payments, real-time data or regulation multiplies effort fast. Third is team location, which I get to below. Fourth is how mature your requirements are. A client with a written spec and wireframes pays less than one who is still deciding what the product is while the team is already building it.
I have watched two otherwise identical projects differ by 2x on price, purely because one client had thought through their requirements and the other had not. If you want to control cost, the cheapest thing you can do is write down what you want before you hire anyone.
The same senior engineer costs different money depending on where they sit. A US developer commonly bills $100 to $180 an hour. Singapore is similar. A senior engineer at an offshore firm in Asia or Latin America, working through a company with real management and QA, typically costs $35 to $60 an hour. That gap is why offshore development exists, and it is not going away.
The trade-off is not quality, it is communication. A cheap freelancer with no oversight will cost you more in rework than you save on the rate. A managed team with a delivery lead, code review and a fixed process costs more per hour than a solo contractor but finishes on time and on spec. GlobeSoft sits in the second category. We run 40-plus engineers on a Java, Spring Boot and Spring Cloud stack with dedicated project management, and clients in the US, Singapore, Brazil and Africa are buying that structure, not just hours.
Clients often ask for a fixed price because it feels safer. I understand the instinct. Fixed price works when the scope is small and locked: a landing page, a simple mobile app, a well-specified integration. The vendor carries the risk, so you pay a premium for that safety, usually 15 to 30 percent on top of the hourly estimate.
Time and materials is the better deal for anything that will grow. You pay for hours worked against a backlog you control, and you can change direction without renegotiating a contract. The risk shifts to you, which is why you want a vendor that reports hours clearly and demos working software every week or two. If a firm resists showing you progress, walk away.
Most of our longer engagements run time and materials with a monthly cap, which gives the client a ceiling without locking the scope in concrete. It is the arrangement I would pick if I were on the buying side.
Maintenance is the line item founders forget. Software is not a one-time purchase. Expect to spend 15 to 20 percent of the initial build cost every year to keep a product secure, updated and running. Hosting, monitoring, database costs and small feature requests all add up. We put this number on the table early in a quote, because a client surprised by it later is a client who feels misled.
If you want a realistic figure for your own project, bring a rough feature list and a budget range to the first call. A good firm will tell you what fits inside that budget and what does not, and will push back on scope rather than quietly padding the bill. That conversation costs nothing.
Tell us what you are building and where you are today. We will help you define the next step.
