Custom software typically costs $10,000 to $49,999 for a project reviewed on Clutch, and the average project is $132,480 over about 13 months. Agencies on Clutch charge $25 to $149 an hour depending on the country. Those figures are from Clutch's pricing data, updated 21 September 2026 and read on 30 October 2026. The gap between typical and average tells you that a few large projects pull the average up. Your price depends on how many hours the scope needs and whose hours they are.
What custom software costs: the numbers
| Measure (Clutch) | Figure |
|---|---|
| Typical reviewed project | $10,000 to $49,999 |
| Average project | $132,480 |
| Usual timeline | About 13 months |
| Average monthly cost | $10,209 |
| Most common hourly rate | $25 to $49 |
These come from reviews by verified clients of agencies listed on Clutch. They describe that marketplace, not every software project, and they are a good starting point for a budget, not a quote.
Hourly rates by country
| Where the agency is | Hourly rate on Clutch |
|---|---|
| United States | $50 to $99 |
| Canada, Australia | $100 to $149 |
| Poland, Spain | $50 to $99 |
| India, Philippines, Ukraine, Mexico | $25 to $49 |
Clutch shows no rate for the United Kingdom. The ranges come from listed agencies, and a rate alone says little about how many hours a team needs for the same job.
Example budgets by project size
The price is hours times rate. The hours below are examples we picked to show the arithmetic. They are not benchmarks, and a real project can land well outside them. Rates are Clutch's bands from the table above.
| Example project | Example hours | At $25 to $49 | At $50 to $99 | At $100 to $149 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Small internal tool | 500 | $12,500 to $24,500 | $25,000 to $49,500 | $50,000 to $74,500 |
| First product version with logins and payments | 1,500 | $37,500 to $73,500 | $75,000 to $148,500 | $150,000 to $223,500 |
| Multi-role platform with integrations | 5,000 | $125,000 to $245,000 | $250,000 to $495,000 | $500,000 to $745,000 |
What moves the price
- Integrations. Each outside system adds work to connect, test and keep working when its API changes.
- User roles and permissions. Two roles are simple. Ten roles with approvals multiply the screens and the tests.
- Data migration. Moving old records is often harder than it looks, because they need cleaning first.
- Compliance. Rules such as HIPAA or SOC 2 add controls, logging and review.
- Reliability. A tool used by five staff can be down for an hour. A checkout cannot.
- Decisions. Slow answers and changing scope cost hours just as code does.
AI coding tools have changed the hours on some of this work, mainly boilerplate, tests and migrations. They do not remove the need for decisions, security review and integration testing. Check what a vendor's quote assumes about them.
Agency, in-house or embedded
An employee is the common comparison. The US median wage for software developers was $135,980 in May 2025. Benefits make up 30% of pay across private industry, a figure for all private workers. Applied to a developer as a rough guide, that gives about $194,000 a year, or $16,200 a month, by our arithmetic, before recruiting, equipment and management.
| Option | Cost basis | What the number covers |
|---|---|---|
| Hire one US developer | About $194,000 a year (our arithmetic) | One person, with benefits, before recruiting |
| Agency project | Hours times the rates above | A defined scope, delivered by a team |
| Gigabit embedded engineer | $3,000–$7,500 per engineer per month, or $36,000 to $90,000 a year | One engineer on your team, with a trial and no lock-in |
A project suits a defined piece of work with an end. Hiring suits software that is core to your business for years. An embedded engineer suits a team that has work now and does not want to hire yet. Build vs buy vs embed goes through the decision.
What you pay after launch
Budget for hosting, third-party services, security updates, bug fixes and small changes. We have not found a reliable study of what share of the build this costs each year, so we do not quote the percentage you will see elsewhere. Ask each vendor to list these costs for your system in writing. Our guide to the hidden costs of AI projects lists many of the same items.
Should you build it at all?
Buy first if a product does the job. Custom software makes sense when the tool you need does not exist, per-seat prices have outgrown the value, or your process is what sets you apart. As an example, 50 users on Salesforce Core at $195 a user a month is $117,000 a year by our arithmetic. Buying is still often right at that price, because it includes things you would otherwise have to build and maintain.
To put a number on the other side, use the AI ROI calculator. Enter the hours a process takes and their cost to see what automating it is worth a year. Set your budget against that figure.
How to get a quote you can trust
- Write down the problem, the users and what done looks like, in one page.
- List the systems it must connect to and the data it must move.
- Ask for a fixed price for a defined scope, or a capped first phase.
- Ask who owns the code, the cloud accounts and the data.
- Ask what the price leaves out: hosting, third-party fees, support after launch.
What Gigabit charges
We quote custom software as a written fixed price after a short scoping phase, because a single public number would mislead you. The fixed prices we do publish are nearby: a Website Build is from $6,000 fixed, one production AI agent is from $8,000, and embedded engineers are $3,000–$7,500 per engineer per month. All of them are on our pricing page. If the software is a first version of an AI product, read what an AI MVP costs.
