Most custom applications True Cedar builds land between $8,000 and $60,000. A single-workflow web application ships in about five business days for under $10,000. A multi-role portal with integrations runs $18,000 to $45,000 over two to five weeks. Regulated builds and legacy data migrations run higher. Here is the whole ladder, and what moves a project up it.
Updated September 2026 · Stephen Backholm, Founder
Every other cost guide you will read on this topic gives you a range like $150,000 to $400,000 and a disclaimer that it depends. Both halves of that are true and neither is useful. This page gives you our actual numbers, the conditions attached to each one, the seven variables that change a quote, and an honest account of why our figures sit well below the category average.
| Budget | Timeline | What it buys |
|---|---|---|
| Under $10,000 | 5 business days | A working web application covering one clearly defined workflow. Single user role or two simple roles, up to two integrations against documented APIs, no data migration. |
| Under $15,000 | 10 business days | The same scope delivered as a mobile MVP on iOS and Android, including store submission. |
| $18,000–$45,000 | 2–5 weeks | A multi-role application or client portal. Several user types with distinct permissions, real reporting, three to six integrations, modest data migration. This is where most of our work lands. |
| $45,000–$90,000 | 5–10 weeks | A system replacing a core business process. Compliance scope such as HIPAA or GLBA, migration from a legacy system, complex permissions, SSO, audit logging, integration with systems that lack good APIs. |
| $90,000+ | 10+ weeks | Multi-system platforms, and builds where the requirements have to be discovered rather than documented. We scope these in phases and price each phase separately. |
These figures are examples to help you plan — not a quote, an offer, or a contract. Every engagement is governed by its own written statement of work and agreement, which set the actual price, scope, timeline, and terms.
For comparison, the published 2026 industry benchmarks put an MVP at $25,000 to $80,000 over two to four months, a moderate build with integrations at $150,000 to $400,000, and the average custom software project at roughly $132,000. Those numbers are not wrong. They are what this work costs when it is delivered the way it was delivered in 2019.
Historically, 60 to 70 percent of the hours on a custom build went to implementation work that required care but not judgment — scaffolding, data-access layers, forms, CRUD screens, test harnesses, integration glue. AI compresses that layer dramatically. It does not compress architecture, data modeling, security review, or knowing what to build. So a team of one or two experienced engineers now produces what used to need five to seven, on the specific categories of work where the compression applies.
That is the entire mechanism. There is no other trick to it.
A $150,000 quote was never mostly profit. It was a five-to-seven person team for three to six months, and most of those hours went into work that a senior engineer could describe in a sentence and then had to spend two days typing. That specific category of work is now fast. The work of deciding what the data model should be, which integration will break in eighteen months, where the authorization boundary belongs, and what the client actually needs rather than what they asked for — that is unchanged, and it is still senior human hours.
This is why AI-accelerated development is not the same as cheap development. Remove the experienced engineer and you get software that demos well and fails in production. The compression only pays off when someone who has done this for twenty years is directing it.
Being straight about this is the difference between a real number and a sales number. The savings are dramatic on greenfield work, standard integrations, and anything where the pattern is well established. They are close to zero on:
If your project is mostly made of the items in that list, expect numbers closer to the industry benchmarks than to ours. We will tell you that on the first call rather than in week six.
A production web application covering one clearly defined workflow, built in about five business days, deployed to your infrastructure, with the source code yours to keep. It is a real application with real authentication and a real database — not a prototype, not a no-code assembly, and not a demo.
Nothing on the right-hand list is unavailable. Each one moves the project into a higher tier, and we will say which before you commit.
Four recent engagements, with client names withheld:
Those timelines reflect those specific scopes. They are evidence that the model works, not a guarantee for every project.
When we look at a project, these are the variables we are pricing. Knowing them in advance lets you shape the scope yourself before you ever talk to us.
Two integrations against modern documented APIs is routine. Six is a different project. One integration against a twenty-year-old system with no API can cost more than the rest of the build combined.
From negligible to the single largest line itemStarting clean is cheap. Moving history out of an existing system means mapping, reconciling, and validating records, and proving the result is correct. The cost scales with how messy the source data is, not how much of it there is.
Adds $5,000–$30,000+HIPAA, GLBA, FINRA, and SOC 2 each impose real requirements on architecture, logging, access control, vendor agreements, and documentation. This is additive work that no amount of delivery speed removes.
Adds 25–60% to the buildOne role is simple. Five roles with overlapping permissions, record-level access rules, multi-tenancy, and SSO against your identity provider is one of the most underestimated costs in custom software.
Adds $4,000–$20,000A fixed set of reports is straightforward. A tool that lets users build their own reports, schedule them, and export them is effectively a second application inside the first.
Adds $3,000–$25,000A responsive web application is the cheapest way to reach everyone. Native iOS and Android adds build work, store review, device testing, and release management. Needing both web and native roughly doubles the surface area.
Mobile MVP from $15,000; web plus native runs 1.7–2×Fifty internal users and fifty thousand public users are different engineering problems. Below a few hundred concurrent users this barely moves the price. Above that it changes architecture.
Negligible under ~500 users, then architecturalBudget 5 to 20 percent of the build cost per year for maintenance, plus hosting. On a $25,000 application that is roughly $1,250 to $5,000 annually, and hosting for an internal application with a few hundred users typically runs $40 to $300 a month depending on data volume. The industry convention is 15 to 25 percent. The low end of our range fits a small, stable internal tool with few integrations; the high end fits a system with many integrations or one that changes often.
Maintenance is not optional and any firm that tells you otherwise is setting you up. Dependencies get security patches, APIs you integrate with change, browsers change, and your business changes.
You own the source code, the data, and the infrastructure accounts, in every engagement and at every tier. It lives in a repository you control. There is no license, no platform lock-in, and no scenario where leaving us means losing the software. If we part ways you keep a working application and any competent developer can pick it up — which is a constraint we deliberately design for.
The break-even is usually simpler than people expect. Forty users on a $45-per-seat tool costs $21,600 a year, every year, rising. A $28,000 custom application that does exactly what those forty people need costs about $4,000 a year to host and maintain after launch. Counting that, it pays for itself in about nineteen months — and from then on saves roughly $17,600 a year.
That math is real, and it is also incomplete, so here is the other side of it.
When you buy SaaS you are not only renting features. You are renting a product roadmap, a support organization, a security team, a compliance posture somebody else paid to certify, and the accumulated result of thousands of other customers finding the bugs before you did. Custom software gives you none of that. You get exactly what you asked for and nothing you did not.
Build when the tool does not fit your process and you have been working around it for a year; you are paying for seats to get one feature; the workaround is a spreadsheet that three people maintain by hand; the thing you do differently from competitors is the thing the software cannot do; or you are paying per-seat for users who need read access to one screen.
Buy when an off-the-shelf product covers 80 percent or more of what you need; the domain is commodity, like accounting or payroll or email; you need compliance certifications you cannot justify obtaining yourself; or the process you are automating is going to change substantially within a year.
We turn down work regularly. These are the cases:
A thirty-minute call, then a fixed-price statement of work within a few business days, with a delivery date on it. Fixed price rather than hourly, so the risk of the work taking longer than estimated is ours and not yours. Scope changes get priced as fixed-fee change orders before work starts on them, never billed as a surprise.
The date is a commitment rather than a projection, and that is the reason we are specific about what fits inside each tier above. A firm that will not tell you what is excluded cannot commit to a date either. Work in the agreed statement of work is ours to finish at the agreed price and on the agreed date, and Stephen sees every engagement through to delivery personally. If we deliver late, monetary penalties apply — the exact terms vary by engagement and are set out in your statement of work.
Through the build you see the software working rather than described — typically twice a week — so you are never guessing where the project stands.
To quote accurately we need to know: the workflow you want to replace or create, who uses it and in what roles, what systems it has to talk to, whether existing data has to come along, and any compliance requirements. If you do not know all of that yet, the call is still worth having — working out which of these actually apply is most of the value of the first conversation.
These are examples, not contract terms. This page describes how we typically work. It is not an offer or a contract, and nothing on it creates a binding commitment. The price, scope, delivery date, late-delivery remedies, change-order process, and every other term for your project are set out in its own written statement of work and agreement, and those documents govern.
A single-workflow web application costs under $10,000 and ships in about five business days. A multi-role application or client portal with integrations runs $18,000 to $45,000 over two to five weeks. Builds with compliance requirements or legacy data migration run from $45,000 upward. Published 2026 industry averages are considerably higher, at roughly $132,000, because they reflect a pre-AI delivery model.
Yes, for an appropriately scoped project: one clearly defined workflow, one or two user roles, up to two integrations against documented APIs, and no data migration. It is a real production application with real authentication and a real database, deployed to your infrastructure. It is not a prototype. Projects that need migration, compliance work, or many integrations take longer and we say so before starting.
Because 60 to 70 percent of the hours in traditional custom development went to implementation work that AI now compresses — scaffolding, data layers, forms, test harnesses, integration glue. Architecture, data modeling, security review, and deciding what to build are not compressed and still require senior engineers. One or two experienced people now produce what used to take five to seven. The savings do not apply to legacy data migration, compliance evidence work, or integrating with systems that have no API.
Budget 5 to 20 percent of the original build cost annually, plus hosting. On a $25,000 application that is about $1,250 to $5,000 a year. Hosting for an internal application with a few hundred users typically runs $40 to $300 a month. Maintenance covers security patches, dependency updates, and changes when the systems you integrate with change. It is not optional.
Yes. You own the source code, the data, and the infrastructure accounts, in every engagement. The code lives in a repository you control. There is no license and no platform lock-in. If we stop working together you keep a working application that any competent developer can maintain, which is something we design for deliberately.
A mobile MVP for iOS and Android starts under $15,000 and ships in about ten business days, including app store submission. If you need both a web application and native mobile apps, expect roughly 1.7 to 2 times the cost of web alone. For many internal business applications a responsive web application reaches every device for less.
Expect compliance scope to add 25 to 60 percent to a build, depending on the regulation and how much evidence and documentation your auditors require. It affects architecture, access control, audit logging, encryption, vendor agreements, and written policy. This work is additive and delivery speed does not reduce it. We have delivered a HIPAA-compliant AI agent for a large law firm.
Fixed price for a defined scope. The risk of the work taking longer than estimated sits with us rather than with you. Scope changes are quoted as fixed-fee change orders and approved before the work begins, so there are no surprise invoices.
Anything outside the statement of work gets quoted as a change order with its own fixed price and timeline, and does not start until you approve it. Work that was in the original statement of work is our responsibility to finish at the agreed price, even if it takes us longer than expected.
No. The prices, timelines, and commitments on this page are examples of how we typically work. They are not a quote, an offer, or a contract. Your project's price, scope, delivery date, and terms are set out in its own written statement of work and agreement, and those documents govern.
Thirty minutes on a call is usually enough to tell you which tier your project is in, whether custom is the right answer at all, and what you should buy instead if it is not.