In 2026, a focused internal tool costs €6,000–18,000 to build. A custom CRM or operations portal runs €15,000–40,000. A customer-facing platform is €25,000–70,000, and a market-ready SaaS MVP lands at €30,000–90,000. The spread inside each band comes down to three things: integrations, design, and data. Below are the real ranges, what moves the number up or down, and an honest comparison of building in-house versus an agency versus offshore.
Cost by project type
These are the bands we and peer studios in Estonia and the EU actually quote in 2026. Treat them as benchmarks for budgeting, not a quote — the only way to get a real number is to look at your specific systems and data.
What moves the number
Two projects with the same one-line description can differ 3x in price. The difference is almost always one of these:
- Integrations. Every external system you connect (accounting, ERP, payment, e-signature, a legacy DB) adds build and test time. One clean API is cheap; five brittle ones are not.
- Design surface. An internal tool used by ten staff needs to be clear, not beautiful. A customer-facing product needs real UX, responsive design, and polish — that is real hours.
- Data. Migrating clean, well-structured data is quick. Cleaning years of inconsistent spreadsheets or a messy legacy database before you can even start is often 20–40% of a project.
- Compliance & roles. Audit logs, granular permissions, GDPR/data-residency requirements, SSO — each is justified for the right business, and each adds scope.
In-house vs agency vs offshore
The build cost above is only part of the decision. The bigger question is who builds it — and the real cost of each path looks different once you account for hiring, ramp, and the maintenance tail.
| In-house | Agency / studio | Offshore-only | |
|---|---|---|---|
| First version live | 4–8 months (incl. hiring) | 3–12 weeks | 2–6 months |
| True 12-month cost | €90k–160k (1 senior FTE) | €15k–70k per platform | €10k–45k + your PM time |
| Biggest risk | Slow start, key-person risk | Vendor fit / handover quality | Communication, spec drift, QA |
| Best for | Software is the core product, 10+ devs roadmap | 1–3 platforms shipped in months, fixed fee | Well-specced, low-ambiguity builds |
Estonia and the wider EU sit in a useful middle: senior engineering quality with rates (€60–120/h) below the UK/US, in your timezone and under EU data law. That is why a lot of European SMBs land on a regional studio rather than a single offshore hire or a London agency.
A real example
A recent build: an auto-parts distributor was running their pricing and reporting off a 55,000-row legacy database that only one person could query. We built a custom portal that ingests the file, lets their team ask questions in plain language, and emails scheduled reports automatically. Mid–five-figure build, live in weeks, and it removed a daily bottleneck that used to depend on a single staff member. The point: the value was not “software” — it was turning a fragile manual process into something the whole team can use.
Getting an accurate number
The benchmarks above will get you 80% of the way to a budget. For the last 20% you need to look at your specific systems, data, and integrations. We do that in a 30-minute call: walk us through one process, and we tell you (a) whether custom is even the right call, (b) a realistic build range, and (c) the path — agency, hybrid, or stay off-the-shelf. No pitch if it is not a fit.
See how we scope and deliver on the Custom Software Platforms page, or read the companion piece — custom software vs off-the-shelf — to decide whether to build at all.
