Software Cost Calculator

Estimate a project in person days from its type, features and platforms, then apply your own day rate.

What are you building?
Platforms
Features it needs
Design

Screens designed for your product rather than adapted. This is what most projects need.

Estimated effort100169person days
Calendar time2033.8weeks

A range, not a number. Software estimates miss high far more often than low, so the top end is further from the middle than the bottom end is.

Where the time goes
Discovery
13 d
Design
19 d
Build
63 d
Testing
21 d
Launch
10 d

Building is about half the work. The other half is deciding what to build, designing it, testing it and getting it live, and it is the half people forget when they estimate.

Your day rate

No price is shown until you enter a rate, because a rate depends on where and who you hire, and quoting one here would be making it up.

What this is and is not

This is a planning aid, not a quote. The day counts are engineering judgement about scope, not measured averages from a dataset, and no real project matches a calculator. For an actual figure we scope the work and come back with a number we will stand behind.

Get a real estimate

How to Estimate a Software Project

1

Describe what you are building

The project type sets the baseline, the features add to it, and the platforms decide how much of the work is shared rather than repeated.

2

Read the range, not the number

The output is in person days with a deliberate spread. A single figure would look more confident and be less honest.

3

Add your own day rate

No money appears until you type a rate, because rates depend entirely on where and who you hire. Putting one here would be inventing it.

Features

Six project types with different baselines
Twelve features costed separately
Extra platforms costed as shared work, not as a second project
Effort in person days and in calendar weeks
Breakdown across discovery, design, build, testing and launch
Money only from a rate you enter yourself
No fixed prices and no fabricated averages
Free, no sign-up, no email required

Frequently Asked Questions

It is a planning aid, not a quote. The day counts are engineering judgement about how much work a given scope usually takes, not measured averages from a dataset, and no real project matches a calculator. Use it to sanity check a budget and to see which features are expensive, not to sign anything.

Because a price is a rate times an effort, and the rate depends on where the team is, how senior it is and what the engagement looks like. Effort is the part that can be estimated from scope. Quoting a currency figure without knowing the rate would be making up a number.

Because software estimates miss high far more often than they miss low. Nobody has ever been surprised by a project finishing three times faster than planned. The upper bound is further from the middle to reflect that.

An admin panel, usually, because it is effectively a second application with its own screens, permissions and edge cases. Real time updates and reporting dashboards are next. Login is cheaper than people expect, because it is well trodden ground.

Because the backend, the data model, the design system and the business logic are shared. A second native platform adds the client work, not the whole project. That is also the argument for React Native or Flutter when the app does not need deep platform integration.

Yes, and it is the most commonly missed part of an estimate. Deciding what to build, designing it, testing it properly and getting it live is the other half. A plan that budgets only for coding is a plan that runs over.

Scope that keeps growing, integrations with systems nobody has documented, and decisions that wait weeks for an answer. The last one costs more time than most technical problems and never appears in any estimate.

Tell us what you are building. We scope the work properly and come back with a figure we will stand behind, which is a different thing from a calculator output.

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