How much does custom software cost in India?

We publish a price range for each package, and no number where the work is custom. A range is not an average: the number you are quoted comes after a scoping conversation, and it can sit anywhere inside the range for the reasons in the next section. Once it is agreed, it does not move.

What each package includes is listed on the pricing page. Other studios will quote differently, and so will freelancers and large IT firms. So compare what each quote covers before you compare what it totals.

Price follows effort, and effort follows decisions you can see on paper before anyone writes code. These are the seven that move a quote most.

Scope: how many different things it does#

Page count and screen count are weak measures. What costs money is the number of different behaviours. A page that lists records is cheap once. A page that lists records, filters them by role, lets three kinds of people approve them and sends an email when they do is a different page, however similar it looks. Ten blog posts are one template; four pages that each have their own logic are four builds. Our FAQ puts the range down to how many templates, integrations and content types are involved, and that is the honest short version.

Roles: who logs in, and what each may do#

Every kind of user is a small product of its own, with its own screens, permissions and test cases. An ordering app with customers and an admin is a smaller job than one with customers, vendors, delivery staff and an admin. When two quotes for "the same app" differ by a factor of two, count the roles each one assumed before you compare anything else. What each package includes for roles and access is on the pricing page.

Integrations: what it has to talk to#

Payment gateways, WhatsApp, accounting software, shipping, an ERP you already own. Each looks small in a quote and is not. Someone has to read the other system's documentation, get a test account, decide what happens on the day it returns an error, and check it with real data. The cost depends less on how well known the other system is than on how good its documentation and test environment are. Say in the brief which integrations are mandatory and which are nice to have, because they are priced one by one.

Content: who writes it and who loads it#

Copy, photographs, product data, the first thousand records of a database. If you bring them, the build is faster; if the studio has to produce them, that is another line. The usual cause of a late launch is late content rather than late code. Ongoing content writing and SEO retainers are not part of our price, and we say so on the pricing page.

Compliance: the rules the software must follow#

If the software touches personal data, money or regulated records, extra work follows: consent and deletion flows, access logs, data-processing agreements with the people who handle the data, retention rules. This is where a cheap quote quietly leaves things out, so ask who is responsible for each obligation. We work under a data-processing agreement where a project touches customer data. Whether a particular law applies to your business is a question for your lawyer, and we will not guess at it for you.

Design depth: adapted or made for you#

A site adapted from a standard layout costs less than a visual system designed around your brand. Neither is wrong. Design is part of every build for us rather than a separate line, done in components with real content and the awkward states: empty, loading, error, overflow. We design the screens with our own tools and show them to you in a PDF to approve. The question to settle is how much custom design the budget buys, and whether the screens need to look like nobody else's or only need to be clear.

Hosting, accounts and the running bill#

We set hosting up in your own account (Vercel, AWS or whatever fits), so the bill is yours. Third-party licences and subscriptions are also yours, in your name, and neither is in the build price. Ask any vendor for the expected monthly figure at launch and at ten times that traffic, in writing, before you sign.

A quote is a promise about scope more than about price. Before you accept one, check that it states:

• A written scope: the screens or modules, the user roles, the integrations, and what is explicitly left out.
• One price, and what it excludes. For us, GST is on top.
• A date or a window, and what it depends on from your side: content, feedback turnaround, third-party approvals.
• How changes are handled. Ours are priced in writing before anyone builds them.
• What triggers each payment. Ours are milestones tied to delivery, for example 20% onboarding advance (when the deal is signed) and the stages after it, and nothing starts until the advance clears.
• Who owns what, from which day: the repository, the cloud account, the domain, the store accounts.
• The warranty: how long, what it covers and what it does not.
• What you pay after launch: hosting, subscriptions, any care plan.

If a quote is missing one of these, the missing item is where the extra cost will turn up.

Cheap is fine. Cheap and vague is the problem. Look for these.

• One number for "an app", with no list of what it includes.
• Nothing about an admin panel or back office. The part people see is usually the smaller part of the work.
• Hosting, domain or store accounts in the vendor's name, so that leaving means asking permission.
• Everything payable up front, or payments that have no connection to delivery.
• No written way to handle changes. "Unlimited revisions" is a promise nobody can keep at a fixed price.
• No warranty, or a warranty that excludes everything that could go wrong.
• Seniors in the sales call and someone you never meet doing the build.
• A price far below every other quote that nobody can explain line by line. The gap is usually the backend, the admin panel, testing on real devices or the store submission. Ask the vendor to point to the line that covers each.

The honest comparison is rarely with a competitor's product. It is with a spreadsheet, three WhatsApp groups and one person's memory. If your workflow is the usual one for your industry, buy the product: you will get more for less and someone else keeps it updated. Build when the workflow is the business, such as a pricing rule nobody else has or an approval chain specific to how you are regulated.

Two other tests. Ownership: a bought tool keeps your operating data in someone else's structure, and leaving gets more expensive each month. Maintenance: custom software is something you now own, which is an advantage only if the handover is real. We would rather tell you a product off the shelf is the right answer than take the project. The longer argument is in what custom software actually replaces, and the way we keep a fixed price fixed is in fixed price only works if you defend the scope.

Our prices exclude GST. GST at 18% is added as its own line on the invoice, so the figure to budget is the price plus that line. At the lowest and highest price of each package:

If your business is registered for GST you can usually claim the GST on this invoice as input credit, and your CA will confirm that for your case. Ask your CA, too, whether any tax has to be deducted at source when you pay; we state no rate here. Whether the tax is CGST and SGST or IGST depends on the states involved, which the locations page explains city by city, and a client outside India is treated differently, as the international page explains.

This is an illustration. It is not a past project and not a quote. The business and the scope are made up to show how the drivers above turn into a price conversation.

Imagine a small distribution business that keeps orders in Excel and WhatsApp and wants one internal system. The made-up scope: three roles (sales, warehouse, owner), roughly a dozen screens, order entry with an approval step, stock updates, a monthly report, and one integration with the accounting software it already uses.

That is custom software: roles, approvals and an integration put it in the Full-fledged package, whose price is ₹1,50,000 to ₹3,50,000, with a planning window of 10–20 weeks for custom software.

What would move the quote inside the range: a fourth role, such as customers placing orders themselves; a second integration; importing years of old records; a stricter approval chain. What would keep it lower: one integration, data that arrives as a clean spreadsheet, and a team that agrees the screens in the first fortnight.

Now the money, if the quote landed in the middle of the range. The price is ₹2,50,000, GST at 18% is ₹45,000, and the total is ₹2,95,000. It is paid in 4 milestones, each invoiced with its own GST when its stage is reached:

Outside that figure: hosting and third-party subscriptions in your own account, and any new feature after launch.

• Warranty. After launch, we fix defects in what we built at no cost: 30 days on MVP and 90 days on Full-fledged and Growth and Scale. That covers our work not doing what the scope said it would. It does not cover new features, changes to third-party services, or modifications made by others after handover.
• Ownership. On final payment, all code, repositories, credentials and infrastructure created for the engagement are yours. We work inside your GitHub organisation and your cloud account from the first commit, so there is nothing to migrate. Some builds include components from our own registry; those come to you as editable source under a perpetual, irrevocable licence, and we keep the right to use the same components elsewhere. The security page sets this out in one place.
• Running costs. Hosting and third-party subscriptions are yours. After the warranty, monthly care plans cover upkeep: Starter Care ₹4,999, Essential Care ₹11,999 and Priority Care ₹24,999 a month, plus GST. The hours are inside the monthly fee. They do not roll over to the next month, and we never bill by the hour. Work beyond the hours is quoted as a fixed-price change order, in writing, before anyone starts it. What each plan includes is on the pricing page.

For a rough range, the estimator takes about a minute. For the packages and what is included, see pricing, and for how a project runs from first call to handover, the process page. For a fixed price and a date against your own scope, contact us: we reply within 1 hour, the scoping conversation costs nothing, and there is no obligation after it.