You asked three firms to price the same piece of software, and the numbers came back so far apart that they cannot all be describing the same project. One is a fixed figure, one is an hourly rate with an estimate, and one says it depends.
They are usually not describing the same project. This post covers what actually decides the cost of custom software development, what you can do to bring it down, and how to check the price against what the work costs you now. I run a firm that does this work, so read the section on our prices as an argument for hiring us. The rest holds whoever you hire.
Why quotes for the same project differ
Three things change from one quote to the next, and they are rarely written down side by side.
The scope each firm heard: one firm priced the screen you described. Another priced the screen plus the connection to your accounting system, because it asked where the data goes next. A third priced a rebuild of half your operation because nobody told it what was out of bounds.
How the bill is calculated: an hourly quote is an estimate that moves every risk onto you. A slow month, a misunderstanding about a field, a rewrite: each one lands on your invoice. A fixed price makes the firm live with its own estimate.
What happens after launch: some quotes end the day the software ships. Others include someone who watches it and fixes it while it runs. Those are different products, and they should cost different amounts.
Before you compare numbers, get every firm to write down the same three things: what is in scope, how the price is calculated, and who is responsible after launch. A quote is only comparable to another quote that answers all three.
What actually sets the price
Custom software costs what it costs because of the work it has to do. These are the parts that move the number.
The systems it connects to: every system that stays in place is a connection to build, map, and test. A system with a documented API is the easy case. An accounting file on a server in your office, a database written twenty years ago, or a supplier portal with a login and no export takes more work, because the software has to read and write it some other way. More systems to connect raise a quote.
The rules and the exceptions: a process with one path is cheap. A process where the answer depends on the customer, the job type, the day of the month, and whether someone approved it last week is not. Most of the cost in a build hides in the exceptions people handle without thinking. More complicated rules raise a quote.
The volume: fifty records a week and five thousand a day need different handling for errors, retries, and logging. More volume raises a quote.
The screens: a screen is needed only where a person decides something. Every step that needs no judgment should need no screen, and every screen you do not build is money you keep.
The agents: the repetitive steps, like reading documents, posting records, and placing or answering calls, are often done by an AI agent inside the software. Each agent has its own build fee and a monthly fee, listed below.
How to bring the cost down
You control more of the price than most quotes suggest.
Build one process end to end first: a first version that runs one process completely gets used the day it ships. A first version that covers part of six processes sends everyone back to the spreadsheet for the rest, and you pay for six half-finished pieces. Pick the process you would take off someone's desk first.
Keep the systems that work: your accounting system and your CRM already solve the general problem. Software that sits next to them costs far less than software that tries to replace them. Write down the list of systems that stay. That list is the boundary of the project, and a fixed price can be written against it.
Write the exceptions down before the first call: ask the person who does the work to list every case where they do something different from the normal path. An hour spent on that list saves days of back and forth during the build.
Make that person available: the most expensive thing in a build is a wrong assumption found late. A firm that can ask the person who does the job a question on Tuesday and get an answer on Tuesday finishes faster and charges less for it.
The cost after launch
Software wired into daily work breaks on the days you are busiest. A supplier changes a form. An upstream system renames a field. A new customer sends a file in a layout nobody tested.
Someone has to notice, fix it, and make the changes you ask for as the business changes. If the firm that built it hands you a repository and leaves, that someone is a new contractor billing by the hour to learn code they did not write. Ask every firm who is responsible for the software in month six, and put the answer in the comparison next to the build price.
Check whether the build pays for itself
You can do this before any firm quotes, with numbers you already have.
Take the process you want to build first. Count the hours a week people spend on it, and multiply by what an hour of their time costs you, including payroll taxes and benefits. Multiply by 52.
A process that takes 20 hours a week at $35 an hour costs $36,400 a year. Add what the mistakes cost: the invoice posted to the wrong account, the order keyed with the wrong quantity, the follow-up that never went out. That total is what the software replaces each year, and it is the number to hold every quote against.
If the yearly number is small, you have picked the wrong process to start with. Choose the one that eats the most hours or causes the most expensive mistakes, and price that one.
What we charge
Custom software and one-off jobs are priced per project, from $10,000. The agents that run inside the software have a build fee and then a monthly fee: the AI receptionist and answering service from $2,500, then from $500 a month; the AI cold caller and appointment setter from $5,000, then from $2,500 a month; the bookkeeping and data-entry agents from $5,000, then from $500 a month.
The monthly fee covers AI model usage, monitoring, fixes, and the changes you ask for, plus the phone line and call minutes on the voice agents. More systems to connect, more volume, more complicated rules, and more agents or phone lines raise a quote. The pricing section of our FAQ covers the rest.
Timeline follows scope. A simple build can be ready in a few days. A complicated one can take 90 days to design, build, and test.
For one job, a delivery company in Dallas-Fort Worth needed about 2,000 handwritten delivery slips turned into records. The data-entry agent produced more than 1,900 rows, checked against the paper, in about 30 minutes. Our voice agent has placed more than 30,000 outbound calls since December 2025, and our proven deployment is outbound qualification and meeting setting in oil and gas. Other industries are a fit rather than a proof, and I will tell you on the call which one yours is.
The call
Bring three things: the process you would take off someone's desk first, the hours a week it takes, and the list of systems that are staying. We will walk the real steps, say what we would build against each one, and put a number on that scope before the call ends.
If that is the conversation you want, book a call and we will price the first version with you.