Disclaimer

This is a planning estimate, not a quote

Every figure here is produced by a model from the answers you gave it. It is a budgeting aid. It is not an offer, a proposal, a bid, or a commitment by anyone to build anything at any price. No vendor is bound by it, including us.

How accurate is it?

Each estimate carries a confidence band between ±15% and ±30%, depending on the team model you selected. That band assumes a reasonably well-defined scope. At the point most people use a calculator like this, requirements are still moving, and the real uncertainty is wider than any calculator can express.

The honest sequence is: use this to work out whether your idea is a $100,000 problem or a $600,000 one, then spend two to four weeks and a small amount of money on a technical specification, and get a real quote against that. A calculator cannot replace that step, and any site claiming otherwise is selling something.

Where the numbers come from

Hour figures are authored per platform, per industry, per app type, per feature and per architecture requirement, then calibrated against the effort published United States market ranges imply. The hours are therefore market-calibrated; the rate they are converted at is our own blended delivery rate for 2026, not a survey of what the market charges. Expect the totals to sit below the ranges you will find quoted elsewhere for the same scope, because that is the rate difference and not a different view of the work. Every estimate is itemised on the page that produces it — the hours by discipline, the cost drivers and the assumptions behind the figure are shown beside the number rather than summarised elsewhere. About sets out the approach.

These are not derived from a proprietary dataset of past projects, and we do not claim they are. This is a documented, internally consistent model calibrated against public market rates and constrained by an automated invariant suite. That is a different thing from statistical evidence, and you should weigh it accordingly.

What is excluded

The headline figure is one-off development cost only. It excludes cloud infrastructure, third-party vendor and API fees, annual maintenance, external audit fees, app store developer accounts, content production, marketing, hardware, legal and accounting costs, and your own team's time. The first four are calculated and shown separately; the rest are listed as exclusions on the method page.

Not professional advice

Nothing here is legal, financial, tax, accounting, regulatory or investment advice. In particular, the compliance options in the calculator — HIPAA, SOC 2, PCI, KYC/AML, FERPA, COPPA, FedRAMP, NERC CIP and the rest — exist to estimate engineering effort. They are not a determination of which obligations apply to your business. Whether a framework applies to you is a legal question; ask a qualified professional in the relevant jurisdiction.

Our conflict of interest

Taction Software Solutions builds software commercially. You should factor that in when reading our numbers.

For what it is worth, the model does not change based on anything you do, the full estimate is visible without giving us anything, and the calculator will happily tell you to reduce scope, drop a platform, defer AI features or run a pilot first — all of which reduce what anyone, including us, could charge you.

Use at your own risk

Business decisions you make in reliance on figures from this site are your own. See our terms of use for the full limitation of liability.