How much does a custom web app cost?

It's the first question everyone asks, and the honest answer is “it depends” — which is useless on its own. So here's what it depends on, how I price projects, and how to get a real number for your project instead of a guess.

Why there's no price list

A “custom web app” can be a two-screen internal tool that replaces a spreadsheet, or a multi-tenant product with billing, roles, and integrations that a whole company runs on. Those aren't the same product with different price tags — they're different amounts of design, engineering, and testing. Anyone who quotes a number before understanding your workflow is either guessing or planning to renegotiate later.

What actually drives the cost

• Number of user roles. An app where everyone sees the same thing is far simpler than one where customers, staff, and admins each need their own screens and permissions.
• Integrations. Every outside system — payments, a CRM, accounting software, email, SMS — is a boundary that has to be built, tested, and kept working when the other side changes.
• Data complexity. Importing existing records, syncing with another system of record, or reporting across a lot of data takes more care than a clean start.
• Design polish. An internal tool used by three people can be plain and fast. A customer-facing product needs to look and feel finished on every screen size.
• Mobile. Adding an iOS or Android app on top of the web app is a second front door to the same system — well under double the work when the backend is shared, but not free.
• Unknowns. If the workflow isn't settled yet, part of the budget goes to discovering it. That's fine — but it's real time.

How I price a project

Every project starts with discovery: a conversation (or a few) about your goals, your users, and what “done” looks like. From that I write a scope — the screens, the roles, the integrations, the launch plan — and price it as a fixed number. You know the cost before the build starts, and the scope is the agreement: if we both decide to add something, we price the addition instead of quietly inflating the bill.

Discovery itself is free. If we go through it and you decide not to build, you still walk away with a clear scope you can take anywhere.

About the budget ranges on my contact form

The contact form asks for a rough budget band, and people sometimes hesitate to pick one. Don't. It isn't a quote and it isn't a commitment — it's the single most useful piece of context you can give me, because it tells me which version of your idea to scope. Almost every project has a lean version and an ambitious version, and knowing your band means the first plan you see is one you can actually say yes to.

As a rough guide, the lower bands fit focused tools and marketing sites, and the upper bands fit customer-facing products with multiple roles, billing, and integrations. Where your project lands depends on the drivers above — which is exactly what discovery is for.

How to bring the cost down

• Launch the smallest version that changes how you work. Version one should replace the spreadsheet, not the whole company. Everything you learn from real use makes version two cheaper and better.
• Use proven building blocks. Stripe for billing, a hosted auth provider for login, managed Postgres for data. Custom code goes where your business is actually different.
• Decide before you build. A change made after a screen is built costs more than the same decision made in design. The clickable previews in my process exist to catch these early.
• Come with examples. Screenshots of tools you like, the spreadsheet you're replacing, the email that goes back and forth today. Concrete inputs shorten discovery.

What about ongoing costs?

For most small-business apps, hosting on modern infrastructure costs far less than people expect, and the accounts are in your name — no markup, no lock-in. Beyond that, most clients keep a light monthly retainer for improvements and support, and some hand the codebase to an internal team. Both work; the code is yours either way.

Get a real number

Tell me what you're building, who it's for, and roughly when you need it. I'll reply within a day or two with honest questions, and — after discovery — a fixed scope and price.