Every agency pricing page either says "contact us" or quotes $10K to $10M — both useless. Here's what actual projects cost in 2026, based on what WebCentriq and comparable senior shops quote, across 400+ projects we've observed in the category this year.
The four project archetypes and what they cost
| Project type | Typical cost | Typical timeline | Team size |
|---|---|---|---|
| Business process automation | $15K–$40K | 4–8 weeks | 1 senior engineer |
| Custom web application | $35K–$120K | 8–16 weeks | 1 senior + 1 designer |
| Mobile app (iOS + Android) | $45K–$150K | 10–18 weeks | 1 senior + 1 designer |
| New product MVP | $25K–$75K | 6–12 weeks | 1 senior + 1 designer |
What drives cost up
These are the seven things that actually move the price, in order of impact:
- Integrations with legacy systems. Salesforce, SAP, old EHR systems, custom APIs built in 2012. Each one adds 1–3 weeks.
- Compliance requirements. HIPAA, SOC 2, PCI-DSS, GDPR. A healthcare project adds 10–20% to cost for formal review time.
- Multi-platform scope. Web + iOS + Android is roughly 2.2× the cost of web alone, not 3×.
- Real-time features. Live chat, real-time dashboards, WebSocket-heavy apps — add 15–25%.
- Payments and billing logic. Stripe integration is simple. Subscription + tax + coupons + trials + refunds is not.
- Role-based access control. Simple admin/user: free. 5+ roles with conditional permissions: add 10–15%.
- Offline mode. Mobile apps that work offline cost 20% more than online-only.
What "cheap" actually buys you
If someone quotes you $8K for a mobile app, you're getting one of four things. None of them are what you think you're getting.
- A template with your logo. No original engineering, no customization. Will look exactly like the last 50 projects the shop delivered.
- Offshore juniors with no senior oversight. Code gets written, and it runs, until the first production bug — at which point there's nobody to fix it.
- An "AI-generated" build with no human review. Ships with OWASP Top-10 vulnerabilities and logic bugs invisible until a user finds them.
- A deliberately under-scoped quote that will triple mid-project. You see $8K, sign, and get a $22K change order in week 3.
The floor for a real, human-reviewed, senior-led build in 2026 is roughly $15K for the simplest automation work. Anything much below that is one of the four above.
How pricing models compare
Three common models, three different risks:
Hourly billing ($100–$250/hour)
You pay for time, not outcomes. Works when scope is genuinely unknown (e.g., pure R&D). Breaks when the agency takes longer than expected — the incentive is to be slow. Weekly-billing shops like Thoughtbot use this model.
Fixed scope, fixed fee
Quoted in advance, written in plain English, unchanged for the duration of the build. Protects the buyer from scope creep, forces the agency to scope tightly. Our preferred model. The risk: if the scope isn't clear enough upfront, change orders follow.
Retainer / month-to-month
Typically $8K–$25K/month for an ongoing product team. Good for in-flight products that need continuous iteration. Bad for one-off builds — you end up paying for weeks when there's not much to do.
Cost ranges by business stage
Your stage should determine your budget ceiling, not your ambition:
- Pre-revenue founder with savings. Scope down to a $25K–$40K MVP. Anything more is burning runway.
- Bootstrapped SaaS, <$500K ARR. $35K–$75K for the first real product build.
- Seed-funded ($500K–$3M raised). $50K–$150K typical. 12-to-16-week timeline.
- Series A+. $150K+ is reasonable for major new surfaces. You can afford redundancy — two engineers, proper QA, design polish.
- Operator (existing business automating workflows). $15K–$40K for one process, $75K–$200K to transform multiple.
What's included vs what costs extra
Senior-led fixed-price quotes usually bundle: discovery + scope sign-off, design, core build, QA, launch, and 30 days of post-launch bug support. They usually don't include: ongoing feature development, marketing pages, content creation, extensive data migration, long-tail customer support.
Read the line-item list in any quote. If the quote is one number with no breakdown, it's hiding something.
Getting a real quote without calls
In 2026, you shouldn't have to do a 30-minute "discovery call" just to get a price. At WebCentriq we built an instant AI estimator — you describe the project in a paragraph, the AI returns a realistic timeline + fixed-price range in under a minute. A senior engineer reviews and refines before we send the final scoping document. No call until scope is priced.
See what your project would cost.
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