Costs
How much does bespoke software, an app or an MVP cost to build in the UK?
In our experience of UK pricing, a small bespoke tool or MVP usually costs from about £4,500 to £15,000, a business application with several user types and integrations £15,000 to £50,000, and a customer-facing platform more than that. The driver is developer time: the UK median contract rate for a software developer was £525 a day in the six months to October 2026.
Our own bespoke builds start from £4,500, and connecting the software you already have, without building anything new, starts from £1,950.
What does the price of software actually pay for?
Days. Design, development, testing and project management are all time, and almost every quote is a number of days multiplied by a day rate. IT Jobs Watch put the UK median contract rate for a software developer at £525 a day in the six months to 7 October 2026, with the 10th percentile at £365 and the 90th at £610. The median permanent salary for the same role was £65,000.
That makes the arithmetic easy to check. Twenty days of one developer at the median rate is £10,500. Ten weeks is about £26,000. A quote that seems far below that either uses fewer days, a cheaper rate, or a shortcut such as an existing product configured rather than software written. None of those is wrong, but you should know which one you are buying.
What does each size of build cost?
These bands are our reading of UK pricing, not an official survey. They assume a competent UK team and include design and testing.
| What you are building | Typical UK cost | What it usually includes |
|---|---|---|
| Joining up software you already have | From about £1,950 | Data moving between two or three existing tools, no new screens |
| Small internal tool or MVP | £4,500 to £15,000 | One or two user types, a handful of screens, one integration, simple reporting |
| Business application | £15,000 to £50,000 | Several user types and permissions, its own data model, two or three integrations, dashboards |
| Customer-facing platform or SaaS | £50,000 and up | Accounts and billing, admin tools, security review, scale, ongoing development |
A bespoke CRM sits inside the same bands; our guide to what a bespoke CRM costs breaks that one down further.
What makes software cost more?
The number of different people who use it, and what each is allowed to see. A tool used by one team doing one job is cheap; the same tool with customers, staff, managers and suppliers, each with their own view and permissions, is several times the work. Integrations are the next biggest factor, because every system you connect has its own quirks, limits and failure modes.
Then come the expensive extras: taking payments, handling regulated or sensitive data, working offline on a phone, importing years of messy data from an old system, and reporting that has to reconcile to the penny. Each is reasonable. Each should be priced as its own line, so you can decide whether it belongs in the first version.
How much does an MVP cost?
Usually the lower band, because the point of a minimum viable product is to test an idea with real users before you spend properly. An MVP that tries to do everything is just a first version that took too long. The cheapest good MVPs pick one user, one journey and one outcome, and do the rest by hand behind the scenes until demand proves it is worth automating.
A useful test: if you could not explain what the MVP will prove in a sentence, it is not ready to be priced. "Will dental practices pay £40 a month to stop missed calls?" can be tested for a few thousand pounds. "A platform for the dental industry" cannot.
Should it be an app store app or a web app?
For most business software, a web app that works well on a phone is enough, and it is cheaper: one codebase, no app store review, updates the moment you release them. A native app makes sense when you need things the browser does badly, such as heavy offline use, background location or deep use of the camera.
Building separately for iPhone and Android can come close to doubling the front-end work, although cross-platform tools narrow the gap. Publishing has its own small fees: Apple's developer programme is 99 US dollars a year, and Google Play charges a one-off 25 dollar registration.
What does software cost to run after it is built?
Less than the build, but not nothing, and it is the part most quotes leave out. Hosting for a small business application is usually tens of pounds a month, more for heavy use. Any paid services it relies on, such as email sending, maps, text messages or AI models, bill by use. Then there is care: security updates, monitoring, fixing what breaks when a connected system changes, and small improvements.
Our care starts from £49 a month for monitoring and small changes, with no contract, and larger systems need more. Ask any supplier for the running cost in writing before you sign for the build.
When should you buy software instead of building it?
Whenever an off-the-shelf product does the job well enough. If a subscription at £40 a user a month covers what you need, somebody else has spent millions building it and a team keeps it working, and that is almost always the better deal. Our guide to choosing a CRM for a UK small business shows what that looks like for the most common case.
Building is right when your process is genuinely different and the difference is part of why customers choose you, when you are paying per seat for people who barely use the product, or when you are holding three tools together with spreadsheets and copy and paste. Often the honest answer is in between: keep the products and join them up, which is what our business systems work does.
How do you get an accurate quote?
Write down four things before you talk to anybody: who will use it, the jobs they need to do, the information it has to hold, and the systems it must talk to. A supplier who can quote from that will still have questions, and the questions tell you a lot about the supplier. Be wary of a firm price for a large build after one call; it is either padded or it will grow.
We start every build with a process audit, normally £495 and free for a limited time, which sets out what to build, what to buy and what to leave alone. Bespoke builds start from £4,500 on our bespoke software page, single automations from £650, and every price is on the price list. If the project is a website rather than an application, see what a website costs in the UK instead.
Questions about the cost of software
How much does it cost to build an app in the UK?
In our reading of UK pricing, a small app or MVP usually costs from about £4,500 to £15,000, a business application with several user types and integrations £15,000 to £50,000, and a customer-facing platform more. A web app that works well on phones is usually cheaper than separate iPhone and Android apps.
How much does an MVP cost in the UK?
Usually from about £4,500 to £15,000, because a good MVP tests one idea with one type of user before you spend properly. Cutting the first version to a single journey, and doing the rest by hand at first, is the most reliable way to keep the cost down.
What is the day rate for a software developer in the UK?
IT Jobs Watch put the UK median contract rate for a software developer at £525 a day in the six months to 7 October 2026, with the 10th percentile at £365 and the 90th at £610.
What are the ongoing costs of bespoke software?
Hosting, any paid services the software uses such as email, maps or AI models, and care: security updates, monitoring and fixes when connected systems change. Our care starts from £49 a month with no contract; larger systems need more.