How much does a custom business application cost?

What the brigdev starting prices cover

These amounts describe the brigdev offer as of 13 September 2026 and are quoted in Polish zloty, excluding VAT. Planning and building are separate decisions with separately agreed prices and deliverables.

Solution planning starts at €850. It addresses one area of work: the current situation, alternative approaches, sketches of the main screens, first-version scope, acceptance checks and a build estimate. You can commission only the plan. Its price is not automatically deducted from later development.

The first build starts at €4,300. The indicative range for a first version in this offer is €4,300–8,300, following an agreed plan. The actual proposal depends on the work required. More integrations, substantial data migration or a wider operating scope can require a different budget or several stages.

Buying a plan does not guarantee that the complete idea can be built for the advertised minimum. Before each paid stage, you should know the result you are buying, its exclusions and the applicable price.

Why counting screens is not enough

“A job list and a form” can describe very different projects. In one, a user manually enters several fields. In another, information arrives from two systems, attachments have a revision history and permissions depend on a person’s role and branch.

The visible screen might look similar. The second project still requires more rules, connections and failure cases to be designed and checked. A useful quote therefore needs a description of the work and requirements, alongside any proposed screen designs.

Scroll the table sideways to read the questions for each cost area.

An example of a useful first scope

Consider a hypothetical project where office staff and the people carrying out jobs need current documents and a clear view of missing information. A first version could include a job register, attachments, a responsible person, a few agreed states and an export of the list.

Automated capacity planning, warehouse accounting and full finance synchronisation are separate topics. They can remain in current tools while the first application handles document completeness. This illustrates how to draw a boundary; it does not assign a price to that example.

If a connection to an existing system is essential to the selected task, removing it from the quote solely to reach a budget limit will undermine the project. Reconsider the boundary or compare off-the-shelf software and configuring current tools. A smaller version still needs to support a complete piece of work.

Include launch and ongoing work in the budget

Build the budget in two parts. One-off costs include planning, development, cleaning and transferring information, training and launch work. If an item is already included in the development quote, do not add it a second time.

Recurring costs may include hosting, licences, external services, agreed support and maintaining connections to other products. Record limits and how charges are calculated. A statement such as “hosting included” needs a duration and a description of what it covers.

Also record your staff’s time for explaining rules, checking data and accepting the application. Their involvement is necessary even when it is absent from the developer’s invoice. Future features need a separate allowance or decision; maintenance should not silently stand for unlimited development.

You can use 24 months as a common period for comparing proposals. Add one-off costs, recurring charges over that same period and planned changes. Label items as quoted, estimated or unresolved. An unknown amount is not a zero cost, and a comparison period is not a payback forecast.

How to compare supplier quotes

Give the suppliers the same task description and sample materials. If prices differ, check five points before judging which proposal offers better value:

1. Do both include the same roles, exceptions and connections?
2. Who cleans and moves the data, and how much history is included?
3. What testing, launch work and user training are covered?
4. What documentation, data, code and account access are handed over under the agreement?
5. What happens after launch, and which activities need a further budget?

Separate correcting a defect against agreed behaviour from adding a new capability. Ask how a scope change is priced and when its effect on the schedule will be explained. An hourly rate alone does not establish the total work or the responsibilities left with your team.

What to do when the required scope exceeds the budget

First check whether the problem can be addressed by configuring current software, adopting an existing product or connecting two otherwise useful tools. Then look for one task with a useful, independently testable result. Complete job information could be such a task if missing details regularly interrupt the work.

Do not assume a return simply because an application will remove some manual steps. Measure how often the problem occurs and which time can realistically be recovered. Include the ongoing work the new approach introduces. The Excel replacement guide includes an example of making that distinction.

A short description, a representative sample and an available budget are enough to start a conversation about scope. The next useful result is an informed choice about the work to improve and the way to address it.