Ask ten Indian software firms "how much does custom software development cost in India?" and you can get ten answers, some of them five times apart. The gap is rarely about greed or bargain pricing. It comes from different assumptions about scope, team seniority, integrations and who carries the risk when requirements change.
Below are typical 2026 ranges by project type, the factors that move them, the costs quotes often leave out, and a sample budget. The ranges are indicative figures based on how projects are usually scoped in the Indian market, not survey data, and they exclude 18% GST. If you already have a project in mind, our custom software development services page explains how we scope and price work.
How much does custom software development cost in India by project type
Project type sets the number of screens, roles, business rules and integrations, so it is the biggest single factor. The cost drivers further down show where you sit within a range.
| Project type | Typical scope | Typical range (₹, excl. GST) | Typical timeline |
|---|---|---|---|
| Internal tool or workflow app | One department, 5–15 screens, 2–3 roles, basic reports, Excel import | 50,000 – 3,00,000 | 3–8 weeks |
| Customer, dealer or vendor portal | Logins for outside users, orders or requests, approvals, notifications, payment gateway | 2,00,000 – 10,00,000 | 2–4 months |
| Custom CRM | Leads, pipeline, quotations, follow-ups, WhatsApp and email, sales reports | 3,00,000 – 15,00,000 | 2–5 months |
| Custom ERP (3–6 modules) | Purchase, inventory, production or projects, sales, GST invoicing, accounting sync | 8,00,000 – 40,00,000+ | 4–12 months, phased |
| SaaS MVP | Multi-tenant sign-up, subscriptions, one core workflow done well, admin panel | 3,00,000 – 12,00,000 | 8–16 weeks |
| Mobile app with backend | Android and iOS from one cross-platform codebase, API, admin panel, push notifications | 2,50,000 – 12,00,000 | 2–5 months |
For reference, EthicsComputer's starting price for custom software, an MVP or a production web app is ₹45,000 + GST, and the final quote always depends on scope. That entry point covers a tightly defined first release, not a full ERP.
Internal tools
These replace a spreadsheet or a WhatsApp group that has become the system of record: job cards, service tickets, site inspections, purchase requests. They are the cheapest category because the users are your own staff, you control the devices, and the design can stay plain. Costs climb when the tool needs offline use in the field, long approval chains, or a detailed audit trail.
Portals and business web apps
Once outside users log in, everything gets more expensive: onboarding, password resets, permission rules, a cleaner interface, support load and security testing. A dealer ordering portal or a vendor onboarding portal is a typical example. Our web application development page covers the architecture these projects usually need.
ERP and CRM
Here the cost depends less on screens and more on business rules: pricing schemes, batch and expiry tracking, multi-location stock, approval limits, and GST treatment for different kinds of supply. A CRM for a ten-person sales team is a modest project. An ERP that runs purchase, production, stores and dispatch for a manufacturer is a programme of work, and should be bought in phases.
SaaS products and MVPs
A SaaS product adds multi-tenancy, subscription billing, usage limits and a self-serve onboarding flow that has to work without your team on a call. An MVP should prove one workflow end to end with paying users, not copy a competitor's full feature list. Our MVP development process is built around that constraint.
Mobile apps
A mobile app also needs an API, an admin panel and store publishing. A cross-platform framework such as Flutter or React Native usually costs less than two native apps, and a responsive web app or PWA costs less again if users do not need offline access or device features.
What drives the cost up or down
Every estimate is effort multiplied by a rate. Effort comes from scope and complexity. The rate comes from who does the work.
The team and its rates
A typical small project team in India has a part-time project manager or business analyst, one or two developers, a part-time UI/UX designer and a QA engineer. Market rates vary widely:
- Freelancers: often ₹500 to ₹1,500 per hour. Cheapest, but you take on project management, testing and continuity risk yourself.
- Small and mid-sized Indian firms: often ₹1,000 to ₹3,000 per hour on a blended basis, including management and QA.
Seniority matters more than the headline rate. A senior developer who has built GST invoicing before may finish in two weeks what a junior developer takes six weeks to get almost right.
Integrations
Integrations are where projects most often overrun, because each has its own documentation, sandbox quirks and failure cases:
- Tally: pushing sales invoices, receipts and stock movements into TallyPrime, usually through its XML interface or a small connector on the machine where Tally runs. A one-way voucher sync is quick. Two-way sync of masters and stock is not.
- GST e-invoicing: businesses with aggregate turnover above ₹5 crore must get an IRN for B2B invoices from the Invoice Registration Portal, either directly through the API or via a GST Suvidha Provider. Budget for cancellations, credit notes and error handling, not just the happy path.
- Payment gateways: Razorpay, Cashfree, PayU and similar. The checkout is easy. Webhooks, refunds, reconciliation and failed payments are the real work.
- WhatsApp Business Platform: order updates, reminders and OTPs through the official API. Template approval and opt-in rules add some setup time.
- Everything else: SMS gateways, courier APIs such as Shiprocket, biometric attendance devices, weighbridges and barcode printers.
As a planning rule, treat each serious integration as a small project of its own, typically one to three weeks of effort.
Compliance and security
Software that stores customers' personal data now carries obligations under the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023: consent records, access controls, breach handling and deletion on request. Finance, healthcare and lending carry sector rules on top. Expect a serious vendor to include security testing in the quote; we run in-house VAPT before every go-live.
Data migration
Moving customer masters, item masters, opening stock and outstanding balances out of Excel, Tally or an old system is routinely underestimated. The coding is rarely the hard part. Cleaning duplicates, fixing inconsistent units and reconciling balances takes time from your team as well as the vendor's.
Roles, platforms and reports
Every extra user role and every extra platform (web, Android, iOS) adds effort. Reports are a quiet budget leak: ten "simple" reports with filters, exports and drill-downs can cost as much as a core module.
Pricing models: fixed scope, dedicated team or time and material
| Model | How you pay | Works best when | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fixed scope | Agreed price for a defined scope, paid by milestones | Requirements are clear and stable, such as a first release after a discovery workshop | Vendors add a risk buffer, and every change becomes a change request |
| Dedicated team | Monthly fee per team member | Long-running products, SaaS, or an ERP rolled out over many phases | You must prioritise the backlog actively, or you pay for drift |
| Time and material | Hours actually worked, at agreed rates | Small enhancements, research tasks, unclear scope | Needs tight tracking and a monthly cap |
A practical pattern is to fix the scope and price of the first release after a short discovery workshop, then switch to a dedicated team or time and material for later phases. This is how we work at EthicsComputer: discovery first, then a fixed-scope proposal or a dedicated team, delivered in two-week sprints so you see working software every fortnight.
Hidden costs most quotes leave out
The build price is only part of the total cost of ownership. Ask every vendor to state these separately:
- Hosting and infrastructure: cloud servers, a managed database, backups, monitoring and a staging server. Small business apps often run on a few thousand rupees a month. Busy SaaS products need far more.
- Maintenance and support: typically 15–20% of the build cost every year, covering bug fixes, security patches, framework and server updates, and small changes.
- Third-party usage fees and licences: WhatsApp and SMS charges, email delivery, maps APIs, GSP fees for e-invoicing, paid libraries, and app store accounts (Apple charges an annual developer fee; Google Play charges a one-time registration fee).
- Payment gateway charges: a percentage per transaction that varies by payment method and plan.
- Change requests: scope added after sign-off. Ask for the hourly rate up front.
- Your own team's time: requirement sessions, data cleaning, user acceptance testing and training.
Sample budget: a dealer ordering portal
Here is an illustrative budget for a common mid-sized project: a distributor wants its 150 dealers to place orders online, see their own price lists and outstanding balances, and pay through UPI, with invoices flowing into Tally. The figures are planning ranges, not a quote.
| Line item | Effort | Indicative cost (₹, excl. GST) |
|---|---|---|
| Discovery workshop, process mapping, clickable wireframes | 1–2 weeks | 40,000 – 70,000 |
| Core build: dealer login, catalogue, price lists, orders, approvals, admin panel | 6–8 weeks | 2,50,000 – 4,00,000 |
| Integrations: Tally sync, payment gateway with UPI, WhatsApp order updates | 2–3 weeks | 80,000 – 1,50,000 |
| Data migration: dealer master, item master, opening balances | 1 week | 25,000 – 50,000 |
| QA, VAPT and user acceptance support | 1–2 weeks | 50,000 – 90,000 |
| Deployment, training, first month of hypercare | 1 week | 20,000 – 40,000 |
| Total build | About 10–14 weeks on the calendar | 4,65,000 – 8,00,000 |
Some work runs in parallel, so calendar time is shorter than total effort. Year-one running costs come on top: hosting, WhatsApp and gateway usage, and maintenance at 15–20% of the build, which here works out to roughly ₹70,000 to ₹1,60,000 a year.
How to reduce the cost without cutting corners
- Phase it. Launch the smallest version that removes your biggest bottleneck, then fund phase two from what you learn. A phased MVP usually costs less overall than a big-bang build, because you stop paying for features nobody uses.
- Keep commodity functions in off-the-shelf tools. Accounting can stay in Tally and email in your existing suite. Build only what is specific to how you work, and integrate the rest.
- Choose web before native. Start with a responsive web app or PWA unless you truly need device features.
- Clean your data early. Assign someone on your side to fix masters while development is underway.
- Name one decision-maker. Committees create rework, and rework is the most expensive line in any project.
- Pay for discovery. One or two weeks of paid discovery produce a scope a vendor can price tightly, which removes much of the risk buffer from a fixed quote.
How to compare quotes
When quotes differ widely, check whether each includes the same things: discovery, UI design, testing, security testing, deployment, documentation, training, a warranty period and source code handover. Some vendors license the software to you rather than hand over the code, which lowers the price but ties you to them. At EthicsComputer the client receives 100% of the source code and IP.
Once the line items match, the answer to how much does custom software development cost in India for your project becomes a fair comparison rather than a guess. Our starting prices are listed on the pricing page.
FAQs
What is the minimum budget for custom software in India?
Typical market pricing for a small internal tool with a few screens and user roles starts around ₹50,000, and EthicsComputer's starting price for custom software or an MVP is ₹45,000 + 18% GST. Anything with outside users, payments or several integrations will cost more. The final figure depends on scope, which is why a short discovery session comes before a firm quote.
How much does custom software maintenance cost per year?
Plan for roughly 15 to 20% of the original build cost each year. That covers bug fixes, security patches, framework and server updates, and small changes. Hosting and third-party usage fees such as WhatsApp or SMS charges are separate. EthicsComputer's maintenance retainer starts at ₹4,500 per month + GST, depending on the application.
Is a fixed-price or a dedicated-team model cheaper?
Fixed price is cheaper and safer when the scope is clear and stable, such as a first release after a discovery workshop. A dedicated team is usually better value for products that keep evolving, like a SaaS product or a phased ERP, because you avoid repeated change-request negotiations. Many businesses use fixed price for phase one and a dedicated team after that.
Do I own the source code after the project?
Only if the contract says so. Ask for a clause that assigns the source code and intellectual property to you on payment, and for access to the code repository during the project. EthicsComputer hands over 100% of the source code and IP to its clients.
Get a scoped estimate
If you want a number for your own project, share your current workflow and we will turn it into a scoped estimate with phases and options. Start with our custom software development services, or contact our team to book a discovery call.
