Pricing
What does bespoke software actually cost?
Most agencies hide pricing behind a sales call. We don't. The ranges below are how every engagement we've actually delivered has priced, from £500 one-day jobs up to £150,000+ public sector platforms. Read these, decide whether we're in the right ballpark for your project, and only then book the call.
Why we publish this
Pricing belongs on the website, not behind a sales call
Almost every UK agency hides prices because vagueness lets them quote whatever the room can bear. We publish them because the opposite produces better conversations.
Procurement teams can rule us in or out
If a council has £40,000 for a digital care records pilot, they know straight away we can deliver at that price. If their budget is £4,000, they know we can't. Either answer is better than a 45-minute call that ends the same way.
Small businesses can plan
An SME owner deciding whether to commission custom software shouldn't have to be a procurement specialist to find out what it costs. Publishing prices lets them benchmark, plan a budget, and have a useful conversation with their accountant before reaching out.
Large projects see we can take them on
Saying our top tier is £150,000+ signals that we're operating at the scale of the work, not pretending to fit our standard process into something we've never delivered.
No one wastes their time
Yours, ours, or your stakeholders'. If pricing is the dealbreaker, you find out now. If it isn't, the call gets to the interesting questions sooner.
Engagement bands
Eight shapes of engagement, with indicative pricing for each
Bands overlap deliberately. Your project might sit at the bottom of one and the top of the next; we'll be honest about which one fits best on the first call. All prices are quoted ex VAT, billed in pounds sterling.
Smallest engagement
Ad-hoc one-day work
From £500
1 day
Best for: A scoped one-day job: a simple API integration, a small Power Automate or Azure Function, a one-off data clean-up script, a focused bug fix, or a quick UI tweak on a system we built or someone else did.
What's included
- 15-minute scoping call so we both agree the day's deliverable
- Fixed price, no formal proposal, no minimum commitment
- Same-week start where possible, often same-day for existing clients
- Written summary of what was done and any follow-up recommendations
- Roll into a support retainer afterwards if it makes sense
Best for: A single landing page, micro-site, or 5–10 page marketing site for a small UK business.
What's included
- Hand-built (not a Wix template) and properly responsive
- Set up for Google Search Console + Google Analytics 4
- Hosted on UK infrastructure with HTTPS, CDN, automatic backups
- Editable content via lightweight markdown if you want
- Handover: you own the domain, the hosting, the code
Most common starting point
Bespoke website or content platform
£3,000 – £12,000
3–8 weeks
See the Website development serviceBest for: A content-driven marketing site, custom design, blog or insights section, structured for SEO and conversion.
What's included
- Custom design tailored to your brand (not a template)
- Structured data, sitemap, OG images, RSS feed if useful
- Multi-author CMS or markdown editorial workflow
- Cookie consent, accessibility (WCAG 2.2 AA), legal pages
- Performance budget with Core Web Vitals as a launch criterion
Validate fast
Focused MVP or internal tool
From £8,000
6–12 weeks
See the Bespoke software development serviceBest for: Replacing a spreadsheet, automating an internal workflow, validating a product idea with real users, or building a single-purpose application.
What's included
- Discovery and architecture (1–2 weeks) before any code
- 2-week build sprints with Friday demos and weekly status
- Staged hosting from day one so you can click around any time
- .NET, React, Azure UK South, with proper observability
- Source code, schemas, documentation, you own everything
Production-grade product
Multi-tenant SaaS or substantial platform
£30,000 – £80,000
3–6 months
See the Bespoke software development serviceBest for: A customer-facing product, a multi-customer system, or a substantial internal platform that several teams will rely on.
What's included
- Multi-tenant architecture, role-based access, audit logging
- Stripe or equivalent billing if customer-facing
- AI features where they earn their keep (generative or agentic)
- Monitoring, alerting, automated backups, disaster recovery plan
- Load testing and security review before go-live
- Ongoing support handover or retained engagement
Procurement-ready
Public sector or enterprise platform
£80,000 – £150,000+
6–12 months
See the Public sector development serviceBest for: Local authority, NHS supply chain, regulated industry, or an enterprise system bid through a formal procurement process.
What's included
- Procurement Act 2023 documentation, capability statement, references
- WCAG 2.2 AA accessibility audit by an external assessor
- Cyber Essentials, ICO registered, UK data residency by default
- Formal acceptance criteria per milestone, KPI reporting
- Sector-specific compliance (GDPR DPA, NHS DSPT, ISO alignment)
- Transition-in and transition-out plans for exit clauses
Advisory, no build
Technical consultancy
£500 – £800 per day
Ongoing or fixed scope
See the Technical consultancy serviceBest for: Architecture reviews, agile coaching, embedded senior engineering support, technical due diligence, or a fresh pair of eyes on an existing supplier relationship.
What's included
- Discovery scaled to the question being asked
- Written deliverable (review, recommendation, decision record)
- Option to run as a sprint retainer for ongoing work
- Can be billed against a framework agreement
- Half-day rates available for smaller engagements
Post-launch
Support and maintenance
From £400 per month
Rolling, cancel any time
Best for: Bug fixes, small enhancements, monitoring, security patches, and a guaranteed response window for software we have or have not built originally.
What's included
- Pre-allocated hours per month, rolled over for one month if unused
- Defined SLA on response and resolution
- Quarterly health-check report
- Pay-as-you-go option if a monthly retainer doesn't fit
- Available for software we did not originally build (with handover scoping)
What moves the number
The six variables that decide where in a band you sit
Two projects in the same band can still differ by a factor of two based on these. The first call is mostly about understanding which apply to your situation.
Number of user types and roles
A single-user tool is cheaper than a five-role multi-tenant platform with admin, customer, support, finance, and superadmin permission layers. Each role adds UI, tests, and access-control code.
Third-party integrations
Stripe, HMRC, Companies House, Microsoft Graph, sector-specific APIs. Each integration is its own discovery, error handling, retry logic, and webhook plumbing. Two integrations is typical, ten is a different conversation.
Compliance scope
GDPR baseline is included on every project. Specific scopes (WCAG 2.2 AA audit, NHS DSPT, ISO 27001 alignment, sector-specific regulators) add time for documentation, third-party audit, and process work that isn't visible in the UI.
Real-time and event-driven complexity
A request/response CRUD app is cheaper than a system pushing live updates over WebSockets, processing event streams, or coordinating long-running workflows across multiple services.
Data scale and retention
A hundred records is different from a hundred million. Retention requirements (5 years, 7 years, indefinite) change the storage tier, the indexing strategy, and the back-up cost.
Onsite delivery needs
Remote-first delivery is included. Regular onsite days (workshops, weekly steerings, in-person sprint demos) are billed separately for clients outside the Northwest. Inside the Northwest, in-person discovery is part of the engagement.
Included in every band
Things we don't bill as extras
Other agencies sometimes line-item these. We don't. If you're comparing proposals, check whether the cheaper-looking bid is excluding any of the below.
- Source code with a permissive licence, in your own repository
- Architecture decision records for every significant choice
- Sprint demos and weekly written status updates
- Database schemas, API documentation, and runbooks
- Handover of hosting, domains, and any third-party accounts
- Initial onboarding session for your team
Pricing FAQ
The questions we hear about pricing
If yours isn't here, ask on the first call. We're happy to talk specifics.
Why do you publish prices when most agencies don't?
Two reasons. First, procurement teams and SME owners both want to know whether we're in the right ballpark before scheduling a call. Hiding pricing wastes their time and ours. Second, it filters mismatches early. If your project genuinely needs to cost £500 and our smallest engagement is £8,000, we'd rather you know that before the conversation than after. We talk through specifics on the first call, but the ranges above are how every engagement we've ever delivered has actually priced.
Can you do projects under £500?
Rarely as a structured engagement. £500 covers either a scoped one-day ad-hoc job (a simple API integration, a small automation, a focused fix) or a single-page brochure site. Below that, the overhead of scoping, billing, and handover eats most of the value. For tiny tweaks on a system we already maintain, pay-as-you-go support at around £100 per hour usually fits better.
Do you offer charity or non-profit pricing?
Yes, where we can. We genuinely enjoy working for charities, community groups, and non-profits, and we'll reduce day rates or scope creatively to fit the budget where the cause and the timeline let us. The simplest way is to tell us upfront on the first call so we can think about the engagement in that frame from the start, rather than discount a quote that was scoped against a commercial rate.
Do you offer fixed-price quotes?
Yes, per milestone. Once we've done discovery (1–2 weeks, paid) we agree a fixed scope and price per milestone, with written acceptance criteria. Time-and-materials is available too if the scope is genuinely open-ended (typical for consultancy and modernisation work), and we'll be honest about which model fits.
What's the cheapest way to validate a product idea?
A focused MVP starting from £8,000 over 6–8 weeks. We compress discovery, scope ruthlessly to one user journey, and ship something real with measurable hypotheses. Cheaper than building wrong, ten times cheaper than running for a year on a half-validated assumption.
What's the payment schedule?
Usually 25% on project start (covers discovery and planning), then milestone-based payments at agreed delivery points. We invoice monthly for time-and-materials and consultancy work. Payment terms are 14 days. No upfront payment for the first scoping call, which is always free.
What if the scope changes mid-project?
Scope changes are normal. We handle them through a written change request that re-baselines the affected milestone, with a clear cost impact. Small changes that don't move the milestone scope are usually absorbed. We'll never silently expand work or send a surprise invoice.
What happens if we want to walk away?
You own everything from day one: code, schemas, infrastructure, third-party accounts. There's no lock-in, no proprietary platform, no exit fee. If you decide we're not the right fit (or you want to take the work in-house), we hand it over cleanly and bill only for work completed.
Do you take equity instead of fees?
Rarely, and only for companies we'd actively choose to back. We've done it before (REBLL Tickets is an example) but the bar is high. Equity-for-build is usually a worse deal for both sides than a properly scoped paid engagement.
Do hosting and infrastructure costs come out of these prices?
No, those are separate operational costs. Most clients run on Azure UK South. A typical SME workload is £50–£400 per month in Azure cost. We project the ongoing infrastructure cost as part of the planning phase so there are no surprises after go-live.
Are you happy to bid against other suppliers?
Yes, particularly for public sector tenders where competitive bidding is the norm. We can also act as a technical advisor reviewing other suppliers' bids if you'd find that useful (paid consultancy, not a free service).
See a band that fits?
The first call is always free and no-obligation. We'll talk through your specific scope and where in the band you genuinely sit, with no vague proposals and no surprise invoices later.
Ready to Build Something?
Whether you're planning a new application, need technical consultancy, or preparing a tender response, let's talk.