How much does custom software cost in 2026?

There is no price list for custom software. At one end, an AI app builder costs tens of dollars a month. At the other, development firms quote six and seven figures. The numbers in between come from estimates published by companies that sell development, hosting or a builder, and they disagree because they price different things: who builds it, how complex it is, and what custom means.

Nova Solutions works in the third row. Where an off-the-shelf product or a builder does the job, it is the cheaper answer, and the next section gives the builders' own prices.

These are the subscriptions the builders publish on their own pricing pages, read on October 9, 2026. They are the only app-building prices in this post that anyone can check today. They are subscription prices: each plan caps how much you can build with credits or tokens, and none of them includes a person to review, host and maintain what you build.

What the table does not show is the cost of what you build. Credits and tokens run out, generated code still needs someone to read it, and an app that holds customer data needs hosting, backups, security updates and a person who owns it when something breaks.

Three guides that appeared on the first page of Bing results for these searches, read on October 9, 2026. Each is published by a company that sells development, hosting or an AI builder, and none publishes the projects or the survey behind its figures.

Read together they show the problem. A simple app is $40,000 to $120,000 at the development firm and free to $20,000 at the hosting company, because they describe different builds, by different builders, for different buyers. Neither is a quote, and neither tells you what your project costs.

• Scope. The riskiest assumption decides the first build. A build that tests one idea costs less than one that implements a feature list, and it tells you whether the rest is worth building.
• Integrations. Connecting to a CRM, an accounting package, a phone system or an older internal system usually adds more work than the screens a user sees.
• Compliance and data. Software that holds regulated or customer data needs security and review work that a prototype does not.
• Who builds it and where. Keyhole Software's 2026 table puts senior developers at $125 to $250 or more an hour in the US and Canada, $95 to $150 in Central and Northern Europe, $45 to $75 in Latin America and $30 to $50 in Asia. It is one firm's average, not a survey, and it notes that lower rates can come with more coordination overhead.
• Owning the result. Whether you get the code, the data and the roadmap, or rent them, changes what you carry in year two and after.
• What it costs after launch. Keyhole Software puts annual maintenance at 15 to 25% of the original build cost, with hosting, licences and security work on top.

This section is our view, not a published figure. If an off-the-shelf product covers the workflow, buy it: it is cheaper, someone else maintains it, and its price is on a page you can check. Custom software earns its cost in three situations: no product fits the process, the process is what sets the business apart, or the tools being stitched together cost more in time and fees than owning one system would. Even then the first build should be the smallest one that tests the riskiest assumption, not the full feature list.

Nova Solutions builds custom websites and web apps, web and mobile apps, and AI agents and automation. It does not publish a starting price, because the scope decides the number. Every build is scoped on a free call: send the idea and who it is for, and Nova sends back an MVP scope, a timeline and a modeled starting range within 48 hours. You own the code and the roadmap. The team is senior engineers in the US and Manila, working at Philippine engineering rates.

This post makes no result claims. Every figure above is someone else's published price or estimate, and Nova's own number comes from scoping your project. If you need a website for a home-service business rather than a custom build, How much does a contractor website cost lists fixed tiers. If you are weighing the Philippines for a build, Custom AI development cost in the Philippines and Filipino AI builder vs US agency cover that market with their own estimates. See also the full list of Nova's services.

• Builder pricing pages, each read on October 9, 2026: Lovable, Base44, Bolt, Replit and Bubble.
• Cost guides, each read on October 9, 2026: Keyhole Software, GoDaddy and Emergent.
• Plans and prices change, so check the builder's page before you buy. The guide figures are the publishers' estimates and are quoted as published.