Application development cost
In 2026, developing a web application generally costs between 15,000 and 200,000 €. A simple, working first version sits between 5,000 and 30,000 €, a complete business application between 30,000 and 80,000 €, and a complex platform with high volumes, integrations, and multiple roles often tops 100,000 €. The gap is huge, and there's a reason for it. That's the whole point of this page.
The real information isn't the range. It's understanding why two quotes for the same application can run from one to five times each other, and where your money actually goes.
The price of an application doesn't depend on "size" the way you picture it. It depends on five concrete things.
The more screens and flows there are to build, the more the development time climbs.
Showing a list is trivial; syncing stock in real time with third-party software or handling payments is where the time goes.
Each external tool to connect adds work and error cases.
An application where everyone sees everything costs far less than one with differentiated permissions.
Payments, personal data, health: the higher the security stake, the more rigorous and therefore longer the development.
An idea often fits in one sentence. The price hides in the action behind the button, not in the button.
Because a quote bills more than code. On a typical agency quote, the share that actually funds development rarely tops a quarter of the total. The rest pays a middle project manager, a sales team, offices, a margin, and the months of back-and-forth on a spec document nobody will read in full. So two providers can offer the same application at 18,000 € and at 90,000 € without one scamming the other: they're not selling the same cost structure. To go deeper, read our guide on choosing an application development agency.
Most agencies bill by the day: a daily rate times the number of days. The problem is mechanical. The slower the provider, the more it earns. The faster and better it is, the less it bills. You pay for inefficiency, never for the result. With AI, this model becomes absurd. A senior developer who orchestrates AI well produces in two weeks what used to take two months. The fixed price fixes the problem: you pay for a bounded result, at a price known in advance, and the productivity gain goes back in your pocket.
Our answer to all of this is a fixed price: 5,000 € for a first working brick, delivered, live, with the source code that belongs to you. Two weeks of development. No endless quote, no hour counter. If your full application is bigger than what we can ship cleanly in one brick, we don't inflate the price: we cut it. You start with the brick that holds the most value, it runs in two weeks, and you decide what's next with a real tool in hand rather than a spec on paper. That's the foundation of the custom web application, and you can see a business application example.
| Application type | Traditional market price | Usual timeline | The 5000.dev approach |
|---|---|---|---|
| First working version | 5,000 – 30,000 € | 1 to 3 months | 5,000 € per brick, 2 weeks |
| Complete business application | 30,000 – 80,000 € | 3 to 9 months | Several bricks at 5,000 € |
| Complex platform | 80,000 – 200,000 €+ | 9 months and up | Cut into successive bricks |
The only way to know the price of your application is to describe what it must do, not to tick a range. Tell us the problem you want to solve, and we'll point out which brick to start with and what it costs.