Software Development Cost Calculator
Estimate what your software project really costs across in-house hiring, freelancers, an agency, and a fixed monthly subscription — free and transparent.
Working out what it costs to build software is harder than it should be. Quotes vary by 10x, agencies hide overhead inside day rates, and the true cost of an in-house hire — recruiting fees, employer taxes, equipment, management time — never shows up in the salary number.
This calculator gives you an honest, side-by-side estimate across the four ways founders actually get software built: hiring in-house, using freelancers, engaging an agency, or subscribing to a fixed-price development service like AsyncForge. Change any input and every number updates instantly.
Your project
Adjust the inputs — every number updates live.
Calendar months of active development.
Sets local salary and rate assumptions.
48-hour turnaround
Advanced hiring assumptions
Taxes, benefits, equipment, software.
One-time, of first-year salary.
Your time, per person, per month.
Months before a new hire is productive.
Estimated total to build this with AsyncForge
€16,000
€4,000/mo · 4 months · 4 person-months of work
≈ €35,200 less than the cheapest alternative below.
In-house hire
Recruit & employ
€57,033
- Monthly
- €10,008
- One-time
- €17,000
- Time to ship
- 6 months
Fully loaded: salary + employer on-costs + recruiting + management time.
Freelancers
Hourly contractors
€51,200
- Monthly
- €12,800
- Time to ship
- 4.5 months
Pay-as-you-go, but rates run high and you carry the management load.
Dev agency
Project-based
€99,750
- Monthly
- €24,938
- Time to ship
- 5 months
Includes project-management and discovery overhead in every invoice.
AsyncForge
Fixed monthly subscription
€16,000
- Monthly
- €4,000
- Time to ship
- 4 months
Standard plan, 48-hour turnaround. Starts within days — no hiring, no overhead.
Estimated savings vs each path
€41,033
vs in-house
€35,200
vs freelancers
€83,750
vs agency
What you avoid with AsyncForge
- Months of recruiting and a 1–2 month onboarding ramp before anyone ships
- Recruiter placement fees (often 15–25% of first-year salary)
- Employer taxes, benefits, pension, equipment and software licences
- Management overhead — standups, 1:1s, performance reviews
- Long-term employment contracts and severance risk
- Paying full salary during quiet weeks with no backlog
How this estimate is calculated
In-house hire
Fully loaded: gross salary plus employer on-costs (taxes, benefits, equipment, software), a one-time recruiting fee, and your own management time per person. Hiring and onboarding also push out the start date, so the timeline includes a ramp before any code ships.
Freelancers
Billed at typical senior hourly rates over roughly 150 productive hours a month. There is no employer overhead, but rates run higher than salaries and you carry the coordination load — chasing availability, reviewing work, and filling the gaps between contracts.
Development agency
Based on a blended day rate with a markup for discovery, project management, and change requests — the overhead that lives inside every agency invoice. Agencies solve availability but are the most expensive path per unit of work.
AsyncForge subscription
A fixed monthly fee for a senior development stream, priced in euros regardless of region. One subscription delivers one stream of work at a time, so for large parallel scopes the calendar timeline is sequential — you trade some speed for far lower cost and zero hiring, management or overhead.
Frequently Asked Questions
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AsyncForge Pricing
Light, Standard, and Pro plans from €2,000/month.
Subscription vs Agency
How a fixed monthly model compares to an agency.
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