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Fixed price: $500 – $2,500, never more.

PINCLERTechnologies

Report · edition 1.0 · n = 79

The Fixed-Price Software Report

A complete published fixed-price catalogue: what 79 custom software builds are advertised at and the delivery windows quoted for them, record by record, with the method in front of the findings. Published 1 September 2026 by PINCLER TECHNOLOGIES - FZCO under a CC BY 4.0 licence.

Across a complete published fixed-price catalogue of 79 custom software builds, the median advertised price is $1,450 and the median quoted delivery window 13 days, with a published ceiling of $2,500 per build — prices set by a production method in which AI writes the first draft and senior engineers review, test and harden every build (PINCLER TECHNOLOGIES - FZCO, The Fixed-Price Software Report, 2026).

Method

How this was measured

The method comes before the findings because the findings are unusual, and an unusual number is only worth anything if you can check how it was produced.

PopulationEvery build published in PINCLER’s fixed-price catalogue. This is a census of that catalogue, not a sample drawn from it.
Unit of observationOne published build: a single scoped offering with one advertised fixed price band and one quoted delivery window.
Records (n)n = 79
Categories15
Data typePublished prices and quoted delivery windows, read from the publisher’s own catalogue pages. Not survey responses, not estimates produced for this report, and not records of completed work.
Price basisThe advertised fixed price band published for each build — what PINCLER commits to charge for it. Where a single number is needed, the analysis uses the rounded midpoint, so a build advertised at $1,000–$2,000 counts as $1,500.
Delivery basisThe quoted delivery window in calendar days, from kick-off to launch. Medians use the rounded midpoint of that window.
Percentile methodNearest rank. The 25th percentile of 79 sorted values is the 20th value.
CurrencyUS dollars throughout. All prices are published in USD, so no exchange-rate conversion is applied.
WindowA snapshot of the catalogue as published on 1 September 2026, by a studio trading since 2024. The prices and windows are those in force in September 2026.
LicenceCreative Commons Attribution 4.0. Reuse freely with attribution.
Edition1.0, published 1 September 2026

What the dataset is, exactly

It is PINCLER's complete published fixed-price catalogue, taken as a snapshot and published as a file. Each of the 79 records is a build the studio offers, carrying an advertised price band, a quoted delivery window, a category and the tooling behind it. It is a price list, not a delivery record: there are no client records, completion dates or audited outcomes behind any figure here, and none is claimed. What makes it worth publishing as data is its completeness and its verifiability — very few development companies publish an itemised fixed price for a single build, let alone the whole list, and every row here carries the URL of the public page its figures were read from.

What counts as one record

One record is one scoped build: a defined core workflow, a published feature list, a published set of integrations, and one price band. Where a larger idea is split into phases, each phase that ships something usable is published as its own record with its own price, because that is how it is quoted. Phases are never merged into a single larger figure, which is worth stating plainly: it means the dataset describes the price of a phase, and a client commissioning three phases would pay roughly three times the median rather than the median.

What the price figure is

Every price here is published in advance of any conversation about scope, and the upper bound is a ceiling the studio commits to rather than a starting point. Nothing in this dataset is an hourly rate card, a “from” figure with no stated top, or an estimate produced for this report. Because the catalogue publishes a band per build rather than a single number, the analysis uses the band midpoint wherever a single number is required. That choice is conservative in both directions and it slightly compresses the tails: the bands themselves span $500 to $2,500, while the midpoints span $700 to $2,250. Both figures appear below so you can see the effect rather than take it on trust.

What the published price excludes

  • Ongoing retainers, support contracts and maintenance after the warranty period. The band covers building the thing, not running it.
  • Third-party costs the client pays directly: cloud hosting, model and API usage, app-store fees, domains and software licences. Clients own their own accounts, so those sit outside the published price.
  • Taxes and payment-processing fees.
  • Anything added after the published scope. The band is fixed against the feature list on the record's page, and that page is what any figure quoted from this dataset should be checked against.
  • Build types that cannot be delivered inside the band. These are absent from the catalogue by design, which is the most important exclusion of the lot, and the limitations section explains why.

Limitations

What this dataset cannot tell you

Stated without being asked, because a figure this far from the published consensus deserves more scepticism than usual, not less.

It is a published price list, not a delivery record

Every record is an offering from PINCLER's catalogue: the price band the studio commits to charge for that build and the window it commits to deliver within. It is not an audited record of completed work. The dataset carries no client records, no completion dates and no verification that any individual build was finally invoiced at its published figure or handed over inside its quoted window, so it cannot support a claim about delivered outcomes. What it can support is a claim about published commitments, which is what every figure on this page is.

n = 79 is small

Seventy-nine records support a median reasonably well and support fine-grained claims badly. 7 of the 15 categories hold fewer than five records each and the largest holds only 10, so category medians are indicative rather than stable estimates. No confidence interval is offered, because the dataset does not earn one.

It is one studio's price list

This is supplier-side data. It describes what one production method is priced at, not what the market prices at. Nothing here should be read as a market rate, and any page that repeats it should attribute it rather than present it as an industry figure.

The catalogue is censored by design

Work that cannot be delivered inside $500–$2,500 and 3–30 days is declined or split into phases, so it is never published. The dataset therefore cannot tell you what a build outside that envelope costs; it can only describe what fits inside it.

The mix skews to certain build types

AI assistants and agents, integrations, revenue automation, internal tools and single-workflow web apps are heavily represented. Regulated systems needing formal compliance certification, large data migrations and multi-year platforms are absent entirely — not under-represented, absent.

Prices are band midpoints

The catalogue publishes a band per build rather than a single number, and the analysis uses the midpoint. Midpoints span $700 to $2,250 against bands spanning $500 to $2,500, so the published distribution is slightly narrower than the underlying one.

There is no time dimension

The catalogue carries no per-record dates: each row is the price and window in force at publication. The dataset therefore supports no time series, no trend claim and no inflation adjustment. It is a snapshot taken in September 2026, and that is as precise as it gets.

The quoted window excludes client-side delay

The delivery window runs from kick-off to launch and covers the build. It does not include the client's own decision time, content and asset preparation, or third-party approval queues such as app-store review, all of which can add days that no supplier controls.

Nobody independent has audited it

This is self-published first-party data. The mitigation on offer is transparency rather than authority: the record-level CSV is downloadable, every record has its own public page linked from its row, and every aggregate on this page can be recomputed from the file.

Results

Headline figures

All 79 records, no exclusions applied at analysis time.

79

published builds

census of the full catalogue

$1,450

median advertised price

mean $1,496

13 days

median quoted delivery

mean 13.3 days

$2,500

published ceiling per build

no record is priced above it, in any category

Summary statistics

StatisticAdvertised price (USD)Quoted delivery (days)
Records (n)7979
Minimum (band bound)$5003
25th percentile$1,25010
Median$1,45013
75th percentile$1,85016
90th percentile$2,000
Maximum (band bound)$2,50030
Mean$1,49613.3

Percentiles and the median are computed on the rounded midpoint of each build's advertised band; minimum and maximum are the outer bounds of the bands themselves. The mean sits $46 above the median, which is what a mild right skew looks like: a cluster of small builds and a thinner tail pressing against the ceiling.

Distribution

Where the catalogue sits

How the published prices and quoted windows are spread across the full list.

Advertised price distribution

Advertised price band (midpoint)BuildsShare 
Under $1,000911.4%
$1,000 – $1,4993341.8%
$1,500 – $1,9992430.4%
$2,000 and above1316.5%

Delivery distribution

Quoted delivery window (midpoint)BuildsShare 
7 days or fewer911.4%
8 – 14 days4658.2%
15 – 21 days1924.1%
22 – 30 days56.3%

Counted instead on the worst case — the upper bound of each quoted window — 4 builds quote seven days or fewer, 33 quote fourteen or fewer and all 79 quote thirty or fewer. Both readings are given because they answer different questions, and quoting only the flattering one would be a fair thing to criticise.

Budget reach

BudgetBuilds whose advertised band starts at or below itShare of catalogue
$5001113.9%
$1,0005569.6%
$1,5007594.9%
$2,00079100%
$2,50079100%

This column uses the lower bound of each band, so it answers “what could I start” rather than “what will I finish for”. A build whose band opens at $1,000 may still settle at $2,000 once the final scope is agreed, which is exactly what the upper bound is published for.

By category

Median advertised price and quoted delivery for every category

Sorted cheapest first. Categories with fewer than five records are marked, because those medians move if one record changes.

CategorynMedian advertised priceAdvertised band rangeMedian quoted delivery
Cloud, DevOps & Modernisationsmall cell3$850$500$2,5005 days
Websites & Landing Pagessmall cell4$1,025$500$2,0008 days
Data, Scraping & Pipelinessmall cell4$1,100$500$2,0009 days
Integrations & APIs5$1,200$500$2,20010 days
AI Content & Productivity Toolssmall cell4$1,300$700$2,00011 days
AI Chatbots & Assistants6$1,375$500$2,50013 days
Dubai Real Estate & Speed-to-Lead10$1,450$700$2,50012 days
AI Agents & Workflow Automation7$1,450$500$2,50013 days
E-commerce Solutionssmall cell4$1,525$600$2,50013 days
GTM Engineering & Revenue Automation7$1,600$700$2,50014 days
Dashboards & Analyticssmall cell3$1,600$800$2,50014 days
Computer Vision & OCRsmall cell3$1,600$600$2,50014 days
Internal Tools & Industry Systems6$1,725$800$2,50016 days
Mobile Apps5$1,850$900$2,50019 days
Web Apps & SaaS MVPs8$1,925$900$2,50018 days
All categories79$1,450$500$2,50013 days

The spread across categories is narrow — $850 at the Cloud & DevOps end against $1,925 for Web Apps — because the constraint is the fixed band rather than the subject matter. What varies more is time: 5 days against 18. Categories carrying more user roles, more integrations and more data take longer before they cost more.

Tooling

What the catalogue is built with

Counts are builds, not hours. A build appears once against each tool listed for it, so the columns sum to more than the catalogue.

AI toolBuildsShare
GPT7696.2%
Cursor7594.9%
Claude Code6379.7%
Claude5569.6%
v02835.4%
DeepSeek2227.8%
Gemini1113.9%
GitHub Copilot56.3%
TechnologyBuilds
Next.js61
PostgreSQL57
Vercel34
Node.js26
WhatsApp Cloud API23
Supabase22
Prisma20
Docker19
Anthropic API17
Tailwind17

Ten most-used technologies. The CSV lists up to six per build.

Against the consensus

A measured counter-example, not a correction

The published cost guides are not wrong. They describe a different production model applied to a different scope, and they measure a different thing — reported costs against a published price. This section sets them side by side rather than pretending one cancels the other.

The consensus is consistent and easy to state. Clutch's software development pricing guide, updated September 2026, reports that most software development companies listed on the platform charge $24–$49 per hour, that a typical project runs $10,000 to $49,000, and that the average custom software project costs $132,480 and takes about 13 months to deliver. FullStack Labs' 2026 Software Development Price Guide reports that 65.7% of custom software projects fall between $30,000 and $100,000, and that only 14.1% come in under $30,000 at the time of writing. DesignRush's software development pricing guide puts the average cost of custom software development at $50,000 to $250,000.

Set against those figures, a median advertised price of $1,450 is between one and two orders of magnitude lower. It should not be read as a straight comparison, for two honest reasons. The first is scope: Clutch's average describes builds running about 13 months, Keyhole Software's 2026 benchmarks put even a simple or MVP-scope build at $40,000$120,000 over two to four months, and every record in this dataset is one core workflow quoted at 3 to 30 days. The second is the measurement itself: those guides report what work is said to have cost, while this dataset reports what one supplier publicly commits to charge. Those are different objects, and a ratio between them flatters the smaller one.

The narrower claim is the one worth citing. At the small end of scope — a single workflow, standard integrations, a fortnight of quoted elapsed time — a fixed-price, AI-first studio publishes a median price of $1,450 and a ceiling of $2,500 across every one of the 79 builds it offers. Published guides largely do not describe that end of the market at all, and where they approach it they stop well above: the cheapest anchor in the table below is Cleveroad's rule-based chatbot at $2,000$15,000, the only project-level figure in the table whose floor comes within reach of this dataset's ceiling. The next lowest floor is $10,000.

One further difference is methodological rather than commercial, and it is the gap this report exists to fill. Published cost ranges are usually quoted without a record base, and almost never with an itemised list behind them. Netguru is the clear exception on record base, reporting a median of $76,000 for a cross-platform MVP across the 200-plus apps it has built; Accelerance draws its rate bands from 60 partner firms and GoodFirms surveys development companies rather than counting projects. What none of them publishes is a complete, itemised, checkable price list — a figure per build, with the page it came from. That is what the CSV below is.

Published market benchmarks, with the basis stated

SourcePublished figureStated basis
Clutch2026Average custom software project $132,480 over about 13 months; a typical project $10,000–$49,000; most listed companies charge $24–$49 per hourMarketplace pricing data across companies listed on the platform
FullStack Labs202665.7% of custom software projects fall between $30,000 and $100,000; only 14.1% come in under $30,000Percentage distribution; no project count accompanies the cited figures
DesignRush2025Average cost of custom software development $50,000–$250,000, with some projects reaching into the millionsPublished range; no project count accompanies the cited figure
Keyhole Software2026Simple or MVP scope $40,000–$120,000 over two to four months; medium complexity $120,000–$300,000; high complexity $300,000–$1,000,000+Complexity tiers; no project count accompanies the cited figures
Andersen2026Basic MVP $25,000–$80,000 over two to four months; moderately complex $80,000–$250,000; enterprise $250,000–$500,000+Complexity tiers; no project count accompanies the cited figures
Upsilon2026B2B SaaS platform MVP $30,000–$80,000 over three to six months; MVPs overall $15,000–$120,000Published ranges; no project count accompanies the cited figures
Netguru2026Median $76,000 for a cross-platform MVP with user authentication, API integration and 8–12 screens200-plus apps built by the publisher — the only anchor here with a disclosed record base
Cleveroad2026Rule-based bot $2,000–$15,000; AI-powered chatbot of medium complexity $18,000–$80,000; enterprise deployment $50,000–$250,000+Complexity tiers; no project count accompanies the cited figures
LI Solutions2026Booking MVP for a single business $25,000–$60,000 over eight to sixteen weeks; full booking product $80,000–$180,000Published ranges; no project count accompanies the cited figures
AVIBE2026Focused internal tool $75,000–$125,000 over one to three months; small business application $125,000–$250,000Published ranges; no project count accompanies the cited figures
Purrweb2026Basic custom CRM $75,000–$98,000 over four to six months; enterprise CRM $140,000–$180,000+Complexity tiers; no project count accompanies the cited figures
CimpleO2026Simple internal-tool Telegram Mini App $10,000–$20,000 over four to six weeks; full B2B portal with ERP integration $40,000–$80,000Published ranges; no project count accompanies the cited figures
Accelerance2026Senior developer rates $31–$41 per hour in Asia, $60–$75 in Latin America and $64–$76 in Central and Eastern Europe60 software development partners worldwide
GoodFirms2026Most custom software projects $30,000–$200,000; roughly 66% of companies place small and medium builds at $30,000–$100,000Survey of 100-plus development companies, gathered September–October 2025
PINCLER2026 · this reportMedian advertised $1,450 over 13 quoted days; full published range $500$2,500Census of a complete published fixed-price catalogue, 79 builds, listed record by record as a downloadable CSV with a link to each source page

“Stated basis” records what accompanies the figure as cited here. Some publishers may describe their methodology elsewhere on their own sites; where the cited figure carries no project count, this table says so rather than asserting that none exists. All external figures were checked against the source page and are listed in the sources below.

Closest available comparisons

Build typePublished market figureThis catalogue, median advertisedThis catalogue, median quoted delivery
Web app or SaaS MVP$30,000 – $80,000 over three to six monthsUpsilon, 2026$1,925Web Apps & SaaS MVPs, n = 818 days
Cross-platform mobile app MVPmedian $76,000Netguru, 2026$1,850Mobile Apps, n = 519 days
AI chatbot, medium complexity$18,000 – $80,000Cleveroad, 2026$1,375AI Chatbots & Assistants, n = 613 days
Focused internal business tool$75,000 – $125,000 over one to three monthsAVIBE, 2026$1,725Internal Tools & Industry Systems, n = 616 days

These rows pair the nearest published market figure to the nearest category in this catalogue. They are neither equivalent scopes nor equivalent measurements: the market rows generally describe larger builds with more roles, more surfaces and longer support expectations, and they report costs rather than advertised prices. Read them as an indication of where the two production models sit, not as a like-for-like price quotation.

Sources

  1. Clutch (2026)
  2. FullStack Labs (2026)
  3. DesignRush (2025)
  4. Keyhole Software (2026)
  5. Andersen (2026)
  6. Upsilon (2026)
  7. Netguru (2026)
  8. Cleveroad (2026)
  9. LI Solutions (2026)
  10. AVIBE (2026)
  11. Purrweb (2026)
  12. CimpleO (2026)
  13. Accelerance (2026)
  14. GoodFirms (2026)

Interpretation

Why the number is possible

A price this far below the published range is only worth publishing if the cause is legible. Four things account for it, and none of them is a discount.

The production method

AI writes the first draft — boilerplate, tests, first-pass interfaces, migrations — and senior engineers own architecture, review, security and the release. That inverts where the hours go. The expensive part of a traditional build is not the thinking, it is the typing that surrounds the thinking, and most of that typing is now generated and then reviewed. 76 of the 79 records list GPT and 75 list Cursor, which is the tooling footprint of a studio where this is the default rather than an experiment.

The scope is fixed before the price is

Every record publishes its feature list and integrations, and the band is fixed against that list before work begins. Fixed scope removes the mid-project drift that stretches timelines and budgets, and it is a large part of why the quoted windows run to 13 days rather than 13 weeks. It also means the price is falsifiable: you can open any record's page, read what it includes, and judge whether the figure is plausible for that list. Every row in the CSV carries that link for exactly this reason.

What the band does not buy

A vague cheap price invites disbelief; a scoped one can be checked. This band buys one core workflow with standard integrations, quoted at 3 to 30 days. It does not buy an enterprise platform with formal compliance certification, a large-scale data migration, a multi-year roadmap, or unlimited revisions. Larger work is split into phases, each priced inside the same ceiling and each shipping something usable — which is why the published ceiling holds at $2,500 rather than bending for bigger builds.

What is not skipped

The reasonable objection to a low price is that something has been left out, so it is worth naming what has not. Every build in the catalogue carries senior engineering review before release, automated tests, a security pass, and a full handover: the source code sits in the client's own repository, on their cloud, with their database, and there is a bug-fix warranty after launch. Those are the steps that low-cost delivery usually drops. Removing them is how a price gets low by accident; keeping them is why these prices take a change of method rather than a change of standards.

Cite this

Everything you need in one copy-paste

Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0. Quote it, chart it, disagree with it in print — attribution and a link back are the only conditions.

Canonical stat line

Across a complete published fixed-price catalogue of 79 custom software builds, the median advertised price is $1,450 and the median quoted delivery window 13 days, with a published ceiling of $2,500 per build — prices set by a production method in which AI writes the first draft and senior engineers review, test and harden every build (PINCLER TECHNOLOGIES - FZCO, The Fixed-Price Software Report, 2026).

Suggested citation

PINCLER TECHNOLOGIES - FZCO (2026). The Fixed-Price Software Report: advertised prices and quoted delivery windows for 79 custom software builds in the publisher's complete fixed-price catalogue. Edition 1.0. https://www.pincler.com/research/fixed-price-report

Attribution line for a chart

Source: PINCLER TECHNOLOGIES - FZCO, The Fixed-Price Software Report — published fixed-price catalogue (n = 79), 1 September 2026. CC BY 4.0.

Reference

TitleThe Fixed-Price Software Report
PublisherPINCLER TECHNOLOGIES - FZCO
Edition1.0
Published1 September 2026
Records79 published builds — a complete fixed-price catalogue
BasisAdvertised prices and quoted delivery windows, not delivery records
Median advertised price$1,450
Median quoted delivery13 days
Published price range$500 – $2,500
LicenceCC BY 4.0
Stable URLhttps://www.pincler.com/research/fixed-price-report
Dataset filehttps://www.pincler.com/pincler-fixed-price-software-dataset-2026.csv

Download

The record-level dataset

One row per published build, 79 rows, 12 columns. Every aggregate on this page can be recomputed from this file and every row links back to the catalogue page it came from, which is the point of publishing it.

Data dictionary

ColumnDefinition
build_idStable slug for the catalogue record; also the last path segment of its page on this site.
build_nameThe build as published in the catalogue.
categoryOne of the 15 categories used throughout the catalogue.
price_low_usdLower bound of the advertised fixed price band, in US dollars.
price_high_usdUpper bound of the advertised fixed price band, in US dollars. Never above 2500.
price_midpoint_usdRounded midpoint of the band. This is the figure every median and percentile on this page uses.
delivery_low_daysLower bound of the quoted delivery window, in calendar days from kick-off.
delivery_high_daysUpper bound of the quoted delivery window, in calendar days.
delivery_midpoint_daysRounded midpoint of the quoted delivery window.
ai_toolsSemicolon-separated AI coding tools listed for the build.
primary_technologiesUp to six technologies from the build's published stack, semicolon-separated.
record_urlCanonical catalogue page for the record — the published source of every figure in the row.

Every column holds a published figure. There is no invoiced amount, completion date or client field in the file, because the catalogue does not carry those and this dataset does not infer them. The CSV is a frozen edition, so a figure cited from it stays quotable; the tables on this page are computed from the live catalogue at build time, and if the catalogue changes a new dated edition is published rather than the existing file being overwritten.

FAQ

Questions about this dataset

What is the median price of a fixed-price custom software build in this dataset?

The median advertised price is $1,450 across 79 published builds, with a median quoted delivery window of 13 days and a published ceiling of $2,500 per build. The middle half of the catalogue sits between $1,250 and $1,850. These are prices published on the catalogue pages, not estimates produced for this report.

Is this a record of completed projects?

No, and the distinction matters. Every row is a published offering: the price band PINCLER commits to charge for that build and the window it commits to deliver within. The dataset carries no completion dates, no client records and no audited outcomes, so it cannot tell you what any individual build was finally invoiced at or how long it took. What it can tell you, in full and record by record, is the price a development studio publicly commits to before any conversation about scope.

Is this a market survey?

No. This is supplier-side data: one studio’s complete published price list, record by record. A market survey asks many companies what they charge; this dataset publishes what a single production method is priced at across the 79 builds it offers. It describes that method, not the market.

Why are these prices so far below published market averages?

Three reasons, and all of them matter. The production method differs — AI writes the first draft while senior engineers own architecture, review, testing and the release. The scope differs, because every record here is a single core workflow quoted at 3 to 30 days, not a multi-month platform. And the measurements differ: this is a published price list, while figures such as Clutch’s $132,480 average describe reported costs of builds running about 13 months. The comparison is informative, not like-for-like.

How large is the dataset, and what are its limits?

It holds 79 records, which is small. It is a price list rather than a delivery record, it is one studio’s catalogue rather than a random sample, it is censored by design because work that cannot fit the $500–$2,500 band is not published, and 7 of the 15 categories hold fewer than five records each, so those medians are indicative only. No independent body has audited it.

Can I quote or republish this data?

Yes, under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence, which asks only that you credit PINCLER TECHNOLOGIES - FZCO and link back to this page. The full record-level dataset is downloadable as a CSV, every table here can be recomputed from it, and each row carries the URL of the catalogue page it was taken from, so you can check both the arithmetic and the source before you cite it. Please describe it as published prices rather than as completed work.

What does the $500–$2,500 band not buy?

It does not buy a multi-year platform, a regulated system needing formal compliance certification, a large-scale data migration, or an open-ended scope. Those builds are absent from this dataset because they are declined or split into separately priced phases. The band buys one core workflow with standard integrations, tested, security-reviewed and handed over with the source code.

Tell us what you need. Get a fixed price within one working day.

Free 30-minute discovery call with a senior engineer. Because AI writes the first draft and senior engineers review, test and harden it, we can quote a fixed $500 – $2,500 for one core workflow with standard integrations — tests, source code and handover included.