Custom software for a small or mid-sized Nordic company typically costs €30,000–150,000 (about 330,000–1,650,000 kr, excl. VAT). That is the range our custom software development projects land in, and we agree a fixed price after a short discovery phase. A focused MVP or customer portal usually costs €30,000–60,000. An internal system with several integrations, user roles and reporting moves toward the top of the range. This guide is for founders, CEOs and IT managers who need a realistic budget before they talk to vendors.
We are Smoother Development AB, a Swedish company with an engineering team in Ukraine. The prices below are the ones we publish. Where we talk about the wider market, we say so and name the source.
How much does custom software cost by project type?
Custom software is software built for your workflow and owned by you, as opposed to a standard product you subscribe to. The table shows what we charge for the project types we are asked about most.
| Project type | Typical scope | Our price (excl. VAT) | Typical timeline |
|---|---|---|---|
| Online store | Storefront, checkout, product and inventory management | Fixed packages: €6,000, €16,000 or €38,000 | 4–20 weeks |
| Customer or partner portal | Login, dashboard, documents, one or two integrations | €30,000–50,000 | 6–8 weeks |
| SaaS MVP or new product | One core workflow, billing, admin tool | €30,000–60,000 | 8–12 weeks |
| Internal business system | Projects, time and invoicing, e.g. a construction ERP linked to Fortnox | Fixed price after discovery, within €30,000–150,000 | First version in 8–12 weeks |
| Platform with many integrations | Several connected systems, roles, reporting, audit logs | €80,000–150,000 | 4–8 months |
| One AI workflow in production | E.g. answers from company documents, orders routed into the ERP | €3,500 audit + €20,000–35,000 fixed-price launch | 5 days + up to 6 weeks |
| Existing or AI-built app | Code audit, then stabilization or phased modernization | Audit from €1,900; stabilization from €6,000 | Days to months |
| Ongoing development | A senior-led team at a fixed monthly price | €4,200–23,000 per month | Monthly |
The AI row is our AI Production Launch: one to three AI workflows connected to your systems and data, at a fixed price set by scope after the audit, paid 30/40/30 at signing, the mid-point demo and production acceptance. Larger AI programs with more workflows are quoted separately.
What drives the cost of custom software?
Five things decide most of the price:
- The core workflow. A form that saves data is cheap. A workflow with approvals, pricing rules, exceptions and several user types is not.
- Integrations. Each system you connect (Fortnox, Visma, Business Central, HubSpot, a payment provider, BankID) adds work. Reading data is simpler than two-way sync, and migrating history is its own task.
- Users and permissions. One user type is simple. Customers, partners, admins and per-customer roles each need their own flows and access rules.
- Interface polish. A clean internal tool costs much less than a branded consumer product with custom interactions.
- Compliance and data. GDPR, audit logs, accessibility for public-sector buyers and EU hosting are cheaper to build in from day one than to retrofit.
Team seniority sits on top of all five. A low hourly rate with weeks of rework is not a saving.
What a first release is made of
Here is how a typical first release breaks down. Effort is in person-weeks (one engineer for one week, including testing and review). At our rates a person-week is roughly €1,800–2,400 (40 hours at €45–60), which is a useful way to sanity-check any quote, ours included.
| Building block | What it covers | Typical effort | What makes it bigger |
|---|---|---|---|
| Discovery | User journeys, scope, acceptance criteria, architecture | 1–2 person-weeks | Many stakeholders, an undocumented process |
| Login, roles, organizations | Users, invites, roles, password reset or simple SSO | 1–3 | Multi-tenant SaaS, custom roles per customer, SAML SSO |
| Core workflow | The screens and rules that do the actual job | 4–12 | Complex rules, several user types, offline use |
| Each integration | Fortnox, Visma, Business Central, HubSpot, Stripe | 1–4 per system | Two-way sync, poor API documentation, historical data |
| Payments and billing | Plans, invoices, webhooks | 1–3 | Usage-based pricing, payouts, several countries and VAT rules |
| Admin and support tools | Internal admin, impersonation, feature flags | 1–2 | Approval flows, bulk import |
| Reporting | Dashboards and exports | 1–3 | Near-real-time data, role-specific metrics |
| Infrastructure | CI/CD, staging, monitoring, backups, EU hosting | 1–2 | High availability, compliance evidence |
A focused product with one core workflow and two integrations usually adds up to 15–25 person-weeks, which is how it ends up at €30,000–60,000. Add three more integrations, SSO and reporting, and you are heading toward €100,000.
Why do software quotes differ so much?
The wider market is hard to pin down. Clutch, which collects verified reviews of development firms, reports an average project cost of about $132,000 over roughly 13 months, and hourly rates of $25–49 for firms in Ukraine and $50–99 in Poland and Spain (Clutch pricing guide, updated September 2026). It publishes no Nordic figure; Swedish rates follow Swedish salaries, which you can see in the in-house section below.
Two quotes for “the same” project differ because the vendors assumed different things. Before you compare totals, check each quote against this list:
- A written list of assumptions and exclusions (design, content, data migration, app store accounts).
- Acceptance criteria for each milestone, not just a feature list.
- Who is on the team, and which senior engineer is responsible for architecture and code quality.
- What is included: testing, deployment, documentation, handover.
- What happens after launch: warranty, maintenance price, response times.
- Who owns the code, and when. With us you own it once it is paid.
- Where data is hosted and whether a data processing agreement (DPA) is in place.
A fixed quote given without discovery, or a vendor who can’t explain how they estimated, is a red flag regardless of the number.
Should you choose fixed price or time and materials?
Fixed price means an agreed scope, price and acceptance criteria. Time and materials (T&M) means you pay for the hours used and steer as you go. We cover both, plus monthly teams, in software development pricing models.
For projects we work like this. Discovery maps the workflow, the integrations and what done means. Then you get a written scope and a fixed price, paid against milestones in the proposal. Changes go through a written change request with their cost and effect on the timeline, so nothing grows silently.
The first sprint is covered by our first-sprint guarantee: before we start, we agree in writing what the first two-week sprint must deliver. If the sprint-1 demo doesn’t meet those acceptance criteria, you can stop and you don’t pay for that sprint.
T&M suits work where the scope can’t be written down yet, such as an inherited codebase or an internal team that needs more hands. Our engineers cost from €45/hour (mid-level) and €60/hour (senior), roughly €7,500–10,000 a month full time.
What does an in-house team in Sweden cost compared with a nearshore team?
Nearshore means your engineers work from a nearby country in a similar time zone. Ours are in Ukraine, one hour ahead of Sweden, and you sign a Swedish contract with Smoother Development AB.
| In-house developer in Sweden | Engineer through Smoother Development | |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly cost | Average salary 55,500 kr (SCB, 2024) + 31.42% employer contributions (Skatteverket) ≈ 72,900 kr (about €6,600), before pension, holiday pay, equipment and recruitment | From €45/hour mid-level, €60/hour senior: about €7,500–10,000 full time |
| Time to start | Typically 2–4 months to recruit | 1–2 weeks |
| Commitment | Employment contract and notice periods | Swedish contract, flexible terms from one month |
| Senior oversight | Depends on who you hire | A senior engineer responsible for architecture and code quality on every team |
| If someone leaves | You recruit again | A second engineer knows the code, and it lives in your repository |
| Personal data | Stays inside your company | DPA with Standard Contractual Clauses before anyone in Ukraine touches it; EU hosting by default |
On paper the monthly numbers are close, and an average employee who is fully busy looks cheaper. But SCB’s figure is an average across experience levels, and senior developers earn more. Pension, holiday pay, equipment, recruitment and management time all come on top. The real comparison is usually not one engineer against one employee. It is a working team next month against a hire several months away, and whether you need someone senior to own the architecture.
What does custom software cost after launch?
Ongoing costs are where budgets go wrong, because they are left out of the first quote.
| Ongoing cost | What it covers | Typical cost |
|---|---|---|
| Hosting and services | EU cloud hosting, database, backups, monitoring, email, error tracking | A few hundred to around €1,500 a month at modest traffic |
| Usage-based services | Maps, SMS, BankID, payment fees, AI model usage | Scales with use; set budget alerts |
| Maintenance | Security and dependency updates, monitoring, small fixes | Care Lite €4,200 a month with us, or your own developer |
| Further development | New features and improvements | Delivery Pods: Start €8,200, Scale €14,000, Build €23,000 a month |
A Delivery Pod is a team at a fixed monthly price with a senior engineer responsible for architecture and code quality. Start and Scale run month to month after the first month, Build has a three-month minimum, and every pod has 30 days’ notice. If you would rather take the system in-house, you can: you own the code.
How do you reduce the cost without cutting corners?
- Build one workflow first. Ship the smallest version that does real work, put it in front of users, then decide what comes next.
- Buy the commodity parts. Use proven services for login, payments, email and hosting, and spend the budget on what is unique to your business.
- Timebox discovery. One or two weeks of structured work beats two months of open-ended meetings.
- Decide integrations early. A late “can it also sync with Visma?” costs more than the same request in week one.
- Measure from day one. Logging and monitoring are cheap to add at the start and expensive to add during an outage.
What to do next
If you have a project in mind, send us a short description of the workflow, the systems it must connect to and your deadline through the custom software development page. A founder replies, usually within one business day, with questions and a time for a call. After discovery you get a fixed price, and the first sprint is covered by written acceptance criteria. If your project is an AI workflow, start with the AI Production Audit (€3,500, 5 business days, credited in full if the launch starts within 60 days).
