Pricing guide
What a business web application costs
With a web application you are not paying for pages — you are paying for business logic.
With a website you pay for presenting content; with a web application you pay for rules — who sees what, who approves what, what gets calculated automatically, and what happens when two actions collide. That is why the price bands look different. Indicative bands for 2026, from a Romanian engineering team: a simple application — forms, CRUD-style records, a few user roles — costs €5,000–15,000. A mid-tier build with integrations into other systems (invoicing, ERP, external APIs), reports and approval workflows reaches €15,000–50,000. Above that you enter complex territory: real-time processing, heavy data volumes, critical availability — from €50,000 upward, with no fixed ceiling. An internal order-management portal for a distributor, for instance, usually falls in the middle band. Below we show exactly what pushes a project from one category into the next, so you can estimate your own order of magnitude before requesting quotes.
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Key takeaways
Simple application: €5,000–15,000
Records and forms (CRUD), 2–3 user roles, authentication, data export. Think internal order registers, equipment logs, request forms with history.
Mid-tier application: €15,000–50,000
API integrations with existing systems, reports and dashboards, multi-level approval workflows, automated notifications. Most genuinely useful business applications live here.
Complex application: €50,000+
Real-time processing, large user or data volumes, scalable architecture, strict availability requirements. Architecture and testing set the price, not screen count.
What moves a project between categories
Three factors dominate the calculation. First, integrations: every connected external system — an invoicing tool, an ERP, a banking API, a courier service — adds roughly €1,000–5,000, because each has its own quirks, limits and failure modes that must be handled. Second, roles and permissions: "everyone sees everything" is cheap; "the agent sees only his own clients, the area manager sees the team, the director sees everything except margins" means a permission matrix tested across dozens of combinations. Third, reporting: a table exported to Excel is trivial, while a dashboard with period aggregations and cross filters is a mini-project of its own.
A worked example: a services firm with 25 employees wants a job-management application — dispatch assigns jobs, technicians see them on their phones and upload photos, the client automatically receives a report at completion, and invoicing runs monthly from the collected data. Rough estimate: the management core €8,000–10,000, roles and the validation flow €3,000–4,000, integration with the invoicing software €2,000–3,000, reporting €2,000–3,000 — €15,000–20,000 in total, plus annual maintenance of 15–20% of the investment. Actual market quotes vary with the team you choose, but the proportions between components hold.
Frequently asked questions
Why does a web app cost more than a website that looks simpler?
Because the expensive part is invisible: business rules, edge cases and the testing of both. An "Approve" button on screen means permission checks behind it, protection against double approval, notifications, an audit history — one application screen can hide more work than ten website pages.
Can I reduce the cost by building in phases?
Yes, and it is the recommended approach: launch the core that solves the main problem first (say, order tracking without reports or integrations) at an indicative 40–60% of the total budget, then add the remaining modules as the application proves its worth inside the company.
What does the application cost me after launch?
Budget an indicative 15–20% per year of the development cost for upkeep: security updates, adaptations when integrated APIs change, fixes and small improvements. Infrastructure comes on top — hosting for a business application starts at €20–50/month, above the level of an ordinary website.
Would a shared spreadsheet do the job instead?
Up to a point, honestly, yes — and you should use it as long as it works. Spreadsheets break down when concurrent editing appears (two people changing the same row), when users need different permissions, or when approval flows emerge; until one of those hurts, postpone the investment without guilt.
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Let’s talk about your project
Message us on WhatsApp or send an email — you talk directly to a developer.
office@northdan.com · +40 752 070 247