Two developers built Marafiq, a training platform with card and installment checkout, live Zoom cohorts and PDF certificates, in about three and a half months. Omraty, a booking platform that pulls live hotel and flight inventory from several suppliers, took a team of 3 more than 15 months to go live. The teams and scopes differ, but one difference is plain: what each product connects to, and how much money moves through it.
That is the first thing to know when you ask what a SaaS build costs. The price follows the number of things the product must do correctly, not the number of screens. Two products with the same screen count can sit far apart on price.
This post shows which parts of a SaaS product move the price, where the money goes besides the build, and when you should not hire a team like ours at all. Our platform builds start from $5k. Where yours lands above that depends on the factors below, and we check them before we quote.
What moves the price
These are the questions we ask in the first call. Each row can push a build from the smaller column to the bigger one on its own.
| Factor | Smaller build | Bigger build |
|---|---|---|
| Accounts and roles | One user type, one plan | Organizations with several users, custom roles, invitations |
| Billing | One card checkout through Stripe | Subscriptions, coupons, refunds, invoices, several gateways |
| Integrations | None, or one system with a clean API | Several suppliers or an ERP with no API |
| Data migration | Start fresh | Years of records to clean and import |
| Admin for your staff | A list and an edit form | Review queues, reports, exports, audit log |
| Languages | One | Two or more, including right-to-left |
| Tests and releases | Basic tests on the main flows | Broad test coverage, staging, rollback, zero-downtime deploys |
| Security and compliance | Standard practice | SSO, customer security questionnaires, audit requirements |
The rows interact. A product with organizations, subscriptions and an ERP integration costs more than the three added up, because every billing rule has to be checked for every role.
Billing is the line that surprises people
Taking one card payment is cheap. Everything around it is not: what happens when a card fails, when a customer upgrades in the middle of a month, when a coupon expires, when a refund is partial. Each case needs a rule, a screen and a test.
On Marafiq the checkout covers a cart, coupons, card payments through Stripe and installments through Tamara. Each of those is a set of rules with its own failure cases, and each case needs a test. Deciding which of them the first release really needs is a scope question, and we cover it in MVP vs. full product. If your product charges money, ask your team early how it handles a failed payment, an upgrade in the middle of a billing period and a refund. Vague answers now mean change requests later.
Two builds, side by side
Marafiq, built May to August 2026 by a team of 2, runs on Laravel 13 with React and Filament. It has 1,700+ learner accounts, 25 published courses and about 940 automated tests. The Marafiq case study has the details.
Omraty, a team of 3 since June 2025, puts hotels, flights, ground transport, guides and visas into one cart and one payment. Availability is re-checked with the suppliers before the customer pays, and the site runs in five languages with right-to-left support. Every supplier is another system with its own rules and its own downtime. See the Omraty case study. It is live now but too new for usage figures, so we describe what was built, not how it performs.
Neither is a clean comparison, since the teams, scopes and start dates differ. The point is what each scope is built around. Marafiq centers on checkout, quizzes and certificates, all inside one system. Omraty centers on connecting to other people's systems.
What you pay for besides the build
Discovery. Our discovery sprint starts from $1.5k and takes 1–2 weeks. It ends with a feature specification, an architecture, a clickable prototype and a fixed estimate. The fee is credited in full if the build starts within 60 days.
Hosting and services. Servers, email sending, video hosting and payment fees are billed to you by their providers. They never go to zero, so ask for them to be listed next to the build price.
Support after launch. Software needs fixes, dependency updates and small changes. We quote a support plan separately, and our post on what happens after your software launches explains what it covers.
Upgrades. Frameworks move on. Laravel 13, the current version, gets security fixes until March 17, 2028, so a product built today will need an upgrade planned within about two years.
Cheaper options, and when to take them
A custom build is not the cheapest way to test an idea. If you have not sold the product to anyone yet, a no-code tool or a template can answer the question for less. You give up control of the data model, and if the idea works you will probably rebuild. That trade is often worth it: you spend a small amount to learn whether anyone pays, and the larger amount only after they do. We would rather tell you that on a call than sell you a build before the idea has a customer.
Hiring in-house is the other option. It makes sense when you will need engineers for years and can manage them. You carry recruiting, salaries and management time. A team like ours makes sense when you need a defined product built and maintained without growing your payroll. You contract with our US LLC in Illinois, you pay in USD, and calls run Monday to Friday, 9 am to 1 pm Eastern. Whichever you choose, ask who owns the code, and get the answer in writing.
How to get a number you can trust
A quote after a one-hour call is a guess. The cost of the guess shows up later as change requests. What works better is writing down the scope first, then pricing it.
List the 3 to 5 things a user must be able to do on day one.
Name every system the product must talk to, and check whether each one has an API.
Decide how money moves: who pays, when, and what happens on failure.
Say how many roles you need, and what each may see.
Ask whether the estimate is fixed or time and materials. Fixed price vs. time and materials explains what each protects you from.
With that list, the estimate stops being a range and becomes a plan. Our post on how long custom software takes covers the timeline side.
Next step
Bring the list above to an intro call. We will tell you which factors push your product up or down, whether a smaller option fits, and what a discovery sprint would cover. Builds start from $5k. Book an intro call.