Custom software cost: our published price ranges
Ranges verified on 1 September 2026
A prototype starts at €8,000 excl. VAT, an MVP at €15,000, a complete business tool (ERP, CRM, platform) at €30,000, and a large platform ranges between €50,000 and €200,000. Those are the numbers. Most agencies do not publish them; we would rather you arrive at the first conversation knowing where you stand.
These ranges come from our real projects. They are reviewed whenever our offers change: last verified on 1 September 2026.
And if these amounts feel high, one important detail: you never commit to them in one go. We work in fixed-price sprints of €5,000, delivered and validated one after the other, and our business platforms are available on leasing, with no upfront investment.
KERN-IT is a Belgian custom software development company based in Brussels. Our proven business building blocks make us on average 20% cheaper than from-scratch development, at equal or higher quality.
Our ranges by project type
Prototype
from €8,000 excl. VAT, 2 to 6 weeks. A clickable, testable version of your idea, positioned as a prototype, to validate the need before industrialising.
MVP
from €15,000 excl. VAT, 2 to 3 months. A minimal product in the hands of real users: the essential features on a sound base, ready to grow. See our startup & MVP offer.
Complete business tool
from €30,000 excl. VAT, 2 to 4 months for a first version. A custom ERP or CRM shaped around your processes and connected to your existing tools.
Large platform
€50,000 to €200,000, 4 to 9 months. Multiple teams, multiple integrations, strong security and load requirements. Rebuilding an existing system is priced after an audit.
You never commit all at once
A €30,000 business tool is not signed like a subscription. That is why we split every project into fixed-price sprints of €5,000: a defined scope, a concrete deliverable, a validation before moving to the next one. You see what you are buying as you go, and you can pause at any step. A €15,000 MVP is three sprints, not a blank cheque.
The other entry point: start with an €8,000 prototype. If it convinces, it becomes the base of the MVP, then of the product. Nothing is thrown away: every euro invested stays in the final product.
What drives the price
Four factors explain most of the gap between the low and high end of a range. Knowing them lets you act on them from the scoping phase.
Functional scope
The number of screens, user roles and business rules to cover. It is the first factor, and the one where a good phased breakdown saves the most.
Integrations
Each connection to a third-party tool (accounting, ERP, e-commerce, payment) adds its own cost, highly variable depending on the quality of the API on the other side.
The state of your data
Importing clean data costs little. Years of Excel files with duplicates and free-form formats require real clean-up work, often underestimated.
Security and load
An internal tool for ten people and a public-facing platform do not share the same audit, performance and availability requirements.
What the price includes
Scoping
Discovery, specifications, prioritisation. This is what prevents you from paying for useless features: half of a project's value is decided before the first line of code.
Development and testing
The code, the reviews, the automated tests. Quality is not an option billed separately, it is in the price.
Deployment
Production release, configured hosting, team training. You receive a running tool, not a code archive.
Warranty
Post-delivery fixes are covered. Maintenance is priced in the quote from the start, never discovered afterwards.
AI and Odoo have their own ranges
Artificial intelligence
A POC starts at €10,000, a complete AI integration project ranges between €30,000 and €100,000 depending on complexity. Our use cases are detailed on the artificial intelligence page.
Odoo
For an SME Odoo implementation, budget €15,000 to €40,000 of services, excluding licences paid to the publisher. The full breakdown (cost items, timelines, pitfalls) is published on our Odoo implementation for SMEs page.
What if you vibecode it yourself?
With Lovable, Bolt, Cursor or directly Claude and Codex, producing a clickable prototype now costs €20 to €100 a month and a few evenings. We encourage you to test your idea that way: it is the cheapest way to know whether it deserves an investment.
The numbers change when the prototype must become a real product: data, security, integrations, production. Our vibecoded project takeover offer is priced too: free initial audit, stabilisation of a simple prototype between €5,000 and €15,000, full professionalisation (tests, CI/CD, deployment) between €15,000 and €40,000. Often cheaper than starting over.
No upfront investment: business platforms on leasing
If your industry is one of the eleven covered by our business platforms (coworking, facility management, museums, rental, invoicing, training, print, inspection, IoT, transport, agencies), you do not need to fund a development: the platform already exists and is paid as an all-inclusive monthly fee, sized to your scope, with a purchase option available in the contract. The detailed quote is presented during the demo.
Why our prices sit below the market
Fifteen years of projects have forged our business building blocks: authentication, ERP, CRM, mapping, integrations. Every project builds on this proven foundation instead of redeveloping everything, which makes us on average 20% cheaper than from-scratch development.
The other saving is even simpler: when your need is better served by an off-the-shelf tool, we tell you. A declined quote costs less than a useless project.
After delivery: maintenance
Custom software lives on and must be maintained: monitoring, security updates, user support and functional evolutions. Our maintenance contracts are sized on the delivered scope and priced in the quote, never afterwards. We wrote a full article on the topic: why software without maintenance loses value.
They trust us
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Frequently asked questions about our prices
Because it is the question everyone asks and almost nobody answers. Publishing our ranges saves time on both sides: you know before the first conversation whether our orders of magnitude match your budget. The final price is set after scoping, but it stays within the ranges published here.
Yes, and that gain is already in our ranges. AI speeds up code production: it is what makes a prototype possible in 2 to 6 weeks and, combined with our business building blocks, prices on average 20% below the market. It does not reduce what makes software valuable: understanding your business, designing the architecture, integrating your tools and owning the result in production. How we combine both is detailed on the vibecoding & vibe engineering page.
The initial audit is free: we look at what holds and what must be reworked. Stabilising a simple prototype costs between €5,000 and €15,000, full professionalisation (tests, CI/CD, deployment) between €15,000 and €40,000 depending on complexity. In most cases, taking over your prototype costs less than starting over, and what you learned building it is never lost.
Yes, in three ways. Fixed-price €5,000 sprints, validated one by one, with the option to pause at any step. Starting with a prototype, which then becomes the base of the MVP and the product. And our business platforms on leasing, which remove the upfront investment. Regional subsidies can also cover part of the services.
A clickable, working user journey covering the core of your idea, delivered in a few weeks and positioned as a prototype: it exists to test the need, not to run production. If the test is conclusive, it becomes the base of the MVP without starting over.
Compare the total cost over three years. Off-the-shelf SaaS is paid per user per month, and licences pile up as the team grows. Custom software concentrates the investment upfront, then narrows down to maintaining a tool you own. Our business platforms on leasing combine both logics: no upfront investment, a controlled monthly fee and custom work included.
Yes. The digitalisation grant in Brussels, the chèques-entreprises in Wallonia and the KMO-portefeuille in Flanders can cover part of the services. Rates and ceilings change every year: check the official regional portals before closing your budget.
Yes. The first 30-minute conversation is free and without commitment, and so is the detailed quote. It follows a discovery phase that frames the real scope, which lets us commit to firm amounts rather than a vague estimate.
Your project, a firm number
Tell us about your need in 30 minutes: you leave with an honest order of magnitude, whether we work together or not.