If you've ever asked three Australian developers what a custom software project costs and got three answers an order of magnitude apart, this article is for you. The pricing isn't actually that opaque, it's just that nobody publishes ranges, because every quote is dressed up as bespoke.
Behind the curtain, almost every custom software engagement decomposes into the same four cost drivers. Once you can see them, the quotes stop looking like dark magic.
The bands you should expect
For an Australian developer or small studio building you a workflow tool, internal platform, or operational system, the typical AUD ranges are:
- Pilot: $4.5k–$8k. One workflow, one team, four to six weeks. A way to prove the approach before scaling.
- Build: $7k–$28k. Three to five workflows, multi-team rollout, two or three integrations, twelve weeks. The bulk of projects land here.
- Platform: $8.5k–$80k. Mission-critical with strict uptime, audit, and compliance. SSO, SOC 2 prep, dedicated team. Usually a multi-quarter engagement.
The wide range on Build and Platform looks like a cop-out. It's not. It reflects the four levers below.
Lever 1: how many workflows you're automating
One workflow with five user actions takes about 4–6 weeks. Five workflows with thirty actions between them takes 14–16. The relationship is closer to linear than people expect, because most of the cost is in the data model and the testing, not the screens.
Cutting from five workflows to three doesn't save 40%, it saves about 25%, because the database design, auth, admin, and shared infrastructure don't shrink. Cutting from five to one saves about 60%, because you also drop a lot of the cross-cutting concerns.
Lever 2: how many integrations you need
Each integration with an outside system is two to ten days of engineering. Xero, MYOB, Stripe, HubSpot, Salesforce, your phone system, your warehouse, every one of them has its own auth model, its own webhooks, its own quirks. None of them are five-minute jobs.
The hidden trap: integrations are the part of the project most likely to break six months later, when the third party ships an API change. So the real cost is not just the build, it's the maintenance retainer that keeps the integrations alive.
The cheapest integration is the one you can replace with a CSV upload until you've validated the workflow.
Lever 3: who owns and runs it after launch
Three answers, three different prices.
- You run it on your own AWS/GCP account. Most expensive at build time (proper IaC, deployment automation, runbooks) but cheapest in year two onwards because you're not paying anyone rent.
- The developer hosts it for you. Cheapest at build time, but you'll pay $200–$2,000/month in hosting and management fees, and you have less control if you ever want to leave.
- Hybrid: you host the data, they host the app. Common middle ground. Roughly mid-range on cost.
Lever 4: how complete the brief is
This is the lever founders most underestimate. A vague brief, "we need a system to manage our jobs", results in a quote with 30% padding for unknowns. A specific brief, "we need to replace this Airtable workflow, here are the five screens, here are the three integrations, here's what success looks like in three months", gets a tight quote.
If you don't have a specific brief, the right move is a paid one-week discovery sprint with whichever developer you're considering. Cost: $1.5k–$3k. Output: a written scope and a fixed-price quote. It's the highest-leverage spend on the entire project. Yes, you pay for it. No, that's not a red flag, it's a sign the developer takes scoping seriously.
What's actually in your quote
For a typical $20k Build engagement, the breakdown looks something like:
- Discovery and design: 15–20% ($3k–$4k)
- Build: 55–65% ($11k–$13k)
- Testing and bugfix: 10–15% ($2k–$3k)
- Deployment, training, handover: 5–10% ($1k–$2k)
If a quote shows you 95% on "build" with nothing for design, testing, or handover, the developer is either skipping those or hiding them. Ask.
The bottom line
Most Australian custom software engagements land between $7k and $28k. The number depends on the four levers above, in roughly that order of impact. Spend a week on a real brief before you ask for quotes, it's the cheapest way to compress the cost.
If you want three quotes against the same brief from vetted Australian developers, FindDevs is exactly that service. Free, no obligation, three real numbers in 24 hours.