How much does custom software development cost in India?

What you actually pay for

Roughly 70% of a custom software budget is engineering time, and the rest splits between design, project management, and third-party services. That is why scope, not technology, drives price: a payment gateway costs nothing to add as a line item and three weeks to integrate, test, and reconcile properly.

Two projects with the same feature list can differ by 3× in price. The difference is almost always integration surface — how many existing systems the new software has to talk to, and how badly those systems are documented.

• Number of user roles — each role is its own permission model, its own screens, its own edge cases
• Integrations — Tally, payment gateways, WhatsApp Business API, Meta lead ads, existing databases
• Data migration — moving years of spreadsheets into a real schema is often the longest single task
• Compliance — GST invoicing, DPDPA consent handling, and audit logging are not optional in India
• Ongoing change — a system nobody maintains is a system that stops matching the business within a year

Price by project type

These are DMC Tech's published starting prices. They are floors, not averages: a project lands above them when scope grows, never below.

Why most agencies won't publish a number

Because a published price can be compared, and because scope genuinely does vary. Both are true. But refusing to name any number pushes the entire cost discovery process into a sales call, which wastes the buyer's time and filters for patience rather than fit.

The honest version is a floor plus the variables. A website starts at ₹90,000; if you need eight languages, a headless CMS, and a migration from an old Wix site, it will not be ₹90,000, and we will say so before you pay anything.

How to compare quotes without getting burned

Ask every vendor the same four questions. The answers separate a real engineering partner from a reseller faster than any portfolio does.

• Who owns the code and the cloud accounts when we're done? (If the answer is anything but 'you', the low price is a lease.)
• What is explicitly not included in this number?
• Who writes the code — your team, or a subcontractor?
• What does it cost to change something after launch?

Common questions

What is the cheapest way to get custom software built in India?

A freelancer, at ₹30,000–₹80,000 for a small build. That is genuinely the right choice for a single simple project with no integrations and no ongoing changes. It stops being the right choice the moment the software has to run something the business depends on daily, because a single freelancer is a single point of failure.

Why is custom software more expensive than SaaS?

Because you pay the build cost once instead of a licence fee forever. A ₹6,00,000 custom CRM overtakes a ₹15,000/month SaaS subscription in about 40 months — sooner if the SaaS charges per user. Custom wins when your workflow doesn't fit the product; SaaS wins when it does.

Do these prices include GST?

No. All published figures are exclusive of GST, which is charged at the applicable rate on top.

How are payments structured?

40% to start, 40% at build milestone, 20% on launch. Scope, price, and timeline are agreed in writing before the first payment.