Contents
- Enterprise software development is expensive because it is complex.
- Clutch.co's 2024-2025 survey of enterprise software development pricing puts custom platform builds in the $500,000 to $5,000,000 range, with the median enterprise project landing between $750,000 and $1,500,000.
- PRJ-01 was not built by cutting corners or shipping a prototype.
- If you are budgeting $780,000 to $1,560,000 for a custom platform build, the market will take your money.
Published: February 2026 | Stealth Labz — CEM Validation Portfolio Keywords: enterprise software development cost, custom platform build cost, how much does enterprise software cost
The Setup
Enterprise software development is expensive because it is complex. A platform that ingests data from 12 sources, resolves identities across touchpoints, processes transactions through 3 payment providers, manages subscription billing across 9 plans, and tracks revenue attribution from first touch to lifetime value is not a weekend project. It is the kind of system that enterprise buyers expect to pay between $500,000 and $5,000,000 to build, depending on scope and vendor.
The conventional approach follows a predictable arc: requirements gathering (2-3 months), architecture and design (1-2 months), iterative development sprints (6-12 months), QA and testing (2-3 months), deployment and hardening (1-2 months). A 5-person team minimum. A project manager to coordinate. A technical architect to design. Each phase adds cost, and each handoff introduces delay.
This model fails not because the people are incompetent, but because the structure carries overhead that scales with the team, not with the output. A 5-person team does not build 5x faster than one person with the right tooling. It builds approximately 1.5x to 2x faster while costing 5x more, because 40-60% of team time goes to coordination: standups, sprint planning, code reviews, documentation, knowledge transfer, and the meeting-about-the-meeting that no one admits to scheduling.
What the Data Shows
External: What Enterprise Platforms Cost to Build
Clutch.co's 2024-2025 survey of enterprise software development pricing puts custom platform builds in the $500,000 to $5,000,000 range, with the median enterprise project landing between $750,000 and $1,500,000. These figures cover mid-market US development shops — not Big Four consulting firms or offshore discount operations.
The COCOMO II (Constructive Cost Model) provides a formula-based estimate. For a system with 194,954 lines of code — the actual size of PRJ-01 — COCOMO II projects a cost of $2,404,350 to $3,900,000, depending on complexity multipliers and team experience adjustments.
Gartner's custom application development benchmarks corroborate this range, noting that enterprise platforms with 100+ database tables, 20+ external integrations, and multi-tenant architecture typically fall in the $1M to $3M range when developed by US-based teams over 12 to 24 months.
| Estimation Method | Cost Range | Timeline |
|---|---|---|
| Clutch.co mid-market survey | $500K–$5M (median $750K–$1.5M) | 12–24 months |
| COCOMO II (194,954 LOC) | $2,404,350–$3,900,000 | Model-dependent |
| Gartner enterprise benchmark | $1M–$3M | 12–24 months |
| US mid-market development | $780,000–$1,560,000 | 12–18 months |
| US premium development | $1,500,000–$3,000,000+ | 12–24 months |
| Internal 5-person team | $960,000–$1,440,000 | 12–18 months |
These are not theoretical projections. They are market rates that enterprise buyers pay today.
Internal: What PRJ-01 Actually Cost
PRJ-01 — a Customer Data Platform built on Laravel 10 — was constructed in 74 active development days (October 8, 2025 through January 31, 2026) for a build cost of $16,800.
| Metric | Value |
|---|---|
| Lines of code | 194,954 |
| Database tables | 135 |
| Eloquent models | 112 |
| Controllers | 104 |
| External integrations | 20 (12 inbound, 8 outbound) |
| Leads processed (production) | 616,543 |
| Contact points resolved | 958,937 |
| Transactions processed | 75,125 |
| Total commits | 1,394 |
| Active build days | 74 |
| Build cost | $16,800 |
| Operating expenses (Oct 2025–Jan 2026) | $3,855 |
| Total cost (build + operating) | $20,655 |
For context on scale: SQLite is approximately 155,800 lines of code. WordPress is approximately 160,636 lines. PRJ-01 at 194,954 lines sits between these two widely-used open source projects in codebase size.
The Cost Multiple
| Comparison | Market Rate | Actual Build | Multiple |
|---|---|---|---|
| vs. US mid-market (low) | $780,000 | $16,800 | 46x |
| vs. US mid-market (high) | $1,560,000 | $16,800 | 93x |
| vs. internal team (low) | $960,000 | $16,800 | 57x |
| vs. COCOMO II (low) | $2,404,350 | $16,800 | 143x |
The $16,800 is not an estimate. It is the actual contractor cost documented in the QB-verified source of truth spreadsheet (28_Month_Source_of_Truth_1.xlsx). The market replacement values are sourced from FullStack 2025 Price Guide, Keyhole Software 2026 Benchmarks, Qubit Labs 2026, and COCOMO II calculations.
What PRJ-01 Replaced
Before PRJ-01 existed, the operation ran on six separate SaaS vendors at a combined cost of $1,565 per month ($18,780 per year). Over the 28-month operating period, $19,909 was spent on these vendors before PRJ-01 displaced them entirely.
| Vendor | Function | Monthly Cost | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Konnektive CRM | Order management, CRM, affiliate tracking | $583 | Replaced |
| TrackDesk | Affiliate tracking and payouts | $499 | Replaced |
| Socioboard | Social media management | $143 | Replaced |
| SendGrid/Twilio | Email/SMS messaging | $180 | Replaced |
| Klaviyo | Email marketing automation | $60 | Replaced |
| Sonetel | Phone/communications | $100 | Replaced |
| Total | $1,565/mo | $0/mo now |
PRJ-01 did not just cost less to build than the market rate. It eliminated $1,565/month in ongoing SaaS dependency. The payback period on the $16,800 build cost — measured against SaaS displacement alone — was 10.7 months.
How It Works
PRJ-01 was not built by cutting corners or shipping a prototype. 194,954 lines of code across 135 database tables, 104 controllers, and 20 external integrations is a full production system. The cost collapsed for structural reasons.
CEM template reuse. PRJ-01 was built after several prior systems in the portfolio had established reusable patterns for authentication, payment processing, admin interfaces, and deployment. The operator — Michael George Keating — carried the full architectural context from prior builds. No architecture discovery phase. No requirements gathering meetings. No knowledge transfer from a departing team member.
74 active days, not 12-18 months. The build timeline compressed because a single operator with AI tools eliminates coordination overhead. No standups. No sprint planning. No code review queues. No waiting for the architect to approve the QA engineer's test plan. The 1,394 commits across 74 active days average 18.8 commits per active day — a velocity that reflects continuous execution, not meeting-interrupted sprints.
Contractor cost was $16,800, not $780,000. CON-01 contributed 10.7% of commits (dashboard work) during a focused sweep. The remaining 86.8% was the operator. AI-assisted scaffolding (Claude Code) contributed 2.5%. The total external human cost was contained because the operator did not need to delegate architecture, QA, project management, or DevOps to separate people.
What This Means for Enterprise Buyers
If you are budgeting $780,000 to $1,560,000 for a custom platform build, the market will take your money. Clutch.co, COCOMO II, and Gartner all validate that this is the going rate. A 5-person team over 12-18 months will deliver a system — eventually.
The PRJ-01 data shows that the same scope of system — 194,954 lines of code, 135 database tables, 20 integrations, 616,543 leads processed in production — was built for $16,800 in 74 active days. The 46x to 93x cost multiple is not because the product is inferior. It is because the organizational model that usually consumes $700,000+ of that budget did not exist.
The question for enterprise budget holders is not whether $780K is a fair price — it is, given the cost structure it assumes. The question is whether that cost structure is the only one available. The audited data says it is not.
Related: C3_S61: ROI on AI-Assisted Development | C3_S62: Engineering Team vs Solo Operator | C3_S66: Monthly Burn Collapse
References
- Clutch.co (2024–2025). "Enterprise Software Development Pricing." Custom platform build cost survey data.
- Boehm, B.W. et al. "COCOMO II Cost Estimation Model." Formula-based software cost estimation framework.
- Gartner. "Custom Application Development Benchmarks." Enterprise platform cost and timeline data.
- FullStack (2025). "Price Guide." Software development pricing benchmarks.
- Keyhole Software (2026). "Development Cost Benchmarks." Custom software project pricing data.
- Keating, M.G. (2026). "Case Study: The PRJ-01 Product Story." Stealth Labz. Read case study