Is your software quote fair, thin or padded?
Enter the price, timeline and what the proposal includes. The checker models a fair range for that scope and team location, flags missing QA, IP and warranty terms, and checks whether a vendor that claims to use AI is passing any of the efficiency on to you.
Describe the quote you received
Enter the price, timeline and what is included. The checker compares it with a modelled fair range and flags what to question.
- Your quote$240,000
- Fair range, low end$190,000
- Fair range, high end$340,000
- Traditional team midpoint$270,000
- AI-native team midpoint$220,000
- Engineering$140,000
- Discovery$13,000
- UX / UI design$26,000
- QA & testing$33,000
- Project management$24,000
- DevOps & deployment$12,000
- Documentation (missing)$5,800
- Warranty period (missing)$7,900
- Amber: No warranty periodA 30 to 90 day bug-fix period after launch is common. Without it, every fix is billable.
- Amber: No documentationWithout documentation, switching vendors or hiring in-house later costs far more.
- Green: Price is within the modelled rangeThe total is plausible for this scope, team location and delivery approach.
- Green: Timeline is plausibleWithin the typical 13 to 23 weeks for this scope.
- Green: QA and testing includedAsk what is automated and what is tested manually before each release.
- Green: IP transfer coveredCheck it transfers on each payment, not only on final completion.
- Green: Milestone paymentsPaying against accepted deliverables keeps incentives aligned.
- Adding the missing items (documentation, warranty period) later would typically cost about $17,000 more.
- The quote works out to about $117 per modelled hour, against a typical $120 for Western Europe / UK.
- At that rate and timeline, the budget pays for roughly 2.8 full-time people. The modelled team is about 5 including design, QA and management.
- Which assumptions keep this price low, and what would trigger a change request?
- What happens if we find bugs in the first 60 days after launch?
- Where do your AI efficiencies show up for us: price, timeline or scope?
- An AI-native team's fair midpoint for this scope is about $220,000, against $270,000 for a traditional team under these assumptions.
- AI savings are real on routine code, tests and integrations, and much smaller on discovery, decisions and novel logic.
- Whatever the vendor says about AI, confirm AI-generated code is reviewed by a senior engineer and that the IP clause covers it.
The fair range models only the line items you selected. Rates, effort and AI multipliers are indicative assumptions, not a valuation of any specific vendor.
Indicative only. We will send the inputs above with your message so a senior engineer can sanity-check them.
Six lenses on a software development quote
Price alone tells you very little. The checker reads a quote the way a senior engineer reviewing a proposal would, and every lens changes the result.
Price against scope
A modelled midpoint is built from typical engineering hours for your product type, size and complexity, priced at blended rates for the vendor’s location.
Line items included
The fair range covers only what the quote includes, so a cheap quote that leaves out testing is compared like for like, then flagged for the gap.
Timeline realism
Quoted weeks are compared with a typical delivery window, and the budget is converted into the number of full-time people it can actually pay for.
Contract protections
Missing IP transfer, warranty periods or a written scope are flagged, because these decide what happens when something goes wrong.
Payment structure
Large deposits weaken your negotiating position. Milestone payments tied to accepted work keep both sides aligned.
AI in delivery
A vendor working AI-native typically needs fewer hours for routine work. The checker shows whether that shows up anywhere in the price.
If a vendor builds with AI, ask where the savings go.
Most development agencies now use AI coding tools in some form, and the better ones run agentic workflows where engineers direct and review AI-generated code instead of typing every line. For the same scope, that usually means fewer engineer-hours on boilerplate, tests, integrations and documentation.
Those savings can reach you in three ways: a lower price, a shorter timeline, or more scope for the same budget. All three are legitimate. What should raise a question is a proposal that highlights AI in the sales deck while pricing and scheduling the work exactly like a traditional build.
Equally, be careful with quotes that are suspiciously cheap because “AI does the work”. AI-written code still needs senior engineers to design the architecture, review every change and own security. A quote that has no room for that review is buying speed now and a rewrite later.
What a software development quote should include
Indicative shares of a complete first-release budget with a traditional team. Proposals structure these differently, but every item should be somewhere.
| What it covers | Typical share | If it is missing | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Engineering | Backend, frontend, mobile, integrations | About 50 to 60% | Not a real quote |
| Discovery | Workshops, requirements, technical plan | About 3 to 6% | Scope gaps become change requests |
| UX / UI design | User flows, screens, design system | About 8 to 12% | Developers design as they go |
| QA and testing | Test plans, automated tests, regression | About 10 to 15% | You find the bugs after launch |
| Project management | Planning, reporting, sign-offs | About 7 to 10% | The coordination falls on you |
| DevOps, docs, warranty | Deployments, monitoring, handover, bug-fix period | About 7 to 12% combined | Hard to run, hand over or fix cheaply |
| IP transfer | Ownership of code, designs and data | A contract clause, not a cost | You may not own what you paid for |
Shares vary with product type and team. AI-native delivery tends to reduce engineering, QA and documentation hours more than discovery and project management.
A fair price is not the same as a good quote.
A quote can sit comfortably inside the modelled range and still be risky, because the red flags that hurt most are rarely about price. No written scope, no IP clause and a heavy deposit together are a bigger problem than a quote 20 percent above the midpoint. Read the flags before the verdict.
Low quotes deserve particular care. Sometimes a vendor is genuinely efficient, has built something similar before, or works AI-native. More often, a very low number means testing, deployment or project management are excluded, junior staff will do the work, or the vendor expects to recover margin through change requests. The checker’s estimate of what missing items would cost if added later is a useful number to put in front of them.
High quotes are not automatically padded either. Senior teams, regulated industries and vendors taking fixed-price risk all price higher. The right response is to ask for a breakdown by role, hours and phase, then decide whether the extra cost buys you something you need.
Questions we often hear
How do I know if a software development quote is fair?
Compare it against a clear scope, typical effort for that type of product and realistic rates for the vendor’s location, and check that testing, project management, deployment and IP transfer are included. Getting two or three quotes against the same written scope helps, but only if you compare them line by line rather than on the total.
Why are software development quotes so different?
Vendors make different assumptions about scope, quality, team seniority and risk, and they operate at very different rates. One quote may include discovery, design, QA and a warranty while another covers only coding. Differences of several times for the same brief are common, which is why the included line items matter as much as the price.
Is a cheap app development quote a red flag?
Not always, but it is a reason to ask more questions. Very low quotes often exclude testing, deployment or project management, rely on junior developers, or leave scope vague so that change requests make up the difference. Ask what is excluded and what would trigger extra charges before comparing it with other quotes.
Should AI make my software quote cheaper?
If the vendor genuinely works AI-native, the same scope usually needs fewer engineer-hours, so you should see the benefit in price, timeline or scope. The saving is smaller for discovery, design decisions and novel logic, and the vendor still needs senior review of AI-generated code, so a sensible reduction is more credible than a dramatic one.
What payment terms are normal for software development?
Milestone-based payments tied to accepted deliverables are common for fixed-price projects, often with a modest deposit of 10 to 30 percent. Time and materials billing is normal for ongoing or evolving work, ideally with weekly reporting and a budget cap. Paying half or more upfront leaves you with little bargaining power if the project slips.
Related reading and tools
Want a senior engineer to read the proposal?
Send us the result from the quote checker and a few lines about the project. We will review the scope, price and contract terms from the buyer’s side, and tell you honestly whether it looks sound.
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