Software Total Cost of Ownership Calculator
The build quote is only the down payment. Real total cost of ownership is the build plus every year you host, maintain and support the software. Set your numbers below to see the honest multi-year TCO of a custom build, and where the money actually goes.
How it works
The total cost of ownership (TCO) of custom software is the sum of what you pay once and what you keep paying every year it runs. The build is a single upfront cost; hosting, maintenance and support are recurring, so they scale with your time horizon. Look only at the build quote and you'll routinely under-budget by a wide margin.
Maintenance is the line most teams get wrong. A working system still needs bug fixes, dependency and security updates, and small changes as your business shifts, which is why the accepted planning figure is 15-20% of the original build cost per year. Hosting covers cloud, databases and third-party services; support covers monitoring, on-call and any help desk or SLA you commit to.
This calculator adds those four buckets over your chosen 3, 5 or 7-year window so you can see the real number and, just as important, where it goes, often the running costs quietly overtake the build itself.
TCO = build cost + (hosting/mo × 12 × years) + (build cost × maintenance % × years) + (support/mo × 12 × years)
To pin down the build figure first, run your scope through the software development cost calculator, or weigh custom against off-the-shelf with the build vs buy calculator.