TL;DR — 2026 UK software development pricing benchmarks
| Engagement |
Typical UK range |
Magora |
| Hourly day rate (product-engineering house) | £45-90 | £45-85 |
| Coded prototype | £3,000-15,000 | Free (+ written analysis from senior PO) |
| Discovery sprint (2 weeks) | £8,000-30,000 | From £3,000 |
| Startup MVP | £25,000-80,000 | From £10,000 |
| Full production mobile or web project | £50,000-300,000+ | From £30,000 |
| AI / ML production build | £40,000-250,000+ | Scoped after Discovery |
| Bespoke enterprise CRM | £80,000-500,000+ | Scoped after Discovery |
| Monthly maintenance retainer | £2,000-12,000 | £3,500-9,000 |
Numbers above assume in-house, senior-led delivery from a London-based UK-registered agency. Offshore and tier-1 consultancies are covered separately below.
Where the money actually goes
A £100,000 UK software project typically breaks down as:
- Senior engineering (50-60%) — the people writing production code.
- Senior Product Owner + Project Management (10-15%) — scoping, sequencing, blocker-removal.
- Design (UX + UI, 10-15%) — wireframes, prototypes, full mocks.
- QA (5-10%) — automated tests, regression, manual.
- DevOps + infrastructure setup (5-10%) — CI/CD, cloud, security baseline.
- Project administration + risk buffer (5-10%) — contracts, contingency, hand-off.
When an offshore agency quotes you 60% less for "the same project", they have removed 80% of the Product Owner time and 50% of the QA time. The code ships, but it ships the wrong thing — or breaks at the first production load.
UK software development pricing by tier
The UK market sorts into five clear tiers. Pick the right one for your project type and risk tolerance:
Tier 1 — Offshore freelancers (£15-30 / hour)
- Solo developers on freelance platforms or direct contracts in India, Pakistan, Eastern Europe, Philippines.
- Strength: raw hourly cost is unbeatable for narrow, well-specified work.
- Weakness: no Product Owner, no QA cycle, no compliance, no UK legal accountability. Time-zone drag adds 30% to delivery time.
- Right for: small tasks where you (or your in-house team) can specify exactly what is needed and review every commit.
Tier 2 — Offshore agencies with UK-fronted PM (£25-50 / hour)
- Companies registered in the UK with sales and PM in London, delivery in Eastern Europe or India.
- Strength: language and PM layer fixes the worst freelancer problems.
- Weakness: the PM is the single bottleneck. Quality varies by which engineer you happen to get. IP-transfer enforceable only if you sue in the offshore jurisdiction.
- Right for: medium-complexity builds where you can tolerate variance and have a strong in-house Product Owner pushing back.
Tier 3 — London-based product-engineering houses (£45-90 / hour) ← Magora
- UK-registered, in-house teams of 30-300, English-law contracts, senior PO on every project.
- Strength: consistent quality, full accountability, compliance by default, senior-led delivery from a single team.
- Weakness: higher hourly rate than offshore.
- Right for: exploratory product work, regulated industries (FinTech, healthcare, education), AI builds, anything where the brief will evolve mid-build.
Tier 4 — Boutique London digital agencies (£60-140 / hour)
- 5-30 person agencies, often design-led, branding crossover.
- Strength: beautiful UI, strong design opinion.
- Weakness: engineering depth varies wildly. Many subcontract backend work.
- Right for: consumer-facing apps where design is the differentiator and backend complexity is low.
Tier 5 — Tier-1 consultancies (£120-250 / hour)
- Global consulting groups offering enterprise digital programmes.
- Strength: programme delivery at scale, hundreds-of-millions budgets, board-level reporting.
- Weakness: the £200/hour rate is mostly hierarchy. Junior consultants do most of the work.
- Right for: enterprise digital transformation programmes ≥ £1M, not product builds.
Magora's pricing — published openly
Free working prototype + senior Product Owner analysis
A senior Product Owner will scope the core flow with you, and we will ship a coded prototype — yours to keep, whether you hire us or not. Cost: £0. No commitment, no charge. Typically 5-10 working days from kickoff.
This exists because most engagements that fail, fail at scope — not at code. The free prototype phase de-risks the scope question for both sides before either spends real money.
Discovery sprint — from £3,000
Two weeks of senior Product Owner and Solution Architect time. Output:
- Validated problem statement and user-journey map.
- Costed architecture and stack choice.
- Working prototype of the riskiest flow.
- Phased delivery roadmap with realistic timelines.
- Fixed-price quote for the next phase.
You can take the Discovery output to another agency for a comparable quote — we have had clients do this. The Discovery output stays useful even if you choose someone else. Book a Discovery sprint →
Startup MVP — from £10,000
Production-grade product in users' hands inside a calendar quarter (6-8 weeks). Scope:
- One or two core flows, fully working.
- Production hosting (AWS or GCP) with monitoring.
- Authentication, user management, baseline analytics.
- One mobile platform (iOS or Android) OR one web platform.
- 30 days of post-launch maintenance included.
Above £10,000, additional flows, second mobile platform, third-party integrations and AI features are quoted as add-ons. Read more about MVP development →
Full production mobile or web project — from £30,000
End-to-end build for a real production audience. Typical scope:
- Multi-platform delivery (iOS + Android + web).
- Backend, admin panel, analytics, third-party integrations.
- Full QA cycle, automated testing, security audit.
- Cloud infrastructure, CI/CD, monitoring.
- Three months of post-launch maintenance included.
Most production projects land in the £30,000-£150,000 range. Larger enterprise builds, AI products, regulated platforms and bespoke CRMs are scoped individually after Discovery.
AI development
Scoped after Discovery. Indicative pricing:
- AI proof of concept (4-6 weeks): from £15,000.
- LLM-powered application (production-grade): from £40,000.
- RAG pipeline + vector database + API: from £30,000.
- Custom fine-tuned open-source model: from £25,000.
- AI agents for internal automation: from £20,000.
All AI work is GDPR-compliant by default, with an EU AI Act readiness review before deployment. Read more about AI and ML development →
Bespoke enterprise software / CRM
Scoped after Discovery. Typical range £80,000-£500,000+. Engagements usually include domain modelling and integration with legacy systems, multi-role authentication, audit logging, GDPR data-subject tooling, bespoke workflows and automation tailored to the client's operations, and phased rollout to internal users with training and handover. Read more about bespoke software development →
Ongoing maintenance retainer — £3,500-9,000 / month
Post-launch, products need constant attention to stay competitive and secure. Magora's maintenance covers:
- Bug fixes (severity-tiered SLA).
- Product Backlog management from user feedback.
- Library and dependency updates.
- Security monitoring and patch cycle.
- Quarterly enhancement releases.
What changes the price
Five factors move a UK software project up or down the price scale:
- Number of platforms. iOS + Android + web is roughly 1.8× a single platform. iOS + Android + web + admin panel is roughly 2.3×.
- Regulatory burden. FinTech with FCA permissions, healthcare with NHS integration, or anything touching Open Banking adds 25-40% for compliance work that an unregulated build does not need.
- Third-party integrations. Each external system (Stripe, Twilio, HubSpot, Salesforce, custom legacy API) adds 5-15% depending on documentation quality.
- AI features. Bolting AI onto an existing app is cheap (LLM API integration). Building an AI-native product with custom models, RAG and agents is a separate engineering discipline that adds £20,000-£100,000+.
- Time pressure. Compressing 16-week delivery into 10 weeks adds 30% for overtime and parallelisation overhead.
Common pricing pitfalls
The "fixed price on a vague brief" trap. If an agency quotes you a flat number without Discovery, they have either inflated the price by 40% to cover unknowns or they will run out of money halfway through. Both end badly. The best UK software development companies insist on Discovery first.
The "we'll match the offshore quote" trap. A London agency that matches a £30,000 offshore quote on a £100,000 brief is cutting senior PO time, QA cycle and post-launch maintenance. The build ships; the product fails at first contact with real users.
The "we own a percentage of the IP" trap. Read the IP-transfer clause carefully. Some agencies retain rights to reuse code on "non-competing" projects — definition of "competing" buried in legal fine print.
The "junior team after sales" trap. The senior architect you meet at sales does not deliver the project. Ask in writing: "Confirm that the team meeting me today is the team delivering the work."
How to get an accurate quote from Magora
The fastest path is the free working prototype. We scope the core flow on a 30-minute call, then within two weeks you have a coded prototype in your hands and a written analysis from a senior PO. No charge, no commitment.
From that point, Discovery (£3,000) gives you a fixed-price quote for the full build. Or you take the Discovery output to another agency for comparison — both options are fine with us.
📞 +44 20 7183 5820 · ✉️ sales@magora.co.uk · 📍 The Tea Building, 56 Shoreditch High Street, London E1 6JJ
Book a discovery call →
FAQ — UK software development costs
What is the average cost of software development in the UK?
Median project size across London product-engineering houses sits around £60,000-£120,000. MVPs from £10,000, full production from £30,000, enterprise from £80,000+. Magora publishes full pricing above.
Why is UK software development more expensive than offshore?
You pay for in-house senior delivery, English-law contracts, GDPR and EU AI Act compliance by default, and a single accountable legal entity. Over an 18-month project lifecycle, the UK premium usually pays back through fewer rebuilds and fewer compliance incidents.
Can I get a fixed-price quote in the UK?
Yes — after Discovery. Any agency that fixed-prices a vague brief is either padding by 40% or will run out of budget. Magora's standard model: free prototype → £3,000 Discovery → fixed-price quote for the build.
Do you take payment in stages?
Yes. Standard Magora payment model: 25% on Discovery sign-off, 25% at the design milestone, 25% at the production-ready milestone, 25% on go-live. Adjustable for specific cash-flow constraints — speak to sales@magora.co.uk.
What is the cheapest realistic UK software development project?
The free working prototype + Discovery sprint at £3,000 gives you a working prototype and a roadmap. The cheapest production build starts at £10,000 for a Startup MVP. Below that, you are looking at offshore freelance, not a UK agency.
