Free tool
Software effort estimator
Most cost questions are really effort questions wearing a currency symbol. This estimates the engineering effort a build takes, in person-weeks, and shows every assumption it used — so you can argue with the assumptions rather than the total.
Why ranges, and why these ranges
An estimate with no visible method is a guess with a decimal point. So here is the method this tool uses, and its limits.
Effort scales with the number of things that can be in a wrong state, not with the number of screens. Ten read-only screens are cheaper than three that write. That is why permissions, payments, tenancy and offline sync each add more than a handful of extra views — they multiply the states the system has to be correct in, and correctness is where engineering time actually goes.
The range widens as the build grows, because uncertainty compounds. A four-week build is knowable. A forty-week build contains decisions nobody has made yet, and any estimate that claims otherwise is describing a plan rather than a project.
What this tool cannot know: the state of the system you are replacing, how fast decisions get made on your side, and whether the process you are automating is written down anywhere. In our experience those three move a number further than any technical choice.