Want to create your own software for your search or business? Here's a cost breakdown

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by a professional from University of California, Berkeley - Haas School of Business
in SF, CA, USA

3h ago

Want to create your own software for your search or business? Here's a cost breakdown

Lots of good convos about "custom software" for your search or business. Here's one view of how much it will cost you. You may be surprised at pricing... For those starting out, ask "how many people need to use my software?" If its just you and your desktop, which is likely true at the start : $100/month. Buy the Claude Max subscription and use Cowork or the chatGPT Pro sub to use Codex. That's the whole stack. You describe what you want (or send up transcripts of yourself explaining in great detail what you want) and answer a lot of questions with your agent to define the scope. AI writes and runs the code on your machine. You test and iterate on that desktop. Automations, reporting, CRMs, etc. Anything that runs on your desktop for an audience of one. If you want more people to use your software OR access your tool over the internet on a phone while your out : ~$150/month The moment a second person needs your tool or you want to use your tool while away from your desktop and on your phone : 1. You need to "deploy" your software. I.e., put your software on a computer that's always on, so it has a web address anyone can visit. Vercel does this: $20/mo. 2. A data store. I.e, a database, so everyone sees the same data instead of whatever's on your laptop. Supabase: $25/mo 3. You need github to store your code base. It's free for individuals. Think of it like a Dropbox for code: it lets any LLM contribute to the code base and allows you to stop saving to that single desktop and push all changes to the cloud. That's all. I am of course simplifying but, at the start, this is all you need. Am I undercounting costs? Here are some exceptions : If your software needs to send emails or notifications : add Resend ($20/mo). And if it has to log into websites and click around like a person, which is common in a lot of automations, add Browserbase ($20/mo). This is dependent on what you want to do. $100 to start today. ~$150 the moment it's for others. ~$185 with some simple add-ons that likely help with automations for your company

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reply by a searcher 1h ago
from University of British Columbia in Oakland, CA, USA

Building software for one self can be as cheap as a dozen dollars a month with open models, free tiers, free credits from Google Cloud, and even allowing a few users to use it for free. I think it all depends on your skill level and who you partner with. If you're someone who is really technical, you can basically get going with essentially nothing, including AI credits, storage, hosting, and github. But if you don't know about software and if you want someone to build it in a way that's sustainable, maintainable, and doesn't go down, and have someone to fix things when things go down, then you can really run the gamut.

reply by a professional 39m ago
from University of California, Berkeley in SF, CA, USA

Nice! This isn't meant to be prescriptive "do this now" more like a look at costs for working custom software. If necessary. Most folks may not need all of this. True!