Free tool · decision support
Build vs Buy Calculator
Four ways to get software built, compared on the two things that actually decide it: what the first year costs, and how long before real users can touch it.
Free 15-minute fit check · no equity · no retainer
Hire in-house
~$90,000 · ~22 weeks
Recruiting, onboarding and management before a single line of product code. Hardest option to reverse.
Freelance developer
~$6,000 · ~8 weeks
Lowest headline price and direct access. Quality, security and availability all depend on one individual, and ownership is often undocumented.
Development agency
~$40,000 · ~16 weeks
Process, capacity and accountability — priced accordingly. Discovery and change orders make the final number hard to predict up front.
Fixed-price MVP sprint
~$3,500 · ~2 weeks
Fixed scope, fixed price, code transferred to you. Scope is deliberately capped: genuinely large platforms need staging into multiple sprints.
How this is calculated
No black box.
First-year cost
Order-of-magnitude planning figures, including the ramp-up and management overhead founders leave out of hiring maths.
Time to real users
Measured from decision to something usable in production, not to a first design or a signed contract.
Reversibility
The unpriced factor. A sprint you can stop after 14 days carries far less risk than a salary or a six-month contract.
Every figure here is derived from Shiftmind Build's own fixed-price sprint model, not from third-party market surveys. It is an estimate for planning, not a quote. The written blueprint is where scope and price become fixed.
Next step
Find out if your idea fits in 14 days.
Tell us what you want to build. We reply within one business day with a straight yes, no, or here is what we would cut.