Fixed-price software development: results you approve, on a date, with the price known before the build starts
Fixed-price software development at CQUELLE means you approve a list of stories with acceptance criteria during a 5-day scoping week, the proposal names one price for exactly that list, and the build ships as accepted stories on a fixed date: up to 8, 20 or 32 stories in 4, 8 or 12 weeks, with a 30-day warranty.
The price on a fixed-price build is not an estimate dressed up as a number. It is the sum of stories you have approved, each with acceptance criteria, and it is written in the proposal after the scoping week rather than on this page. What this page does show is every package by name, duration and story count, and the rules that keep the price fixed once it is set.
| Scoping week | 5 working days | story list and one price |
| Codebase assessment | 5 working days | findings report |
| Starter build | 4 weeks | up to 8 stories |
| Standard build | 8 weeks | up to 20 stories |
| Growth build | 12 weeks | up to 32 stories |
| Hosting, Frankfurt | monthly, from go-live | S, M or L |
| Operate plan | monthly, 12-month term | Essential, Standard or Regulated |
Every price is quoted per scope in the proposal, after the scoping week. Half the scoping week is credited against any package started within 60 days.
The packages
Every build starts with the scoping week. We write the stories, in two working sessions with your decision-maker, and you approve the list before the price is confirmed. Larger scopes than Growth are priced the same way, inside a frame agreement.
Scoping week
User stories with acceptance criteria, an architecture sketch, a compliance read, and one price for the build. For an idea or a prototype.1
Codebase assessment
A prioritized findings report on an existing system: what is load-bearing, what is at risk, what it takes to reach your target.2
Starter
One core workflow, taken from prototype or idea to a deployed, tested product on European infrastructure.
Standard
A complete first release, with several workflows, roles, and integrations.
Growth
A first release plus a second milestone, integrations and reporting.
Infrastructure setup
Infrastructure as code in your own AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, or Hetzner account, instead of our managed platform.3
- 1 Half of the scoping week is credited against any package started within 60 days.
- 2 Half of the assessment is credited against a follow-on engagement.
- 3 Only needed if you do not use our managed platform in Frankfurt. See Hosting.
A package is priced as a result. A developer by the month is priced as time.
A Starter is a small senior team for four weeks, with the review, testing and deployment work that gets a workflow from prototype to production, priced as one result. Book a single developer by the month and you buy that person's time, whatever it produces. The difference shows the day something takes longer than planned: on a package, the overrun is our problem, and so is the 30-day warranty.
What you buy
- Starter package
- Up to 8 stories, tested and deployed, by a date
- One developer by the month
- One person, full-time, by the month
Who does the work
- Starter package
- The delivery system produces; an engineer reviews every change before it ships
- One developer by the month
- That person; review is whoever you assign to it
Overruns
- Starter package
- Ours
- One developer by the month
- Yours, at the monthly price
Pipeline and hosting setup
- Starter package
- Included
- One developer by the month
- Scoped as extra work, inside the booked time
After delivery
- Starter package
- 30-day warranty on delivered scope
- One developer by the month
- No warranty; the seat stays booked, or scales down with 30 days’ notice
Best when
- Starter package
- No engineering lead on your side, and you need a finished product
- One developer by the month
- You already run engineering in-house and need capacity
Put a scope together
Pick a way in, a build size, where it runs, and who keeps it running. The timeline updates as you go. When you take it to the discovery call, the message is prefilled with your selection, so the conversation starts from your scope. The price for it comes after the scoping week.
Add stories beyond the package
Small, medium or large. Each size gets its price in the proposal, agreed in writing before work starts.
| Small | 0 |
| Medium | 0 |
| Large | 0 |
What “production” means in these packages
A prototype that runs on one laptop is not a product. Every Prototype to production package, Starter included, ships with these six things.
- Authentication, roles, and a data model
- Versioned migrations, and an API contract shared between backend and frontend.
- Automated tests at every layer
- With a deployment pipeline to staging and production. Nothing reaches production unreviewed.
- Deployed on launch day
- On our managed platform in Frankfurt, ready for your first users. Or in your own cloud account, if you prefer.
- GDPR-ready, privacy by design
- Personal data mapped and minimized, export and erasure reachable for every data subject, consent stored as data, an audit trail per change.
- Data processing agreement
- Signed at handover. Hosting is in Germany by default.
- Handover and a 30-day warranty
- Documentation your own engineers could take over from, and a warranty on delivered scope.
The story list is the contract
A fixed price only works if the scope is written down in a unit both sides can count. Ours is the story: one user-facing capability with acceptance criteria, a list of what is out of scope, and a test scenario, sized small, medium or large, and capped at 20 hours of work in our public engineering handbook. Our team writes the stories during the scoping week, you approve them, the package includes a fixed number of them, and you accept each one against its written criteria.
The fixed-price disputes we have seen come down to a sentence in a proposal that both sides read differently. A story with a test scenario leaves less room for that.
The story list is the contract.
What is in the list is included. What is not in the list is a new story.
New stories have a price, not a discussion.
Small, medium or large, priced in writing before work starts. You decide whether to add it to the package, move it to the operate plan's included capacity, or leave it for later.
The date holds.
Adding a story extends the date by its size. Otherwise a story is swapped out to make room.
One decision-maker on your side.
A weekly demo, and acceptance within 5 business days of each delivery. Silence counts as accepted, so the schedule cannot stall on either side.
Assumptions are written down with the price.
If one turns out wrong, the delta is a named change request, agreed before the work happens.
A new story is sized, then priced
Small, medium or large. Each size has a price in your proposal, agreed in writing before work starts, and every size stays inside the story rules of the public handbook. Never priced after the fact.
You buy stories. A package is a fixed number of them with a date.
Every build on this page is a number of stories. Starter means up to 8 of them in 4 weeks, Growth up to 32 in 12. Standard and Growth also buy a lower price per story. Starter buys the date.
So you do not have to buy a package. After the scoping week you can order stories in monthly batches instead, each one priced by its size before it is built and invoiced after your acceptance. The date is set per batch. If a story grows during the build, we stop, split it, and price the new part before continuing.
A story ordered on its own ships through the same pipeline and carries the same 30-day warranty as one inside a package. The pipeline is set up once: included with hosting on our platform, or through the infrastructure setup package in your own cloud. The data processing agreement is signed before the first story. The first batch is at least 4 stories, so that nobody sets up a pipeline for a single small one. Once the product is live, an operate plan keeps it running between batches.
If your procurement team needs a frame agreement with call-offs, we contract it that way: a price list per story size, one call-off per batch, security and audit deliverables in the frame, and no open time-and-material budget for anyone to approve.
| Inside a package | A fixed number of stories with a fixed date. Standard and Growth cost less per story than Starter; with Starter you pay for the fixed date on a small scope. |
| In monthly batches | At least 4 stories per batch, each priced by size before it is built and invoiced after your acceptance. The date is set per batch. |
| Under a frame agreement | A price list per story size, one call-off per batch, security and audit deliverables in the frame. For procurement teams that need call-offs instead of a package. |
Hosting and operate plans are priced separately in every form.
Hosting: Frankfurt by default, your cloud on request
By default your product runs on our managed platform in Frankfurt, Germany: Kubernetes, PostgreSQL, TLS, daily backups with 30-day retention, uptime monitoring, and platform updates, all in one monthly fee sized by plan. Hosting is billed from the go-live date; the build packages include deployment, so there is nothing to pay for hosting before launch. Other locations on request.
Hosting S
Up to 100 active users, about 250,000 requests a month. Shared database.
Hosting M
Up to 1,000 active users, about 2.5 million requests a month. Dedicated database.
Hosting L
Up to 10,000 active users, about 25 million requests a month. Dedicated compute and database.
Above Hosting L, or for private networking or data residency outside Germany, we quote individually.
Your own infrastructure instead: 2 weeks, one price
If you want the product in your own AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, or Hetzner account: infrastructure as code, staging and production environments, the deployment pipeline, secrets management, backups, and monitoring, handed over with documentation. You pay the cloud provider directly, and the operate plans below apply unchanged.
Operate and evolve after launch
Each plan includes a monthly capacity for changes and fixes; unused capacity rolls over one month and no further, and capacity beyond it is priced in the plan. As an option, the delivery system that built the product stays around it: your feedback and new requirements flow into a per-client AI handbook, the system analyzes, fixes and implements, and our engineers review and release. Plans run for 12 months and are billed monthly.
Essential
- Included hours of changes and fixes a month: 10
- Monitoring, alerting, backups
- Security and dependency updates
- Response time: Next business day
Standard
- Included hours of changes and fixes a month: 40
- Monitoring, alerting, backups
- Security and dependency updates
- Response time: 4 business hours
- A named engineer
- Release review and sign-off
- Monthly report on what shipped
- Self-developing option: feedback and requirements handled by the delivery system, engineers release: Optional
Regulated
- Included hours of changes and fixes a month: 80
- Monitoring, alerting, backups
- Security and dependency updates
- Response time: 4 business hours
- A named engineer
- Release review and sign-off
- Monthly report on what shipped
- Self-developing option: feedback and requirements handled by the delivery system, engineers release: Optional
- Release attestations with evidence for your auditors
- Quarterly architecture and roadmap review
- Support during audits
Monthly fees per tier are in the proposal, next to the build.
AI, ownership, and the guarantees that travel with every package
How we work with AI
An AI delivery system built around your product produces most of the work, under a written policy we share on request. Your contract and that policy decide what gets processed. Personal data, credentials, and production data never do. Every generated change goes through the same review, tests, and acceptance as hand-written code, an engineer answers for every result that ships, and on request we work without AI tools and state what that does to effort and schedule.
What is yours and what is ours
All source code, data, infrastructure definitions, and documentation are your intellectual property, without restriction. The delivery setup we install alongside your code, the instructions, checks, and review agents that let the system work this way, remains CQUELLE's to use as we see fit. You keep the right to use it for your product. That setup never contains your company or product names, tokens, credentials, or any security-sensitive or privacy-sensitive content; those live in your code and configuration, which are yours.
Guarantees
- Prices rest on written assumptions. If one turns out wrong, the delta is a named change request agreed before the work happens.
- The per-story and monthly prices in your first proposal are held for 12 months.
- You keep everything we produce, whether or not you continue with us.
When a fixed price is the wrong fit
- Your roadmap changes weekly.
- A story list written in week one will be wrong by week four. A standing team that re-plans every sprint fits better than a fixed list. How a standing team works.
- You need more than 32 stories in the first release.
- We price that the same way, story by story, but it is no longer a package. Expect the scoping to take more than one week, and expect a frame agreement rather than a package.
- Nobody on your side can accept a story within 5 business days.
- The date holds because acceptance is prompt. Without one named decision-maker the schedule stalls, and a fixed date becomes a fiction.
- You want engineers inside your process, by the month, managed by you.
- That is a standing team, priced per role and month. It is also the better choice once the product has found its users and the roadmap is open-ended. What a standing team looks like.
Questions about fixed-price software development
What does fixed-price software development cost at CQUELLE?
How can the price stay fixed when requirements change?
What happens after the build is delivered?
Where is the software hosted, and is it GDPR-compliant?
Do you use AI tools to build, and who owns the result?
Can I buy stories without a package?
Where the price comes from
Take the scope you put together above into the discovery call, or send the prototype or the repository ahead of it under NDA. The scoping week that follows produces the story list, and the proposal names the price for that list. Nothing before that point costs anything, and nothing on this page is an order.