Fixed-Price Software Development: From Prototype to Production in 5–13 Weeks
CQUELLE builds software at a fixed price and a fixed date. A scoping week costs €3,700. A build costs €11,000 to €32,000, takes 4 to 12 weeks, and ends with a tested product deployed on European infrastructure, with a 30-day warranty.
Most companies that ask about this are in one of two situations. They have an idea or an AI-generated prototype and need it to become a real product: users, data, hosting, compliance. Or they have a system built by someone else that is not doing what it should. Both need the same thing: a number, a date, and a partner who answers for the result.
- Scoping week · 5 working days
- €3,700
- Starter build · 4 weeks
- €11,000
- Standard build · 8 weeks
- €21,500
- Growth build · 12 weeks
- €32,000
- Hosting, Frankfurt · from go-live
- €150–€1,200 / month
- Operate plan · 12 months
- €1,350–€5,500 / month
Fixed prices, net of VAT. Half the scoping week is credited against any package started within 60 days.
Two ways in, three build sizes
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 fixed price is confirmed. Larger scopes than Growth are priced the same way.
Scoping week
€3,700User stories with acceptance criteria, an architecture sketch, a compliance read, and a fixed price for the build.
Half of it credited against any package started within 60 days.
Codebase assessment
€4,200A prioritized findings report on an existing system: what is load-bearing, what is at risk, what it takes to reach your target.
Half of it credited against a follow-on engagement.
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.
Put a package together
Pick a way in, a build size, where it runs, and who keeps it running. The total and the timeline update as you go. When you take it to the fit check, the message is prefilled with your selection, so the call starts from your numbers.
Where you start
Every build begins with the scoping week. The assessment is for a system someone else built.
The build
One story is one user-facing capability with acceptance criteria. You approve the list before the price is confirmed.
Add stories beyond the package
Small, medium, or large. Each size has a fixed price, agreed in writing before work starts.
Where it runs
Managed platform in Frankfurt, billed from go-live. Or your own cloud account.
After launch
A monthly plan for keeping it running and improving it. 12 months, billed monthly. Unused hours roll over one month.
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. 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.
Agreed in writing before work starts. Never priced after the fact.
- 1
The story list is the contract.
What is in the list is included. What is not in the list is a new story.
- 2
New stories have a price, not a discussion.
Small €700, medium €1,400, large €2,800, agreed in writing before work starts. You decide whether to add it to the package, move it to the operate plan's included hours, or leave it for later.
- 3
The date holds.
Adding a story extends the date by its size. Otherwise a story is swapped out to make room.
- 4
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.
- 5
Assumptions are written down with the price.
If one turns out wrong, the delta is a named change request, agreed before the work happens.
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 the monthly fee. 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.
| Plan | Sized for | Monthly |
|---|---|---|
| Hosting S | Up to 100 active users, about 250,000 requests a month, shared database | €150 |
| Hosting M | Up to 1,000 active users, about 2.5 million requests a month, dedicated database | €450 |
| Hosting L | Up to 10,000 active users, about 25 million requests a month, dedicated compute and database | €1,200 |
Above Hosting L, or for private networking or data residency outside Germany, we quote individually.
Infrastructure setup
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
Software needs someone who keeps it running and keeps improving it. Included hours are a monthly total per plan, not added across plans. Additional hours cost €55. Hosting and third-party costs are passed through at cost. A plan replaces a hire for the routine work. Plans run for 12 months and are billed monthly. Unused hours roll over one month.
Essential
- Monitoring, alerting, backups
- Security and dependency updates
- Up to 10 hours of changes and fixes
- Response by the next business day
Standard
- Everything in Essential
- 40 included hours in total
- A named engineer
- Response within 4 business hours
- Release review and sign-off
- A monthly report on what shipped and what it cost
Regulated
- Everything in Standard
- 80 included hours in total
- Release attestations with evidence for your auditors
- Quarterly architecture and roadmap review
- Support during audits
AI, ownership, and the guarantees that travel with every package
How we work with AI
We use AI-assisted development tools every day, 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 AI-assisted change goes through the same review, tests, and acceptance as hand-written code, 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 AI delivery setup we install alongside your code — the instructions, checks, and review agents that let the team 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
- Fixed prices rest on written assumptions. If one turns out wrong, the delta is a named change request agreed before the work happens.
- Rates are guaranteed for 12 months from your first project.
- Time spent learning your domain in the first package is credited against the first operate plan or time-and-material invoice.
- 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 team that re-plans every sprint fits better than a fixed list.
How the dedicated team model worksYou 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.
Nobody on your side can accept a story within five 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 the dedicated team model. It is also the better choice once the product has found its users.
Compare with a dedicated teamQuestions 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?
The first step is a conversation with Eugen
He has written software since 2005 and reads the pull requests himself. Bring the package you put together above, or nothing at all. Under NDA if you prefer. You leave with a technical read on your situation and a recommendation on which package fits, or the answer that none of them does.
Or write to welcome@cquelle.com. We reply within 48 hours.