Short answer
In 2026 a fixed-scope system covering one workflow end to end typically costs EUR 1,000–4,000 and ships in two to four weeks. A core operational platform covering orders, inventory, customers, and reporting typically costs EUR 6,000–25,000 delivered in phases. Ongoing ownership of a live system typically costs EUR 600+ per month. These are the bands Atomberg quotes in; anything materially cheaper is usually a template, and anything materially more expensive is usually paying for agency overhead rather than engineering.
Why the price fell
Custom software used to be expensive because most of the effort was mechanical: scaffolding an application, wiring authentication, writing CRUD screens, building integrations, producing test coverage, then repeating all of it every time the requirement changed. That work needed a team and a year, which is why a bespoke system was a capital project reserved for enterprises.
AI-assisted engineering removes most of that mechanical cost. What is left is the part that was always the valuable part: understanding the operation, deciding the data model, choosing what not to build, and making the system survive contact with the people who use it every day.
What you are actually paying for
Assume the code is now the cheap part. A fair quote is priced around judgement and risk, not keystrokes.
- Process mapping — what the business really does, including the exceptions nobody documented
- Data model design — the decision that determines whether the system can still be extended in three years
- Migration — getting historic spreadsheet data in without corrupting it
- Adoption — training, permissions, and edge cases, which is where most internal systems quietly die
- Ownership after launch — a live system that nobody maintains degrades within months
How to sanity-check a quote
Ask for the first phase to be fixed scope with a working output. If a supplier cannot describe one workflow they will put into production in weeks, the estimate is guesswork and the risk sits with you.
Ask who owns the code and the data. If the answer involves per-seat licensing to the builder, you are buying a subscription with extra steps.
Ask what happens in month four. The value of an operational system is created after launch, so a quote with no plan for that period is incomplete.
A worked example of payback
Payback is arithmetic, not optimism. If three people each lose six hours a week to manual admin at a blended internal cost of EUR 30 per hour, that is roughly EUR 2,300 of recoverable time a month, which pays back a EUR 6,000 core system in around three months.
Treat that as a planning estimate, not a promise. The honest version of this claim requires measuring the workflow before and after the rebuild, which is why our pilots include a before/after figure on the specific process we replace.
Written by the Atomberg team, based on systems we build and run for European operators. See client work.