Guide
What a SaaS product costs to build
Building a SaaS product that small accounting firms pay for by card every month, with an admin panel behind it for you, costs $48,000 – $67,000 and takes 15–22 weeks. Charging the card again each month is about $2,000 of that, level with search as the smallest line in the build. A first version without automatic renewal costs about $20,000 less.
- $48,000 – $67,000
- A SaaS product with monthly card billing and an admin panel, 15–22 weeks
- $2,000
- What charging firms again every month adds, on top of taking the card
- 35%
- Less for a first version with no automatic renewal, 13–19 weeks
Written by
WhatWillMyAppCost
We build the estimator this site runs on, and we design and build custom mobile and web software for a living. Every figure below is the estimator’s own output, except the published vendor prices, which are read off each company’s own page and dated.
You’ve got an idea for software other businesses would pay you for every month. Maybe you’ve spent years inside an industry and watched every firm in it run on email and memory. Before you put money in, or ask anybody else to, you want to know what it costs to build. What you find online is price tiers with no product attached to them.
What a SaaS product costs and what’s in it, what monthly billing adds, which parts cost the most, and what a first version costs, all on one product: a tool small accounting firms use to keep track of their clients’ work. Stripe’s billing fee is the one figure read off somebody else’s page.
How much does it cost to build a SaaS product?
$48,000 – $67,000, over 15–22 weeks, for a product a few hundred people log in to at the start. It runs in the browser with nothing on phones. A logo and brand colors exist, no screens are drawn, and nothing’s built behind it yet. Here’s who does what.
A firm signs up on your site. The owner picks a plan, puts a card in and adds the rest of the firm, and the card gets charged again every month.
Everyone at the firm logs in to the same list of clients, showing what’s due for each one and who’s handling it, and they can search for a client. Nobody at one firm ever sees another firm’s clients.
The owner gets a dashboard with a few reports. They’re the only person at the firm who can change the plan, the card or who’s on the account.
You work from an admin panel of your own. You manage accounts, see who’s paying, and sort out a firm’s billing when something goes wrong.
The estimator has no line for keeping one firm’s clients away from another firm’s, so that work isn’t priced on its own anywhere on this page.
What the firms do in it is the part that’s yours. Open this description in the estimator and rewrite that part for your own product. If your sign-up, billing and admin panel work the same way, leave them as they are.
How much does subscription billing add to a SaaS build?
About $2,000 to charge firms again every month, measured by taking the renewal out and leaving everything else in. Take the card out as well, send firms an invoice from your accounting software, and the same product costs about $6,500 less.
- Firms pay an invoice you email them each month
- About $6,500 less than taking the card. Nothing in the product touches money. You send the invoices, you check who paid, and you chase the ones who didn’t.
- Firms put a card in when they sign up
- $48,000 – $67,000. The plan a firm picks decides what its people can open. The card gets charged every month without anybody touching it, and the owner can change plans or cancel without emailing you.
The renewal comes out small because it’s added to a build that already has accounts, a card on file and an admin panel. The estimator charges each feature after the biggest one a smaller share of its listed cost, because it reuses what’s built. On an app that already ships with only payments and a finance screen, fewer pieces sit ahead of it, and the guide to adding payments prices the same renewal higher.
Apple and Google stay out of it, since nothing’s on phones.
Running it costs a little every month too. Stripe Billing’s pay-as-you-go plan takes 0.7% of what you bill through it, so $10,000 a month in subscriptions costs $70 before the card fee. Stripe’s page, read on October 16, 2026, says that plan is best for low or unpredictable volume, and a new product has both. What it costs to add payments has the card rate, and what the app stores take from subscriptions if this ever ships to phones.
Which parts of a SaaS cost the most?
Your admin panel, at about $11,500, because it’s a second application only you log in to, and then the three kinds of user at about $7,500. Taken out one at a time:
Your admin panel, for managing firms and sorting out their billing, about $11,500
Three kinds of user, each with their own screens and permissions, about $7,500
Taking a card, about $4,000
Sign-in, about $3,000
The owner’s dashboard and reports, about $3,000
Charging the card again every month, on the plan the firm picked, about $2,000
Searching for a client, about $2,000
Monthly renewal costs the same as search here, about $2,000. Priced alone in an empty web product it’s $4,500.
What does a SaaS MVP cost?
About $20,000 less than the whole product, or 35%, and it takes 13–19 weeks. That’s the estimator’s own first version of it, and it trims five things.
A small management screen for you, where the full admin panel was.
No automatic renewal. A single charge or an invoice from you carries the first release.
One report for the owner instead of a dashboard.
Simple filtering in place of full search.
Two kinds of user, down from three. Here that means everyone at a firm gets the same screens.
The card stays in. The estimator never cuts taking payment from a first version, so firms can pay you from day one. Only the automatic part waits.
If 35% sounds like a small saving for five cuts, what an MVP should cost explains why it stops there.
A SaaS product small accounting firms pay for monthly by card, with three kinds of user and an admin panel, costs $48,000 – $67,000 and takes 15–22 weeks. The monthly renewal is about $2,000 of it.
A first version that leaves the renewal out, trims the admin panel and starts with two kinds of user costs about $20,000 less than the whole product.
FAQ
Questions about building a SaaS product
What does SaaS stand for?
Software as a service. A business pays a regular fee to use software that the company selling it hosts and keeps running. Building one, for example a tool small accounting firms pay for monthly by card with an admin panel behind it, comes to $48,000 – $67,000 on this site’s estimator.
How much does software as a service cost?
It depends which side you’re on. Using somebody else’s costs whatever they charge, and build or buy has two per-seat prices read off the vendors’ own pages. Building your own, for example a web product small accounting firms pay for monthly by card, is $48,000 – $67,000 over 15–22 weeks, or about $20,000 less for a first version.
What is the difference between a SaaS product and a web app?
A SaaS product is a web app that many separate companies sign up for and pay for every month, each one seeing only its own data. The estimator has no line for keeping those companies apart. Otherwise it prices a SaaS like any other web app and adds the billing. On a $48,000 – $67,000 product for small accounting firms, the monthly renewal alone is about $2,000, and taking the billing out altogether saves about $6,500. What a web app costs covers the rest.
How long does it take to build a SaaS MVP?
13–19 weeks for a first version of a SaaS product for small accounting firms, with card payment but no automatic renewal, two kinds of user, a small management screen, one report and simple filtering. The whole product takes 15–22 weeks. Signing up the first firms comes on top of both.
Can you build a SaaS product for $10,000?
No. A web tool where people sign in and do nothing else, built from scratch, already costs more than $10,000. A first version of a SaaS product with card payment, two kinds of user and a management screen comes in about $20,000 under the $48,000 – $67,000 full product, which is still more than three times $10,000. What $10,000 buys has what that budget does get you.
Can you build a SaaS app without a technical cofounder?
Yes. You’d hire people who build software for a living, and what they need from you is what only you know: who signs up, what each kind of user does in it, and what customers pay for. Written down, that’s an app brief. A SaaS product for small accounting firms with monthly billing, three kinds of user and an admin panel is $48,000 – $67,000 over 15–22 weeks to have built.
How much does it cost to run a SaaS product each month?
Three things go on the bill: hosting, billing fees and changes. What it costs to keep an app online itemizes hosting from each vendor’s own page. Stripe Billing’s pay-as-you-go plan takes 0.7% of what you bill through it, plus Stripe’s card fee, as of October 16, 2026. Changing the product once customers use it is priced in what app maintenance costs.