The short answer
Most of a £30,000 app quote is not engineering. It is the cost of uncertainty: sales overhead, coordination, re-scoping, and a margin covering the risk that the estimate was wrong. Remove the uncertainty and most of the number goes with it.
Where the money actually goes
Take a typical UK agency project quoted at £30,000 over four months. Very roughly, that breaks down like this.
| What you're paying for | Share of the quote | Is it work on your app? |
|---|---|---|
| Engineering and design | Under half | Yes |
| Project management and coordination | Meaningful | Indirectly |
| Sales and account management overhead | Meaningful | No |
| Re-scoping and change handling | Variable | Partly |
| Contingency for estimate risk | Variable | No, unless it overruns |
None of that is fraud. It is the honest cost of running open-ended projects. The problem is that you are paying for the uncertainty rather than the software.
The four things that make software expensive
Open scope. If the thing being built can change, everything downstream must be able to absorb change, and absorbing change is expensive. This is by far the biggest factor.
Coordination. A project with five people across four months spends a remarkable amount of its budget on those five people staying in sync.
Waiting. Not billed directly, but paid for. A week waiting for feedback is a week the project stays open, and open projects cost money.
Estimate risk. Nobody wants to quote £20,000 and lose £15,000. So quotes carry a margin, and you fund it whether or not it is needed.
What changes when you fix the deadline
Fixing the deadline first sounds like a constraint on the builder. In practice it is a constraint on the scope, and that is where the saving is.
What a fixed fortnight removes
- Re-scopingThere is no time for it, so scope is settled properly on day one instead of drifting for weeks.
- Coordination overheadA small team for two weeks needs far less process than five people for four months.
- Estimate riskWe carry it, not you. If it takes longer than we thought, that is our problem.
- Sales overheadThe checkout is the sales process. There is no proposal to write and no pitch to fund.
What it does not remove
What this means for how you buy
The most useful thing you can do before getting quotes is decide whether your scope can be fixed. If it can, buy a fixed price. If it cannot, expect to pay for the uncertainty and negotiate on how it is shared rather than on the headline number.
How to write a brief that gets you a real quote.
Common questions
Where does the money go in an app project?
Less than half of a typical agency quote is engineering. The rest is sales and account management overhead, project coordination, re-scoping, and a contingency margin covering the risk that the estimate was wrong.
Are cheap developers worse?
Not necessarily, but cheap and open-ended is the dangerous combination. A low hourly rate on an unbounded project can cost more than a higher rate on a bounded one, and usually takes longer.
Does a fixed price mean lower quality?
It means smaller. A fixed price with a fixed deadline forces a tighter scope, and the work inside that scope should be held to exactly the same standard.