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A typical software development project with an Indian partner company costs about $10,500. AI projects have the same median, and a typical digital marketing engagement is much smaller at about $2,600. You can usually start below those figures, because the median minimum project across the 53 companies we studied is about $530.
Those numbers come from our analysis of 53 verified partner companies on UpBusiness in October 2026, and together they make a software development cost benchmark for India that you can hold a quote against, from inside India or abroad. It's written for founders, operations and IT heads and procurement teams who are about to hire a partner company and want to know if a number is normal. Companies report their prices in Indian rupees, and we've converted them at 95 rupees to the dollar and rounded.
Key takeaways
- Software development and AI projects both have a median typical size of about $10,500. Digital marketing engagements sit at about $2,600.
- AI integration, AI agent and AI chatbot work is the most expensive group in the data, with a median typical project of about $26,300, two and a half times the software median.
- Team size moves the price more than anything else we measured. Teams of 1 to 10 people report a typical project of about $1,050, and teams of 11 or more report $10,500.
- Of 110 client projects listed on partner profiles, 72 (65%) were under $10,500 and 7 (6%) went above $105,000.
How We Built This Benchmark
Every company in the data was one of the 53 partner companies approved on UpBusiness on 16 October 2026, and each had passed our verification before it was listed. When a company joins, it gives us two pricing figures, and this report is built on those two numbers alone.
- The minimum project is the smallest engagement the company says it will take on.
- The average project is how the company describes its usual job. We call it the typical project from here on, since that's closer to what companies mean by it.
We use medians rather than means. One company with very large projects would drag a mean upward and tell you little about the middle of the market. Where it helps, we also give the middle half, the range between the 25th and 75th percentile (p25 to p75), so you can see how far the spread runs rather than just where its centre is.
There are a few things to know about the sample before you use it. Everything is self-reported, and companies choose from fixed price bands, which is why so many medians land on the same few values, such as $10,500 (where a quartile falls between two bands, we show the value in between, such as $1,500). Of the 53 companies, 52 are based in India and one is in the US. The numbers describe project sizes, not hourly or monthly rates, and for the day rates of AI engineers there's our separate guide to AI developer rates in India. This is a snapshot from 16 October 2026, so the counts on our live category pages will drift as companies join or leave.
| All 53 companies | Median | Middle half (p25 to p75) |
|---|---|---|
| Minimum project | $530 | $260 to $2,600 |
| Typical project | $5,300 | $1,050 to $18,400 |
Minimums are spread widely but lean low. Seventeen of the 53 companies will take work under $530, and only one has a floor between $26,300 and $52,600. Typical projects fall into two camps. Twenty-three companies say their usual project is under $5,300, while the other 30 put it at $5,300 or more, and 25 of those are at $10,500 and above. So more than half the list regularly works at $5,300 and up, even though it includes small studios too.
Software Development Cost Benchmark for India: Results by Category
Software development and AI share a median typical project of about $10,500, though the spread around that median looks quite different. Digital marketing sits well below both. Companies can work in more than one category, so the counts in the table add up to more than 53.
| Category | Companies | Minimum project (median) | Typical project (median) | Typical, middle half |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Software development | 39 | $530 | $10,500 | $1,050 to $10,500 |
| Artificial intelligence | 27 | $1,050 | $10,500 | $1,050 to $26,300 |
| Digital marketing | 17 | $260 | $2,600 | $1,050 to $5,300 |
In software development the 75th percentile is the same as the median, $10,500. For three quarters of the 39 software companies in the 16 October snapshot, then, $10,500 is the top of their usual range. A quote well above it for a standard build should come with a reason you can check, such as a large integration scope, compliance work or a long support period. At the other end, a quarter of the software companies put their typical project at $1,050 or less.
AI has the longest upper tail. Its median matches software at $10,500, but a quarter of the 27 AI companies put their typical project at $26,300 or more, and their median minimum of $1,050 is twice the software figure. What AI development costs in India therefore depends heavily on the kind of AI work you need, and the service table below shows how far apart the types are.
Digital marketing has the lowest entry point in the data, with a median minimum of $260. Half the marketing companies set their minimum somewhere between about $190 and $790, and the typical engagement is $2,600. Companies don't say whether that's one month of work or a whole campaign, so read it as the size of an engagement rather than a monthly fee. For monthly numbers by channel, see our guide to digital marketing cost.
Benchmark by Service
By service, the range is far wider than the category view suggests. A typical website project is about $1,050, while AI integration and AI agent work sits at $26,300. Many companies offer several services, so one company can appear in five or six rows, and we only show services with at least 9 companies behind them.
| Service | Companies | Minimum project (median) | Typical project (median) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mobile app development | 20 | $790 | $10,500; middle half $1,500 to $26,300 |
| Website development | 17 | $530 | $1,050; middle half $530 to $18,400 |
| Web development | 14 | $790 | $5,300 |
| AI development | 14 | $1,050 | $10,500; upper quartile $26,300 |
| AI automation | 14 | $790 | $10,500 |
| AI integration | 13 | $1,050 | $26,300 |
| AI agent development | 13 | $1,050 | $26,300 |
| AI chatbot development | 11 | $1,050 | $26,300 |
| SaaS development | 10 | $1,900 | $10,500; upper quartile $14,500 |
| AI consulting | 10 | $1,900 | $18,400 |
| Custom software development | 10 | $2,600 | $10,500 |
| Search engine optimisation (SEO) | 9 | $260 | $2,600 |
Three AI services (integration, agent development and chatbots) share the highest typical project in the table, $26,300. These are usually projects that connect a model to a company's own data and systems, and the same companies often offer all three, so treat them as one cluster rather than three separate results. AI automation comes in lower at a $10,500 median, though its $790 minimum is close to the $1,050 the other three ask for.
Website development has the widest spread of anything we measured. The median typical project is only $1,050, but the 75th percentile reaches $18,400, because the same label covers a five-page company site and a custom web platform. With a range that wide, the median won't tell you much about your own site, but your scope document will. Our website development cost guide walks through the features that move a price from the five-page end towards a custom web platform.
Custom software development has the highest entry point, with a median minimum of $2,600, and SaaS development and AI consulting follow at $1,900. Floors like these rule out very small jobs. SaaS projects have a typical size of $10,500 and an upper quartile of $14,500, and the custom SaaS development guide covers what a first version usually includes.
Mobile app development has more companies than any other service (20). Its median typical project is $10,500, with the middle half running from $1,500 to $26,300. If you're setting a first app budget, start from that middle half and narrow it once you've written the scope.
What Moves the Price
We looked at three company traits. Team size makes the biggest difference, years in business comes second, and city matters least of the three.
Team Size
The jump happens at 11 people. The 19 companies with 1 to 10 people report a median typical project of about $1,050, with a quarter of them at $5,300 or more and a median minimum of $260. In the 25 companies with 11 to 50 people, the typical project is ten times larger at $10,500. Their middle half runs from $2,600 to $26,300, and their minimum rises to $1,050.
Above 50 people the figures stop climbing. The 8 companies with 51 to 200 people show the same $1,050 minimum and $10,500 typical project as the 11 to 50 group, with an upper quartile of $26,300. With only eight companies in that group, we wouldn't read much into the flat line. The one company with 201 to 500 people isn't reported on its own.
For buyers, the point is that small teams aren't a cheaper version of the same service. They take on smaller projects. Bring a $15,800 product build to a five-person studio and you may be its largest client, which can mean close attention but also a real chance the team runs short of people.
Years in Business
Older companies report larger projects, in fairly even steps. The 17 companies under 5 years old have a median typical project of $2,600. For the 20 companies aged 5 to 10 years it's $7,900, and the 16 companies older than 10 years sit at $10,500, with a quarter of them at $26,300 or above. Minimums only change for the oldest group, which asks for $1,050 against $530 for the other two. We haven't separated age from team size, and older companies may simply be bigger, so some of this could be the team-size effect seen from another angle.
City
Of the 52 Indian companies, 27 are in metro cities (Bengaluru, Mumbai, Navi Mumbai, Delhi NCR including Noida and Gurugram, Hyderabad, Chennai, Pune and Kolkata) and 25 are elsewhere. Metro companies report a median typical project of $5,300 and a median minimum of $1,050. Companies in other cities report $2,600 and $530. The upper quartile shows the same gap, $26,300 against $10,500.
Metro companies run bigger projects, roughly double at the median. That's a difference in the size of work they take on, though, and it doesn't mean a company outside the metros will do the same job for half the price. The biggest clusters in our data are Noida and Surat with 7 companies each, then Jaipur with 5 and Pune and Bengaluru with 4 each. Surat and Jaipur aren't metros by our definition, yet they account for 12 companies between them. With a budget under $5,300, looking beyond the big cities gives you more companies whose usual work is your size.
What Buyers Actually Spend: 110 Client Projects
Partner companies list past client projects on their UpBusiness profiles, and 110 of those listings include a project size. Of those, 72 (65%) cost less than $10,500. Our team has verified 13 of them and the other 97 are waiting for verification, so read them as listed projects, not audited ones.
| Project size | Listed projects | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Under $1,050 | 32 | 29% |
| $1,050 to $10,500 | 40 | 36% |
| $10,500 to $105,000 | 31 | 28% |
| Over $105,000 | 7 | 6% |
The most common band is $2,600 to $5,300, with 17 projects, and the $530 to $1,050 and $1,050 to $2,600 bands have 12 each. At the top there's a long tail of 10 projects between $52,600 and $105,000, 5 between $105,000 and $263,000 and 2 between $263,000 and $526,000.
The listings fit fairly well with what companies told us about their typical work. The overall median typical project of $5,300, from the first table, sits at the top edge of that most common band. They're not a neutral sample, though. Companies choose which projects to show, and they're likely to pick bigger and more recent work.
India vs US: How These Prices Compare
The US Bureau of Labor Statistics puts the median annual wage for software developers at $135,980 in May 2025[1]. Spread over 52 weeks, that's about $2,615 a week in salary alone, before benefits, payroll taxes, equipment or any agency margin.
On that basis, the typical Indian software project in our data ($10,500) costs about the same as four weeks of one median-paid US developer's salary, and a $26,300 AI integration or agent project ($26,300) is closer to ten weeks. The Indian figure usually pays for a team working over several weeks or months, plus the company's overheads and margin.
We don't offer this as a like-for-like comparison. A salary is one person's pay, while a project price buys a delivered result with management, testing and the company's own costs built in. What it does show is the gap in scale that draws overseas buyers to India. Whether the saving holds up depends on things the price doesn't show, such as the hours of time-zone overlap, how the team communicates and how much support you get after launch.
How to Use These Numbers in Your Budget
Find the service row that matches your project, then place each quote against that row's middle half. Here's how it works for a hypothetical customer-facing mobile app.
- Start from the mobile app row: a median typical project of $10,500, a middle half of $1,500 to $26,300 and a median minimum of $790.
- Say three companies quote $950, $8,400 and $42,100. The $8,400 quote sits inside the middle half. $950 is close to the $790 median minimum, which often points to a template app or a narrower scope than you meant to ask for, and $42,100 is above the 75th percentile, so ask that company for its scope line by line.
- Look at the team behind each quote. Companies with fewer than 11 people report $1,050 as their median typical project, so an $8,400 build would be large for them. That's no reason to turn one down, but ask who else will work on it and what happens if someone leaves.
- Get all three to price the same written brief, and check that every quote says whether design, testing, app store release and support after launch are included.
This only works if the brief is detailed. When your requirements fit on half a page, each company fills the gaps with its own guesses, and you end up with three quotes for three different products. Our software project brief template gives you a structure that keeps quotes comparable.
When you shortlist, look for companies whose minimum is below your budget and whose typical project is close to it. A company whose usual project is $26,300 might take a $3,200 job, but you'd be one of its smallest clients. The software development, AI and digital marketing listings on UpBusiness show each verified partner company's minimum project size, so you can filter before you contact anyone.
Limitations of This Data
The benchmark will tell you whether a quote is in a normal range, but it can't settle an exact price, for these reasons:
- Every price figure is self-reported, and companies choose from fixed bands, so the medians are band values rather than exact averages.
- Samples per service are small (9 to 20 companies), and the same companies appear under several services.
- With 52 of the 53 companies in India, this describes Indian partner companies, not global prices.
- The figures are project sizes. They don't give hourly rates or say anything about delivery quality or outcomes.
- Only 13 of the 110 listed client projects have been verified so far.
- It's one snapshot, taken on 16 October 2026, and we plan to rerun it as more companies are approved.
Using This Benchmark
A quote outside these ranges isn't necessarily wrong. As a rough rule, a price below a service's median minimum deserves a question about what's been left out, and a price above its 75th percentile deserves a line-by-line scope. In both cases you're asking for a reason you can check, not turning the quote down. If you want quotes to compare against these figures, post your project on UpBusiness and we'll match you with verified partner companies whose typical project fits your budget.
