DESAmedia ·

Short answer

The cost of developing a custom system in Lithuania ranges from a few tens of thousands to several million euros, and it is driven mainly by the scope of the processes, the number of integrations and the security requirements. According to 2025 public procurement data, the median value of contracts for developing and modernising information systems was about €89,000, and half of the contracts fell between roughly €20,000 and €484,000. A more precise figure for a specific project can only be given once the processes and integrations have been described, so this article is a market overview, not a price list.

Why this question is hard to answer with a single number

Asking "how much does a system cost" is like asking "how much does a building cost". A warehouse and a hospital are both buildings, but their costs differ by a factor of tens. Software is the same: a registration form with an admin panel and a CRM with accounting integration, payments and customer self-service are both called "a system".

The cost is determined by three things that, at the start, often neither the client nor the developer knows:

  • how many different processes and user roles the system has to serve;
  • how many external systems it has to exchange data with, and how good their interfaces are;
  • what requirements apply to security, accessibility, audit and data retention.

That is why an honest price at the outset is a range, which narrows after the analysis stage. Anyone who gives an exact price without describing the processes is either taking on the risk themselves or will pass it on to you later through additional work.

What makes up the project cost

The cost of a custom system is almost always hours of work multiplied by an hourly rate. In software development, materials and equipment are a small share, so the cost depends on how long the work takes and what a specialist's hour costs.

Stages of work

  1. Analysis and design. Process description, data model, integration map, priorities.
  2. User interface design. Screen structure, forms, reports.
  3. Development. Business logic, database, permissions, notifications.
  4. Integrations. Connections to accounting, payments, registers, the online store.
  5. Testing and deployment. Automated tests, trials with real data, data migration, training.
  6. Project management. Meetings, agreeing priorities, documentation.

What a specialist's hour costs

Publicly available data gives a sense of the market level. According to the open data portal of Sodra (the Lithuanian State Social Insurance Fund), in August 2026 there were about 21,500 insured persons in the economic activity group "Other computer programming activities", and their average insured income was €4,389 per month. From January to August 2026 this figure ranged from €4,316 to €4,654. This is the average for everyone working in this activity, not only developers, and it is a gross amount before employer taxes.

By our simple calculation, dividing €4,389 by roughly 168 working hours a month gives about €26 of gross pay per hour. A company's rate is always higher, because it includes employer taxes, holidays, non-billable hours (sales, learning, internal work), software and administration.

On the international service provider platform Clutch, there were 151 software development companies in the Lithuania category in September 2026. Companies list their hourly rate there in bands, and on the first page of the listing the most common bands are $25-49 and $50-99 per hour. Clutch's general pricing guide (updated 21 September 2026) states that the most common project budgets on the platform are $10,000-49,000, and the average project value is about $132,000 with an average duration of about 13 months. These data cover suppliers from many countries, so they show only a general trend.

Why integrations cost more than design

Clients often expect the largest part of an estimate to be the look and feel. In practice, integrations carry the most uncertainty, because their complexity is determined not by your system but by another vendor's.

Several things drive up the cost of an integration:

  • Quality of documentation. Some systems have public and thorough API documentation; others provide an interface description only after a contract is signed, or have none.
  • Test environment. If the vendor has no test environment, every trial runs against a copy or against real data, which is slower and riskier.
  • Error scenarios. What to do when the accounting software is unreachable, when a product code does not match, when the same order is sent twice. Handling these cases often takes longer than the main data transfer.
  • Monitoring. The connection has to log what was transferred and when, so that an error can be found in minutes.

Design, by contrast, is a well-controlled area: screens can be drawn, agreed and approved before development starts. So when comparing proposals, ask how many hours are allocated to each integration and what assumptions have been made. You can read more about how we assess connections on our integrations and automation page.

Market ranges by project type

One of the few verifiable sources on the Lithuanian market is public procurement contracts. The Public Procurement Office publishes open contract data from CVP IS (the Lithuanian e-procurement system). From the 2025 contracts we selected those whose CPV code begins with 72 (IT services) and whose title mentions a system, platform, portal or subsystem together with development, creation or modernisation. We excluded maintenance, support, licence and subscription contracts, as well as contracts under €1,000. That left 116 contracts.

Contract value Number of contracts Examples from 2025 contracts
up to €25,000 33 Booking system for sports facilities with installation of access control equipment (Jonava Sports Centre, €23,547)
€25,000-100,000 30 Information system for registering children for summer camps, including deployment and support (Klaipėda City Municipality Administration, €26,535); development of a content management system (Agricultural Agency, €95,348)
€100,000-500,000 24 Strategic planning and project management information system (Druskininkai Municipality Administration, €119,789); development of an operations management system (National Accreditation Bureau, €136,348)
over €500,000 29 Development and deployment of a human resources management information system (Public Governance Agency, €3,313,569)

How to read this table:

  • These are contract values as published in CVP IS. The data description states only that values are given in euros, so whether VAT is included may vary.
  • One contract does not always equal one project: some large systems are bought through several contracts, and some contracts also include hardware or support.
  • Public sector projects carry additional requirements (documentation, security, accessibility, procurement procedures), so a business project with similar functionality may be smaller in scope.

Despite these caveats, the data show a clear trend. A simple single-process system with a few roles usually falls into the first two rows. A system that connects several processes, registers or external systems usually costs a six-figure sum. State registers and systems with hundreds of thousands of users cost millions.

This article covers business systems and web applications. If you are interested in the cost of a website, there is a separate website cost estimate page: websites and systems are priced differently, so we do not compare them.

How to split a project into stages

The biggest budget risk is trying to build everything you can think of in one go. Stages help reduce that risk.

Stage one: analysis

A short, clearly defined piece of work whose result is a process description, a data model, a list of integrations and a prioritised feature list with estimates. Afterwards the price range narrows, and you can also use the document to compare proposals from several suppliers. We provide this as a separate IT consulting and system design service.

Stage two: the first working version

Only the processes without which the system makes no sense. Often this is one core process and one key integration. This version goes live and is used.

Further stages: development based on usage data

After a few months of use it becomes clear which features are actually needed. Usually some of the features planned at the start are no longer relevant, and others appear.

Contract model

When a project is split into stages, the contract model changes too. A fixed price suits a clearly defined stage, such as analysis or a first version with an approved scope. For further development, an hourly model with a monthly budget is usually a better fit, because priorities change. How these stages look in our work is described on the process page.

What is the real cost of ownership after launch

The development cost is only part of the spending. The total cost of ownership also covers all the years the system is in operation.

Hosting. Server, domain, SSL certificate, backups and storing them in a separate location. For most business systems this is a small share of the costs, but higher load and high-availability requirements increase it.

Security and version updates. Software ages even when nobody changes it. Under the PHP project's policy, each version receives 2 years of active support followed by 2 more years of security fixes only. The Laravel framework provides bug fixes for each major version for 18 months and security fixes for 2 years. This means the system has to be upgraded every few years, otherwise it is left without security fixes. Similar cycles apply to other technologies.

Maintenance. Monitoring, bug fixing, maintaining integrations when an external system changes its interface. Integrations are again the biggest unknown here: a change to the API of the accounting software or payment provider requires work on your system.

Further development. The business changes, so the system changes too. These costs are easiest to plan as a separate budget line tied to business goals.

The funds needed for maintenance and development depend on the size of the system and the pace of change, so we do not give a universal percentage. Public procurement again provides a reference point: in 2025, CVP IS published 781 contracts whose title mentions system maintenance or support (from €1,000), and their median value was about €17,400. Contract duration and scope vary widely, so this figure shows only that maintenance is an ongoing cost line that has to be planned.

When comparing a custom system with an off-the-shelf product, compare the same period: development plus 5 years of hosting, updates and maintenance against 5 years of licences, implementation and integrations. We walked through this calculation using CRM as an example in our article on off-the-shelf and custom CRM systems.

What to do next

Start with three lists: which processes the system must serve, who will use it and which systems it must exchange data with. With that description, the scope can be estimated reliably and the first stage chosen. You can see how we build web applications from analysis to launch on our web application development page.

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