Pricing
We quote per project, not per hour. You see the price before we start. We split it 50 / 50 between kickoff and delivery, so you never pay for work you cannot see running.
A focused tool that solves one well-scoped problem. Built in days, not months.
A real internal product. Multi-user, multi-feature, fits the way your team actually works.
A back-office or commercial product big enough that the integrations and edge cases are the hard part.
The math
Plug in what your team pays for the closest SaaS tool today. We will show you the unit economics of replacing it with something custom. Most enterprise tools have a base fee plus per-user, which is where the real cost usually hides.
Plus you own the tool. Add users, change features, hand it to the next operator. No vendor in the loop.
Start a project with these numbersNot every SaaS makes sense to replace. Keep the tools that do their one job well (Slack, GitHub, Stripe, your accounting software). The math works for tools that almost-fit but you keep paying anyway, and for workflows your team has built around SaaS that does not quite cover.
Optional add-on
If you do not have an identity yet, we can ship one with the build. Logo, palette, typography, a small set of guidelines. AI-assisted mockups so you see options fast. This site is an example of what comes out.
Hosting
The code lives in your GitHub either way. You decide where it runs.
We do not want to make money from hosting. We want SMEs to have a partner they can get their software from. Hosting is priced near the infrastructure we actually pay for, with a thin margin to cover the admin time.
Either hosting option, the code lives in your repository from day one. If Papu Studio vanishes tomorrow, you take the repo, point it at any host that runs Node, and the app keeps running. Hosting with us is convenience, not lock-in.
Default for clients who already have Railway, Cloudflare, or similar accounts in place. You pay providers directly, we hand over with documentation, you own everything from day one.
Pick this if you do not want to think about Railway, Cloudflare, Resend, or any of the supporting accounts. We run it under our operations, you pay one monthly bill priced near what the infrastructure actually costs us.
Margin lives in Care, not in hosting. Pick Hosted by us if you want the convenience; pick Watch and self-host if you do not need either.
Ongoing care
Two retainer tiers for ongoing work, plus an ad-hoc option for clients who only need us occasionally.
Most clients should pick this.
Treat us like part of the team.
Growth
Most projects start small. The ones that work get bigger. Here is how we price what comes next.
A new field, a new report, a tweak to an existing flow. One to two days of work, flat-quoted, typically €1,000 to €2,500 each.
A new module, a new integration, a redesign of a workflow. Priced like our standard build tiers, Challenging or Demanding.
A real next-version, ground-up. Priced like Complex, with the existing-customer discount below.
Existing-customer projects get 20 percent off the build cost because we already know the codebase, the constraints, and the customer.
When we have a signed scope and a target date, we invoice half. That funds the build week. Paid via Stripe.
You see the tool running on your domain before you pay the second half. If something material is broken at handoff, we fix it before invoicing.
Hosting, database, transactional email, and AI API costs run on your accounts under your billing. You own the keys from day one.
After launch, some clients keep us on a small monthly retainer for iteration. Optional. Always month-to-month.
Tell us the problem. We will tell you which tier it lands in and why.
Start a project