IQAAN Tools — Estimator
Maintenance Cost Calculator
Price the monthly retainer your application actually needs — size, technology age, compliance, support level, and release cadence, benchmarked honestly.
Your application
Application size
Technology age
Monthly active users
Compliance
Support expectation
Release cadence
Powers the 15–20%-of-build industry benchmark below
Estimated retainer
$1,795 – $2,428
Per month · ≈ 24.8 hours × $85/h · ≈ $25,337 / year
How the hours stack up
Baseline — medium application
24 h/mo
Technology age
×1.00
Active users
×1.15
Compliance
×1.00
Support level
×1.00
Release cadence
×0.90
Total hours / month
24.8 h
Industry benchmark
The oft-quoted benchmark — 15–20% of the original build cost per year — puts a $120,000 build at:
Benchmark range
$1,500 – $2,000 / mo
This estimate
$1,795 – $2,428 / mo
In line with the benchmark — a healthy place to be.
About this tool
Price the monthly retainer your application actually needs — size, technology age, compliance, support level, and release cadence, benchmarked honestly.
Software is not a purchase; it is a pet. This calculator prices the ongoing care a healthy application needs: a baseline hours budget by size, multiplied honestly for technology age, user load, compliance burden, support expectation, and release cadence — then priced at a blended studio rate with the hours shown, not hidden.
The industry rule of thumb says maintenance runs 15–20% of the original build cost per year. Enter what your build cost and the calculator renders both numbers side by side, so you can see whether your setup prices above or below the benchmark — and why. Legacy code, regulated industries, and 24×7 commitments push estimates up the scale; a current stack with modest scope pulls them down.
Everything is computed in your browser. No account, no tracking, and nothing about your systems leaves your machine.
Frequently asked questions
How much does software maintenance cost per month?
A small, current application typically needs $700–$1,700/month; a typical medium product runs $2,000–$5,000; large or legacy platforms with SLAs can exceed $15,000/month. The calculator prices your exact combination of size, technology age, users, compliance, support, and release cadence.
What is the 15–20% benchmark?
A widely cited industry norm: annual maintenance costs 15–20% of the original build price — a $120k build implies $18k–$24k a year, or $1.5k–$2k a month. It is a sanity check, not a law; the calculator shows your estimate and the benchmark side by side.
Why does legacy technology cost more to maintain?
Older stacks carry expired dependencies, scarce specialists, missing documentation, and regressions hiding behind every change — the model prices that at 1.8× the hours of a current stack. Often the honest answer is not a bigger retainer but a staged modernization.
What does a 24×7 SLA actually price?
The commitment, not the hours: someone must be reachable at 3 a.m., which means rotation, paging infrastructure, and on-call premiums. The model doubles the retainer versus business-hours support even though average weekly hours barely move.
Related tools
From the studio
This is an estimate — IQAAN delivers a firm, itemized quote within 48 hours.
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