The classic path: agency or freelancer
A management application custom-built by an agency classically runs between €15,000 and €50,000 for a first serious scope — database, management screens, dashboard, production deployment. An experienced freelancer can bring that down to €8,000-20,000, with a two-to-four-month lead time either way.
That price pays for real work: design (turning your need into a data schema and screens) is often a third of the effort, development another third, adjustments and production the rest. Add recurring costs: hosting, corrective maintenance (budget 15-20% of the initial cost per year) and every evolution billed by time spent.
The real risk of this path isn't the price, it's the tunnel effect: you only see the application at the end, when the budget is spent. If the design misread the need, corrections are billed at evolution rates.
The no-code path: cost disguised as subscription
No-code shows a seductive entry cost: €0-25 per user per month. For a five-person team, expect €1,800-4,500 over three years — plus a cost rarely counted: your design and build time. Assembling a serious management application yourself takes dozens of hours, and the result's quality depends on a skill (data modelling) that no-code doesn't provide.
The main hidden cost is elsewhere: the application you build isn't yours. If the platform changes pricing — 30-100% hikes after an acquisition are not textbook hypotheticals — or shuts down, the re-platforming cost joins the bill.
The generation path: what actually changed
AI application generation displaces the design cost: describing your activity in plain language replaces dozens of assembly hours or thousands of euros of specifications. At Blueprint Maker, the grid is public and known BEFORE you generate:
- Discovery plan: €0 — generate your first application, complete and deployed
- Pro plan: €25/month — credits to generate and iterate regularly
- Max plan: €149/month — for intensive use (several applications, frequent iterations)
- Each generation's credit cost displayed before launching — published, fixed weights
Comparing honestly: the full-cost grid
Over three years, for a small team's operational tracking tool: the agency path costs €15,000-50,000 plus maintenance; the no-code path €2,000-5,000 plus dozens of build hours and a re-platforming risk; the generation path a few hundred to about two thousand euros of subscription depending on intensity, design included — with owned code at the end.
The comparison has a fundamental asymmetry: only the agency and generation paths produce an asset (owned code). The difference between them is the starting point — the agency starts from a blank page billed by time; generation starts from a complete application produced by an engine.
The two combine, in fact: generate first (structure validated on real screens, at marginal cost), then hand the exported code to a developer for the specifics. The agency budget then concentrates on what truly needs it.
Hidden costs to hunt in any quote
Whatever the provider, three questions reveal the true price:
- Who owns the code and data at the end? (a vague answer means the real price is higher than displayed)
- What does EVOLUTION cost? (a management application lives; a frozen tool is paid for in daily workarounds)
- What happens if the provider disappears? (real export? recoverable code? or full rebuild?)
The free tier as a buying method
The best use of the Discovery plan isn't saving €25: it's replacing the specification document with a real test. Describe your activity, generate, run the application for a few days with its demo data. In one week — for €0 — you'll know what a classic quoting cycle would have taught you in two months: whether the proposed structure truly fits your business.