Free Tool
Project Timeline Estimator
How long will this actually take?
Including the variable nobody prices: how quickly you can make decisions.
Estimate a timeline
Ranges, not dates. Anyone giving you a single date for a project that has not been scoped is guessing with more confidence than the information supports.
Your inputs
Base duration in weeks for a standard scope.
More people compresses the calendar, but not proportionally.
The most under-estimated variable in any timeline.
Result
Calendar time
14 – 19 weeks
Brief to launch
Discovery and design
3 – 4 weeks
Included in the total above
Stabilisation after launch
2 weeks
Before maintenance begins
Indicative only. These are the same bands published across our cost guides, not a quotation — a real number needs your actual scope.
Quick Answer
Updated August 22, 2026
How long does it take to build software?
An MVP takes 8–16 weeks, a web application 10–24, a mobile app across both stores 10–22, a SaaS platform 16–32, and a marketplace 20–34. Team size compresses the calendar but not proportionally — going from one engineer to three roughly halves the duration rather than cutting it to a third, because coordination costs rise. The factor most estimates omit is your own readiness: a team still deciding what to build adds around 35% to any timeline, and that delay does not appear on the vendor’s side of the plan.
Inputs
Product, scope, team, readiness
Output
A calendar range in weeks
Biggest variable
Your decision speed
Best for
- Sanity-checking a timeline before committing to a launch date
- Understanding why adding people does not halve the schedule
- Seeing what your own readiness costs
Not best for
- A committed delivery date — that needs a real scope
- Fixed-scope contracts, which are estimated differently
- Emergency rescue work, which has its own shape
FAQ
Questions about this tool
Why does adding engineers not proportionally shorten the timeline?
Because coordination cost rises with team size and some work is inherently sequential — the data model has to exist before the API, and the API before the screens. Going from one engineer to three typically halves the calendar rather than cutting it to a third.
What is the readiness factor?
How fast you can answer questions and make decisions. A team with written scope, finished designs, and a decision-maker available daily lands about 10% under a standard timeline. A team still deciding what to build adds around 35%. It is the single most under-estimated variable in software delivery.
Does this include design?
Yes. Discovery and design are typically 15–20% of the total and are included in the range shown, because pulling them out is how timelines quietly grow later.
What about testing and launch?
QA runs alongside development rather than as a phase at the end, and is inside the range. The two weeks of post-launch stabilisation shown separately is the period where real users find what testing did not.
Why is the mobile timeline longer than a web app of similar scope?
Store submission and review, device-specific testing, and release management are real work that web projects never have to do. Budget an extra one to two weeks for a first App Store submission specifically.
Related
Go from a number to a plan
The guides behind this tool, and the other free tools alongside it.