The article
You have a product to build and no team to build it, or a team that is already full. Choosing an outsourced software development company then comes down to three decisions that most sales pages skip: who runs the work, how the price is fixed, and what you get to see while the software is built. Settle those three, and most of the risk of outsourcing is handled before the first line of code.
I have spent 18 years in software development, from junior developer to CTO. Since 2017 my company, 26 Lines of Code, has grown to 70+ specialists and delivered 150+ projects across healthcare, fintech, logistics and e-commerce. Below: the three ways to work with us, a table for choosing between a fixed price and time and materials, what you see every two weeks, and products clients have outsourced to us.
Outsourced software development services: the short version
| How it works with us | |
|---|---|
| Who runs the work | Our team from discovery to DevOps, or our engineers inside your team |
| Where the price starts | A first version of a web or mobile app from $5,000; developers from $35 an hour, depending on the role |
| Anything bigger | Estimated free, before any contract |
| How the price is set | A fixed scope or time and materials |
| What you see | A demo of working software every two weeks, and a direct line to the developers |
| The contract | With our US company, and an NDA first if you ask |
| The team | Engineers, designers, QA, DevOps and managers, with the delivery center near Kyiv |
Three ways to work with an outsourced software development company
- Outsource the product. Our team owns the whole build: discovery, design, development, QA and DevOps, under a fixed scope or a time-and-materials contract. You set the goal and the priorities; we run the people and the process. This is what outsourced software product development services look like in practice.
- Extend your team. Dedicated engineers or a squad join your process and take tasks from your lead, through staff augmentation from $35 an hour depending on the role. Anyone who turns out not to be a fit in the first week is replaced at no cost.
- Resell it as yours. Agencies put their own brand on the software we build, or send clients our way and earn a commission on each project.
One question usually decides between the first two: who writes the tasks for engineers today? If nobody on your side does, outsource the product; custom software development describes that work in full. If you have a technical lead with a backlog and too few hands, extend the team.
When outsourcing is the wrong move
Outsourcing solves a capacity problem. It does not solve these:
- Nobody on your side can decide. A team that waits a week for an answer loses that week, on any contract. Someone has to own the priorities and come to the demos.
- You need a few hours of help a month. That is upkeep, not a project: outsourced IT support is priced by the month after we look at what you run.
- You want engineering to become your own strength. Then hire, and add our people through staff augmentation while you do.
Fixed price or time and materials: who carries the risk
This decision shapes the budget at least as much as the hourly rate. Forward the table to whoever signs the contract on your side.
| Fixed price | Time and materials | |
|---|---|---|
| What is fixed | Scope, budget and timeline, before the start | The rates; the scope follows your priorities |
| Who carries the risk of underestimating | Mostly us, for the agreed scope | You, so the demo every two weeks is your control |
| A new idea halfway through | Gets its own estimate and your approval before we build it | Is estimated and scheduled once you approve it |
| How you pay | Every two weeks or by milestones; the total for the agreed scope cannot exceed the agreed price | Every two weeks, for the time actually spent |
| Fits when | The requirements are settled before the build | You expect them to change once users see the product |
| Watch out for | A scope written loosely: everything outside it is new work | A decision maker who is never available: the clock runs either way |
One question settles most cases: can you write down today, in detail, what the first release must do? If yes, a fixed price protects your budget. If not, time and materials protects the product from being built to a guess.
In October 2026 I read the four outsourced software development company pages Google showed me for this search; the rest of its first page were "best companies" lists and statistics. Two of the four explain these two models. None of these sellers of software development outsourcing services publishes a price for its own work: the dollar figures on their pages are budget brackets in a quote form, market rates by region, and a developer at $30 an hour held up as a warning. Four pages are a small sample; our starting prices are in the first table.
What you see every two weeks
Outsourcing feels risky when the work is invisible, so ours is built to be seen:
- A demo every two weeks. Each sprint ends with working software you can click through, not slides.
- The same checks on every task. What the software must do is written down before any code. The work is cut into small tasks, each with its own definition of done, and each task is built with AI tools and checked against that definition. An engineer reviews the code, and our tester checks the result before it reaches you.
- The people, by name. You know who works on your product and talk to them directly.
A person works in a pair with AI agents on every task, and that pairing is where our speed comes from. Your code does not train any AI: what goes into our agents is the set of practices my team has settled on over years of projects, and the design and architecture decisions stay with people. More on where AI actually speeds up a build.
Before you outsource software development to a company: five questions
When you outsource software development services, the hourly rate is the easiest thing to compare and the least telling. These five questions tell you more, and they work on any vendor, us included:
| Ask | Why it matters | Our answer |
|---|---|---|
| Who will work on our product, and can we talk to them? | A team you never meet is a team you cannot judge | You know them by name and write to them directly |
| What will we see, and how often? | A report describes work; software shows it | A demo of working software every two weeks |
| How is a change priced? | Most budget surprises start with a change nobody priced | Estimated and approved by you before we build it |
| When does the code become ours? | Without the code you cannot change vendors | Once it is paid for: whoever pays owns it |
| What if the first week does not work? | The first week shows how a team really works | On outsourced development and staff augmentation, you stop and do not pay for it |
Products clients outsourced to us
- AAE Plugin: from a technical demo to a product. An AI plugin for Adobe After Effects, where artists generate and edit images and short video fragments without leaving their project. We built in-painting with masks, licensing by subscription tier and an admin that sees every task. The hard part was cost: models change fast and GPUs are expensive, so the backend swaps models without a plugin update, and GPU workers start on demand, which ended the cost of idle hardware.
- Mutualz: one app, two sides of the table. A restaurant app from Oldenburg, Germany: diners order and pay at the table, collect points and share their visits, and restaurants manage menus, orders and offers in an admin panel. It is built in Flutter on Node.js and AWS and is live on the App Store and Google Play in German and English. The hard part was losing nothing on the way: orders, points and activity are tracked end to end between the app, the restaurant and the backend.
- SaneBox: an app on top of a service that keeps changing. We designed and built the Android app of an AI email assistant in Kotlin and Jetpack Compose: the digest, the folders, and training a sender with one tap. The hard part was keeping up with the service: the app's API client is generated from SaneBox's OpenAPI description, so the app follows the backend as it changes.
Offshore software development services on a US contract
As an offshore software development outsourcing company, we sign contracts through our US company and keep an EU company in Tallinn, and the engineers work at our delivery center in the Kyiv region. If you are weighing an offshore software product development company against a local one, the hours worry people most, so here they are. Kyiv is usually seven hours ahead of Miami: at 9 am in Miami it is 4 pm at the delivery center, so your morning is shared working time.
One of the four pages I measured rates the overlap between Eastern Europe and US business hours as "low to partial". Partial is the honest word. Plan calls for your morning and keep the rest of the day's questions in writing. A new request to us gets a reply within 30 minutes on weekdays, 9 am to 6 pm Miami time.
Clients rate us 5.0 on Clutch from 26 verified reviews (as of September 2026), and not one of those reviews is negative.
What the price depends on
The estimate follows what the product has to do:
- accounts and roles, payments or subscriptions, an admin panel;
- chat or real-time updates, AI features, maps and location;
- integrations with your CRM, ERP or other APIs, a marketplace of buyers and sellers, analytics dashboards, several languages;
- and where you start: an idea, ready designs, or a product that needs new features or a rebuild.
A first version of a web or mobile app starts at $5,000: the smallest version that proves the idea, built with AI tools, reviewed and tested. Developers who join your team start at $35 an hour, depending on the role. Everything else is estimated free before any contract, and every price we publish is on our pricing page.
On outsourced development and staff augmentation there is no upfront payment: you pay every two weeks for delivered work. The first week is on us too: if it does not work for you, you stop and do not pay for it.
What you own
The code written for your product is yours once it is paid for: whoever pays owns it. Because requirements are written before the code, the documents describing what the software must do exist as well, so the next developer, ours or anyone else's, starts from them instead of from someone's memory.
Where to start
Next to this page: web development outsourcing for sites and web projects, web app outsourcing for portals and SaaS products, and everything we take over on the IT outsourcing page. Tell us what you are building and who is on your side today: the rough estimate is free, before any contract is signed.
