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Build vs. Buy Calculator

What Will You Actually Pay? The honest cost of building your own RFP tool — not just to build it, but to keep it accurate.

Your Situation

Engineering Cost Assumptions

Include opportunity cost
Time this engineer isn't spending on your core product
Built with AI coding assistance
Cursor/Claude Code cuts build time — not the ongoing tuning burden

Infra, Hosting & AI Cost

Covers hosting, vector database, monitoring, and security tooling, plus all AI processing behind the capabilities you select below — extraction, embeddings, conflict checks, and answer generation. Scales automatically with your RFP volume.

Model next-gen AI pricing
Reflects the cost jump when providers migrate to newer, pricier models

Capabilities You'd Need to Trust It

🔒
Baseline platform (always included)API integration, basic upload, simple Q&A storage — 80h to build · 3h/mo to maintain
Build It Yourself
$549,258
over 5 years
cwRFP
$53,940
over 5 years
Team tier ($899/mo) — based on 320 generations/mo

Cumulative Cost Over Time

615k461k308k154k0Year 1Year 2Year 3Year 4Year 5
Build it yourself
cwRFP

Hover any point for the exact number

⚠Build cost alone already exceeds cwRFP's first-year price at this scope — before maintenance or infra are even added.

Cost Breakdown by Year — DIY vs. cwRFP

CategoryYear 1Year 2Year 3Year 4Year 5
One-time build (700 hrs @ $125/hr)$87,500$0$0$0$0
Ongoing maintenance (36.0 hrs/mo)$54,000$54,000$54,000$54,000$54,000
Infra, hosting & AI processing$2,602$2,602$2,602$2,602$2,602
Opportunity cost (1.5× on labor)$70,750$27,000$27,000$27,000$27,000
Comparison vs. cwRFP
Total this year — DIY$214,852$83,602$83,602$83,602$83,602
cwRFP subscription this year$10,788$10,788$10,788$10,788$10,788
Cumulative — DIY$214,852$298,453$382,055$465,656$549,258
Cumulative — cwRFP$10,788$21,576$32,364$43,152$53,940
Difference (DIY − cwRFP)+$204,064+$276,877+$349,691+$422,504+$495,318

Every number here is an adjustable assumption, not a fixed claim — drag any slider to match your own reality.
Built for live conversations, not as a substitute for your own estimate.