In short
Software maintenance costs 10–25% of the development cost a year, most often 15–20%, according to rules of thumb from ten providers based in Germany. For a €60,000 project, that’s usually €9,000–12,000. Monthly packages with hours included start at €260–1,050. Without a package, a developer hour costs €120–175. Hosting and major version upgrades often cost extra. As of November 2026.
Key takeaways
- As a rule of thumb, ten software providers based in Germany put maintenance at 10–25% of the development cost a year, most often 15–20%.
- Packages with hours of work start at €260–1,050 a month. Without a package, a developer hour costs €120–175; the median is €125.
- At 15–20% a year, five years of maintenance add up to 75–100% of the original development cost.
- PHP, Node.js, .NET and PostgreSQL get two to five years of updates per version, so version upgrades belong in every maintenance budget.
- A response time only says when someone gets back to you. A short one requires a larger block of hours or a surcharge.
What does software maintenance cost per year and per month?
According to rules of thumb from ten software providers based in Germany, software maintenance costs 10–25% of the development cost a year, most often 15–20%. Depending on the provider, the smallest monthly package costs €260–1,050. Without a package, a developer hour costs €120–175; the median is €125.
| Item | Published figure | Providers |
|---|---|---|
| Maintenance, rule of thumb | 10–25% of the development cost a year, most often 15–20% | 10 |
| Smallest monthly package | €260–1,050, median €660; four of the five packages include 2–10 hours of work | 5 |
| Package with 8 hours of work a month | €799–1,040 | 3 |
| Hourly rate in a block of hours | €95–130, depending on the size of the block | 3 |
| Hourly rate without a package | €120–175, median €125 | 6 |
| Benchmark for maintaining or running a small application | €500–2,000 a month | 2 |
| Initial analysis of existing software | €890 or from €890, fully or partly credited | 2 |
Source: our own survey, · 16 providers based in Germany
How to read the table: We haven’t found any official statistics on maintenance costs or any reliable recent studies. As early as 2004, researchers at the University of Koblenz-Landau wrote that statistical data on maintenance existed only from the 1970s and 1980s (Softwaretechnik-Trends, 2004 (external site), in German). So the figures come from our own survey. On November 7, 2026, we opened the pricing, service and guide pages of 16 providers. According to their legal notice (Impressum), all of them are based in Germany, and each offers maintenance for custom software or publishes figures for it. Ten give a rule of thumb, and ten give euro amounts for maintenance or support. Six of these ten state that their prices exclude value-added tax (VAT); the others don’t say, or say so only for an add-on. We didn’t count offers only for websites, online stores or IT support for computers and servers. What a website costs to run is listed under ongoing costs of a website in our website cost guide.
The rules of thumb are based on the providers’ experience, not on measurements. Two providers give 15–20% on one of their pages and 15–25% on another. Packages and hourly rates are mostly starting prices, so a quote for your software may be higher. Where a provider sets different rates by role, we counted the rate for developers. For comparison, freelance software developers in Germany, Austria and Switzerland ask a median of €90 an hour excl. VAT in their freelancermap profiles, and the middle 50% ask €80–100. We don’t name competitors as a matter of principle, so you can’t check the individual figures directly here. Where we describe a provider’s terms in detail, we call it Provider A, B, C, D or E.
Source: freelancermap (in German) (external site), , updated · 2,337 profiles, listed rates
These figures apply to custom software such as internal tools, customer portals and SaaS products. Our guide What is SaaS? explains what defines a SaaS product and how it’s run. What development itself costs is covered in our cost guide How much does custom software development cost?
What drives software maintenance costs?
Maintenance costs depend mainly on how much the software and its environment change. Other factors are the number of third-party components that need updates, how easy the code is to understand and the response time you require. Settle these points before you request quotes.
| Cost driver | What determines it | Evidence |
|---|---|---|
| Changes | new requests, new requirements, changed interfaces in other systems | effort follows the share of code that’s added or changed (COCOMO II) |
| Understandability | code structure, documentation, tests | 10% extra effort for software that’s easy to understand, 50% for software that’s hard to understand (COCOMO II) |
| Familiarity | Does the team already know the software? | the full extra effort if the team has never seen the software (COCOMO II) |
| Dependencies | number of third-party components | an average npm package brings in 79 others (TU Darmstadt, 2019) |
| Security vulnerabilities | how often updates are needed | an average of 119 new vulnerabilities a day (BSI, July 2024 to June 2025) |
| End of support | operating system, runtime, framework, database | two to five years of updates per version for common runtimes and databases |
| Response time and availability | how quickly someone has to step in, including at night | short response times only with larger blocks of hours or at a surcharge (our own survey) |
Source: COCOMO II manual, TU Darmstadt, BSI, our own survey, · details in the source list
An estimation model from research helps explain what a percentage rule reflects. In COCOMO II, the cost model from the University of Southern California, maintenance effort depends on the share of code that’s added or changed during the maintenance period (COCOMO II Model Definition Manual, version 1.4 (external site)). By that logic, a rule of thumb of 15% a year roughly fits software in which a similar share of the code changes each year. If little changes, less will do. If new requests keep coming in, 15% won’t be enough. According to SWEBOK, the IEEE Computer Society’s Guide to the Software Engineering Body of Knowledge, over 80% of maintenance goes into enhancing and adapting the software (SWEBOK Guide, version 4.0a (external site)). Fixing faults is the smaller part.
Our article on technical debt works out why changes to hard-to-understand code cost more and when cleaning it up pays off.
Dependencies are third-party components your software is built on. According to a study by researchers at TU Darmstadt, an average package from npm, the JavaScript package registry, brings in 79 other packages (USENIX Security 2019 (external site)). Installing it means implicitly trusting 39 people who maintain those packages. This website depends on components like these, too. It lists 33 packages as direct dependencies; including all transitive dependencies, it uses 959 (as of November 8, 2026). Before the site went live, we had already applied a security update to its framework. The technology it uses is listed in our colophon.
How often updates are needed also depends on the security situation. Germany’s Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) reports that an average of 119 new vulnerabilities in IT systems became known every day between July 2024 and June 2025 (BSI report on the state of IT security 2025 (external site), in German). That’s about 24% more than in the previous year. According to the BSI, known vulnerabilities in perimeter systems are far too often patched late or not at all. These are the systems at the boundary between a company’s network and the internet.
When are version upgrades due?
A version upgrade is due when the version of a component you use stops getting security updates. Common runtimes, frameworks and databases get two to five years of updates per version. Over five years of operation, that means at least two major version upgrades with two years of support, and at least one with three or four years.
| Component | Updates per version | End-of-support examples |
|---|---|---|
| PHP | 2 years of full support, then 2 years of security fixes only | PHP 8.2 on Dec 31, 2026, then PHP 8.3 on Dec 31, 2027 |
| Laravel (PHP framework) | 18 months of bug fixes, 2 years of security fixes | Laravel 12 on Feb 24, 2027, then Laravel 13 on Mar 17, 2028 |
| Node.js | 30 months of long-term support (LTS), 36 months from release | Node.js 22 on Apr 30, 2027, then Node.js 24 on Apr 30, 2028 |
| Angular (JavaScript framework) | usually 24 months; about a year and a half for Angular 20 and 21 | Angular 20 on Nov 28, 2026, then Angular 21 in June 2027 |
| Python | 5 years | Python 3.11 in October 2027, then Python 3.12 in October 2028 |
| .NET | 3 years for LTS releases, 2 years for standard-term (STS) releases | .NET 8 and 9 on Nov 10, 2026, then .NET 10 and 11 on Nov 14, 2028 |
| PostgreSQL (database) | 5 years | PostgreSQL 14 on Nov 12, 2026, then PostgreSQL 15 on Nov 11, 2027 |
| Ubuntu LTS (server operating system) | 5 years of security maintenance, longer with an Ubuntu Pro subscription | Ubuntu 22.04 in May 2027, then Ubuntu 24.04 in May 2029 |
| Windows Server 2016 | fixed lifecycle, ending with extended support | in January 2027 |
Source: official project and vendor pages, · individual sources in the source list
An upgrade doesn’t have to be a big job if it happens regularly. The Laravel team aims to make sure you can update to each new major release in one day or less (Laravel 13.x release notes (external site)). Provider B, by contrast, writes that jumping five major versions at once can take weeks. So ask whether version upgrades are included in the maintenance price or billed as a separate project. Put this in your requirements from the start. Our how-to How to write a software requirements specification shows how such a document is structured.
From our work: what do you get for 15–20% a year?
At 15–20% a year, the maintenance budget for an internal tool that cost €20,000 to develop covers about two to three hours of work a month. For a €60,000 customer portal, it’s six to ten hours, and for a €150,000 business application, 14–24 hours. The calculations are ours, and the hourly rates come from our survey of November 7, 2026. They aren’t Datafalke prices or quotes.
| Example and development | Maintenance/year at 15–20% | Per month | Hours per month | Market package |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Internal tool, €20,000 | €3,000–4,000 | €250–333 | about 2–3 | 2 hours for €260–299 |
| Customer portal with ERP integration, €60,000 | €9,000–12,000 | €750–1,000 | about 6–10 | 8–10 hours for €799–1,050 |
| Business application with several modules, €150,000 | €22,500–30,000 | €1,875–2,500 | about 14–24 | 24 hours for €2,700–3,120 |
Source: our own calculation based on our survey,
Here’s how we calculate, so you can do the same with your own figures:
- Development: round example figures. What projects like these cost on the market is covered in our cost guide on development.
- Per year and per month: the development cost times 15% and 20%, the most common rule of thumb in our survey. For the month, we divide by 12.
- Hours: the monthly amount divided by the hourly rates in blocks of fewer than 40 hours, €105–130 at three providers. One of them charges €95 an hour only for 40 hours or more. The lower figure divides the smaller amount by €130, and the higher figure divides the larger amount by €105.
- Packages: published monthly prices for that number of hours. For 24 hours, we also scaled up Provider B’s rate of €112.50 an hour, which applies to blocks of any size.
- Five years: five times the annual amount. At 15–20%, that’s 75–100% of the development cost, so €45,000–60,000 for the customer portal.
Hosting, external services, major version upgrades billed as separate projects and your own time aren’t included. Check with your provider whether two hours a month are enough for updates and small fixes to your software. If you calculate your quotes the same way, you’ll see how much work a monthly price actually buys.
What maintenance models do providers offer?
Providers bill maintenance as a monthly flat fee for defined services, as a block of hours or by the hour. For planning, many also give a percentage of the development cost. Which model costs less depends on how regularly work comes up and how quickly someone needs to respond.
| Model | How it’s billed | Market examples | Fits if |
|---|---|---|---|
| Monthly flat fee | a fixed amount for defined services such as updates, monitoring and backups | from €660 a month, or from €1,650 with hosting and ongoing development (Provider E) | you mainly want secure operations covered |
| Block of hours | hours reserved each month at a fixed rate | 2 hours for €260, 8 for €1,040, 24 for €3,120 (Provider A); 10 hours at €105 each, 40 or more at €95 each (Provider C) | there’s work every month |
| Time and materials | each hour billed separately, with no base fee | €120–175 an hour (six providers) | work comes up only rarely |
| Share of the development cost | an annual budget as a percentage, broken down into a monthly budget | 10–25% a year (ten providers) | you’re planning before you have a quote |
Source: our own survey, · pricing pages and guides of 16 providers based in Germany
The fine print of these blocks of hours differs widely. At Provider D, unused hours expire at the end of each month; at Provider C, they carry over for one month; at Provider B, half of them remain as credit. You can cancel monthly at C, and with four weeks’ notice at B and D. Provider C bills new development, modernization and 24/7 on-call support separately, and hosting and licenses are in the customer’s own name.
The international standard ISO/IEC/IEEE 14764 provides guidance on software maintenance. It explicitly doesn’t cover operating the software, such as backup, recovery and system administration (ISO, 2022 edition (external site)). Several packages in our survey also include monitoring or backups. So ask which operational items the price covers. All prices in this section come from providers that sell maintenance themselves. The same goes for this article; our own services are described further down.
What do faster response times cost?
Faster response times cost more because providers must keep capacity free. Provider C usually responds within five business days if you pay by the hour, within one business day with 10 hours a month and on the same business day with 40 hours or more. Three providers offer 24/7 on-call support, but only at a surcharge or on request.
Pay attention to the verb. A response time says when someone gets back to you. Provider C states explicitly that it commits only to when it will respond, not to when a fault will be fixed. Provider D promises a reply within 48 hours in its package from €299, and a fix for critical errors within 24 hours in its package from €799. Also check whether a deadline runs only during service hours. One provider gives its service hours as Monday to Friday, 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. German time, and doesn’t commit to a fixed response time without a contract that covers it.
For operations, some contracts set an availability level in a service level agreement (SLA), an agreement on service hours, response times and availability. At Provider B, the first SLA tier, with enhanced response times and prioritized handling, costs €1,500 a month. Tiers with 99.5% and 99.9% availability are available on request. At 99.5%, a system may be down for about 3 hours 39 minutes a month; at 99.9%, for about 44 minutes.
Source: our own survey, · downtime: our own calculation with 730 hours a month
An internal tool used only on weekdays rarely needs a commitment for the night. A customer portal your customers use to place orders may well need one. Decide this before you request a quote, because the response time helps determine the price.
How much does Datafalke charge for software maintenance?
At Datafalke, software care S covers updates, monitoring and two hours of work a month, for at least three months, and software care L is by agreement. We don’t publish a price for software care S yet; you’ll get it with your quote. The intro call is free.
Changes outside the fixed price start only once you approve them. Every sign-off includes a patch and incident-reporting process and a software bill of materials (SBOM), a machine-readable list of your software’s components. Repository, cloud account, domain and credentials are in your name. That means your team or another provider can also take over maintenance. Scope and process are on our software development page under Pricing and packages.
We work exclusively with businesses and self-employed professionals. All offers exclude VAT.
What other costs are there besides maintenance?
The main costs on top of maintenance are hosting, external services and major modernization work, which several providers bill separately. According to three providers, hosting a business application costs €20–500 a month, depending on scope and redundancy. You also need to budget for your own time, for example for testing after updates and for approving changes.
| Item | Published figure | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Hosting a business application | €20–100 a month; infrastructure alone €20–50, high-availability setups €150–400; with a database, backups and a content delivery network (CDN) €100–500 | three providers |
| Managed hosting with updates and monitoring | from €136 a month per server; entry package with two servers €348 | one provider |
| External services such as AI, email delivery, payments and SMS | €50–1,000 a month | one provider |
| Performance monitoring as an add-on | from €89 a month | one provider |
| New development, modernization and expansion | outside the block of hours; larger projects at a fixed price | one provider |
| Security updates after the end of support | Windows 10: US$61 per device in the first year, then twice as much each year | Microsoft |
Source: our own survey, · pricing pages and guides of six providers based in Germany
Source: Microsoft Learn (external site), · price for organizations through Volume Licensing
Our cost guide How much does it cost to build a SaaS product? works out what servers, a database and a payment provider cost for a small SaaS product. Our software development cost guide lists more items under ongoing costs of custom software.
Plan for your own time as well. After each update, someone in your business has to check that the most important workflows still work. Someone also has to approve changes and collect requests from users. Decide who takes this on.
Frequently asked questions
What happens if I skip maintenance?
The software keeps running at first, but security vulnerabilities in its components stay open. With every end of support, the gap to the current version also grows, and the upgrade you’ll eventually need gets bigger. For neglected software, Provider D budgets 25–30% a year for the first one to two years instead of 15–20%. So plan for at least security updates and the version upgrades of your most important components.
Where does maintenance end and new development begin?
Your maintenance contract sets the boundary; there’s no fixed rule. According to SWEBOK, the ISO/IEC/IEEE 14764 standard distinguishes five categories of maintenance. They cover fixing faults found after delivery (corrective), fixing latent faults before they show up in live operation (preventive), adapting the software to a changing environment (adaptive), adding features (additive) and improving the software, for example its documentation or performance (perfective). There’s also emergency maintenance, which keeps a system running until the actual fix. Several providers in our survey bill small enhancements against the block of hours and larger projects separately. Ask for the boundary to be described with examples.
How much does it cost to switch maintenance providers?
Switching mainly costs onboarding time, because the new team first has to get to know the software and how it runs. For an initial analysis of the existing software, Provider C charges €890 excl. VAT and Provider D from €890. Both credit all or part of the amount if you then book ongoing support. In the COCOMO II cost model, every change takes more effort as long as the team doesn’t know the software. According to the model, understandable code and documentation reduce this extra effort considerably. What this looks like at Datafalke is explained under What happens if we can’t continue? How to prepare the switch is covered in our how-to Avoiding developer lock-in.
What does maintenance cost for off-the-shelf software?
For off-the-shelf software, maintenance is usually a fixed share of the license price. For ERP systems, Trovarit AG’s user study “ERP in der Praxis” puts it at 12–25% of the license price a year. For small installations with 5–25 users, that averages about €600 per user a year. According to the study, ERP systems stay in use for just under 13 years on average. Our comparison Build or buy software? shows how to compare both options over the same period.
Source: Trovarit AG (IT-Matchmaker.news, in German) (external site), , updated · study “ERP in der Praxis”
What does it cost to extend support past its end date?
Extended security updates usually cost extra, and for Windows 10 the price even rises every year. Microsoft charges organizations US$61 per device for the first year of Windows 10 updates, and the price doubles each year after that, for a maximum of three years. If you join later, you pay for the years you missed, so three years cost US$427 per device. For Ubuntu, an Ubuntu Pro subscription extends security maintenance to up to 15 years; it’s free for personal use on up to five machines. Budget for the upgrade anyway, because any extension eventually runs out.
How do I compare two maintenance quotes?
Compare what’s behind the monthly price, because the price alone tells you little. Ask how many hours are included, at what rate and what happens to unused hours. Ask which deadline is promised: for a response or for a fix, during service hours or around the clock. Ask whether version upgrades, hosting and monitoring are included, how you can cancel and whether the provider reports every month. Also find out who pays to fix defects from the original development.