How to Budget a Software Project: 2026 Enterprise Buyer's Guide (Turkey)

"This project costs 200K — your quote is 2M. Why?"

Same project, four Turkish vendors quote 200K, 800K, 2.5M, 6M. None of them is lying. They're describing four different products.

Four common pricing models in Turkey 2026:

• Fixed price / fixed scope — risk on vendor; rigid on changes
• Time & Materials — risk on buyer; max flexibility, MVP-friendly
• Sprint-based fixed — fixed price per 2-week sprint, scope renegotiated each cycle (the trend in 2026)
• Outcome-based — rare, sales-automation/e-comm only

A real software project budget has at least 7 line items: discovery, UI/UX, backend, frontend, mobile, QA, DevOps, PM. On top, 30-40% in invisible costs: 3rd-party API fees, cloud, licenses, training, data migration, security testing, KVKK/ISO compliance, year-1 maintenance.

The 200K-400K band buys freelancer + WordPress; 600K-1.5M buys junior boutique + basic Laravel/MERN; 1.5M-4M buys mid-senior team + modern stack + automation; 4M+ buys full enterprise team + microservices + ISO/SOC2.

10 silent budget multipliers: i18n, multi-role, multi-location, multi-currency, offline mode, real-time sync, regulatory (KVKK, e-invoice, BDDK), data migration, third-party integrations, design system from scratch.

The forgotten line: maintenance is 18-25% of dev cost annually. 5-year TCO = 2-3x first build.

12 must-ask questions before signing: 1. Pricing model? 2. Discovery included? 3. UI/UX revisions allowed? 4. Excluded 3rd-party tools? 5. Cloud account ownership? 6. QA + security testing scope? 7. KVKK / ISO compliance? 8. Source code transfer fee? 9. Year-1 maintenance scope? 10. SLA defined? 11. Who pays 3rd-party API fees? 12. Early/late delivery clauses?

Turkey vs Europe in 2026: comparable team quality at 40-60% lower cost. Time zone and culture proximity make nearshore Turkey Europe's new B2B sweetheart.

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*Makrops works on transparent sprint-based pricing with European and Turkish enterprise buyers. Contact.*