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Find out before you ask someone to build it. No sales call and no lead form. You see the scope, the hours and the arithmetic behind the range.
Not open yet
Launching this weekend.
The free range, the $79 spec and the $199 execution pack all open then. Nothing to sign up for — come back and paste your idea.
How the range is worked out
A vaguer idea gets a wider range.
STEP 1
Tickets
Your idea is broken into the pieces of work a developer would actually do. "Walker can set their hourly rate."
STEP 2
Match
Each piece is matched to one of roughly 100 standard components, priced from real builds — not guessed at from scratch every time.
How the library is calibrated →STEP 3
Hour band
Each match carries an hour range. The low end assumes nothing goes wrong. The high end assumes the normal amount of surprises.
STEP 4
Dollar band
Hours × our $85/hr US benchmark, with the typical $75–95/hr senior-freelancer band shown underneath. Then the same scope, priced as an agency instead.
Worked example · dog-walking marketplace
“A marketplace where dog owners book local walkers, pay in-app, and rate them.”
Rough range · freelance
$24k–40k
Priced at US developer rates.
Same scope, an agency instead of freelancers:
$44k–89k
Roughly 1.8–2.2× the freelance band. Agency pricing typically also covers project management, QA, account management, delivery risk and post-launch support.
This is the free range. The $79 spec for this idea looks like this →
Before you pay for discovery
A paid discovery phase is how most agencies work out what to build and what it will cost, before they quote. Their own published prices start at $3,000 and commonly run to $20,000, and the work takes two to six weeks. A good one includes user research and wireframes. We do not do those.
What we cover is the part you need first: the scope, the ticket list, the hours and the range. It costs $79 and you have it the same day. If you still commission a discovery afterwards, you walk in with a spec, and they have less to find out.
Discovery prices and durations as published by Purrweb, Uptech, SolveIt and Digiteum, checked September 2026. Larger or regulated projects cost more.
What you can buy
You are about to make a five- or six-figure purchase. For $79 you know what you are asking developers to build, what we would expect it to take, and what you can cut to bring the budget down. For $199 you hand over a folder and start from the specification instead of the idea.
$79
Itemised spec
Know what you are buying before you ask anyone to build it. Every ticket with its size and the reason for that size, hours and dollars per module, a smaller launch-first scope next to your complete idea, and two to four budget levers showing what the range does when you cut something. Methodology and rate sources included.
spec.pdf
Opens this weekend
If a developer tells you the spec is unusable, we refund it. Email the reply you got to hello@canarlo.com and we'll send the money back.
See a full sample spec (PDF)See every document in this tier →$199
Execution pack
Ready to build. Hand this folder to a developer or an AI coding agent and start from the specification instead of the idea. The spec, plus the same work written as ready-to-run tickets, a product requirements doc and a short architecture note.
tickets/ · prd.md · architecture-note.md
Opens this weekend
If a developer tells you the spec is unusable, we refund it. Email the reply you got to hello@canarlo.com and we'll send the money back.
See every document in this tier →One-time purchase. No account, no password. You give an email at checkout so we can send the link and resend it later.
Where we stand
TrueBallpark is made by Canarlo, a software studio. We built it from the way we scope our own projects. We take no referral fees and we will not pass your idea to anyone. The spec is written so you can hand it to any developer and compare their answers. If the range tells you the app is too expensive to build right now, we have done our job.
Questions
Is this a quote?
No. It is a range built from a ticket list you can read, priced against published rate bands. You can take it to anyone.
Why a range and not a number?
Because anyone giving you one number before the work is specified is either guessing or selling. The low end assumes an experienced developer and no surprises. The high end assumes the normal amount of surprises.
Where do the rates come from?
Freelance hourly bands from Gun.io and Toptal ($75–95/hr) and agency MVP totals from AgencyCluster ($25k–200k). Both are cited on every estimate.
Will you introduce me to developers?
No, and we take no referral fees. The spec is written so you can take it to anyone and compare their answers. TrueBallpark is made by Canarlo, a software studio; after you buy a spec we mention once that we can quote it too. You can ignore that.
Do I need an account?
No. The rough range needs nothing. If you buy, you give an email at checkout for the download link, and you can have it resent any time.
What if a developer says it's no good?
If a developer tells you the spec is unusable, we refund it. Email the reply you got to hello@canarlo.com and we'll send the money back. You can also ask for a refund for any reason within 14 days — see the terms page.