Build vs buy: should you stay on rented tools or own your platform?
Plug in what your current stack costs, how fast you're growing, and a build price. See the month your stack overtakes a custom platform, and what you keep over three years.
Where you are now
Where you're heading
We value your admin time at your effective hourly rate (your revenue spread across a 37.5-hour week). Tool spend and admin both scale as your client count grows. A custom platform runs at about £200/month and takes roughly 75% of the tool-juggling admin off your plate.
Build pays for itself in
3-year net saving
Total cost, stay vs build
"Stay" is your tool subscriptions plus the cost of your admin time, both scaling as you grow from 25 to 50 clients. "Build" is the one-off build cost plus £200/month running, plus the admin a platform can't remove. This is cost only. It leaves out the revenue upside of serving more clients without adding hours, which is usually the bigger number.
What your numbers say
A custom build costs more upfront, then overtakes your current stack by month 7. Over three years you keep £131,100, a 6.6x return on the build, before any revenue you add by growing past your calendar.
Want these numbers checked against a real build?
Book a free architecture audit. We'll price your build, map what it replaces, and show you the payback on your actual stack. You pay nothing until you've seen the plan.
When build vs buy is actually worth running
This calculator is for coaches and consultants who've outgrown the off-the-shelf option and are weighing up whether to keep paying for it or build something of their own. You're past the point where Kajabi or Teachable plus a stack of bolt-ons feels cheap, and you're starting to wonder if the monthly bill, and the hours you spend holding it together, would be better spent on a platform you own.
The honest answer depends on your numbers, not on anyone's sales pitch. Renting wins when you're small and growing slowly. Building wins when you're scaling and the rented stack starts taxing you on every new client. This tool finds the line between those two for your specific situation, and tells you which side of it you're on. For the full decision framework behind the numbers, read build vs buy: when a coach should invest in custom software.
If the result says build, the next read is what a bespoke coaching SaaS actually costs. If you're not sure you've outgrown your current setup yet, five signs you've outgrown Kajabi, Teachable, and Skool covers the tells, and custom coaching platform vs Kajabi compares what you get and what you give up.
How the comparison works
You set six numbers: your current monthly tool spend, your monthly revenue, how many clients you have now, the hours a week you lose to admin, the client count you're aiming for in twelve months, and a build price. From those, the tool runs two cost lines forward over three years.
The "stay" line is your tool subscriptions plus the cost of your admin time, both scaling up as your client count climbs toward your target. The "build" line is the one-off build cost, plus about £200 a month to run a custom platform, plus the slice of admin a platform can't take off your hands. We value your admin hours at your effective hourly rate, worked out from your revenue across a 37.5-hour week.
The headline figure is the month the stay line crosses the build line: the point your rented stack costs more than owning would have. Below that you get the running total for each path at year one, two, and three, the net saving over three years, and the return on the build. It's a cost-only view on purpose, so the saving stays conservative. The revenue you'd add by serving more clients without more hours sits on top of it.
Once you've run the numbers, the tech stack cost auditor breaks your current tool spend down tool by tool, the revenue ceiling calculator shows where your delivery model caps your income, and the platform readiness quiz checks whether your framework is ready to be built into software at all.
Everything coaches ask about build vs buy
What's the difference between buying and building coaching software?
Buying means renting software you don't control: Kajabi, Teachable, Skool, plus the bolt-ons you glue around them (Zapier, Calendly, a community tool, sheets). You pay monthly, forever, and the price climbs as you add clients and seats. Building means a custom platform that runs your framework the way you actually deliver it. You pay once to build it, then a small monthly running cost that doesn't scale the same way. This calculator puts a number on both so you can see which is cheaper over one, two, and three years.
How does the calculator decide when a build pays off?
It adds up the running total of each path month by month. Staying on your tools starts cheap and climbs as your client count and admin load grow. Building starts expensive because of the upfront build cost, then climbs slowly (about £200/month plus the admin a platform can't remove). The 'pays for itself' month is the point where the stay total catches up with the build total. After that month, every pound spent on tools is money you'd have kept by building.
Why does it count my admin time as a cost?
Because it's the biggest hidden cost of a rented stack and it grows with every client you add. Every hour spent copying data between tools, fixing broken automations, and manually onboarding clients is an hour you're not coaching or selling. We value that time at your effective hourly rate (your revenue spread across a 37.5-hour week) and assume a custom platform removes roughly 75% of it, since the manual glue work goes away.
Is £20,000 a realistic build cost?
It's a sensible mid-range default for a coaching platform that runs payments, client onboarding, and your framework delivery. Our founding-cohort tiers run from a web portal (Coach Lite) up to a platform with an admin dashboard, an AI onboarding agent, and outcome tracking (Coach Core), with native mobile and smartwatch builds higher again. We fix the price on the free call and put it in writing before we start. Slide the build cost to match the scope you're actually weighing up. For a full breakdown, read what a bespoke coaching SaaS actually costs.
What if staying on my tools comes out cheaper?
Then the tool tells you that, plainly. If your client growth is flat, your admin load is light, and your tool spend is low, renting can be the cheaper call across three years. Building pays off when you're scaling: more clients, more manual admin, more bolt-ons stacking up. Push your target client count or admin hours up and you'll see the maths flip. There's no point building before the numbers say so.
Does this include the extra revenue from scaling?
No, and that's deliberate. This is a cost-only comparison: what each path costs you, not what it earns. The bigger case for building is usually the revenue you open up by serving more clients without adding hours to your week, which a rented stack caps. We left that out so the saving figure stays conservative and easy to defend. To see where your current model caps your income, use the revenue ceiling calculator.