The dominant factor is never the choice of framework — it is unclear scope. Each unanswered question in the requirements is converted into a contingency inside the number you receive. A supplier that has no visibility into the edge cases has to assume the worst. Putting two weeks into a proper discovery frequently cuts the overall figure by far more than haggling over hourly rates.
Third-party integrations tend to be the second big multiplier. A screen that writes to your own database is low risk; the same feature wired into an old accounting system is a different problem. The unknown sits in the counterparty: rate limits and sandbox access, slow approval cycles, offshore development team for moscow fields that mean something different on each side. Ask each bidder to list every external system, because this is the usual source of overruns.
Quality attributes can easily double the estimate. An internal tool used by a small internal team is a very different build from the same idea serving public traffic. Audit and compliance requirements, high availability, scalability, data retention rules and accessibility all add weeks of work. Write them down at the start or expect them priced as extras.
Who actually does the work changes the arithmetic. An hourly rate says almost nothing on its own: one senior developer at a higher rate is often less expensive in the end than two juniors who need constant review. Check too what else appears on the invoice: delivery management, testing, DevOps and design are legitimate costs, but they should be visible in the estimate.
The number in the proposal is rarely what you will actually spend. Budget for infrastructure, third-party licences, observability and a change budget for every year the nearshore software development runs. A useful planning figure holds that any production system consumes a noticeable fraction of its original build cost annually simply to stay current. Treating the launch as the finish line is the most frequent planning error.
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