What a hardware prototype actually costs.
Real development fees and per-unit prices from devices our engineers built and delivered. Not ranges, not estimates: what each project cost.
Four kinds of cost
- Development fee
- Engineering, design, integration and project work.
- Prototype cost
- Building and testing the first units.
- Pilot batch cost
- Producing a small validated batch.
- Repeat batch cost
- Repeating production once the design and process are stable.
Three delivered projects
| Project | Units | Per unit | Development | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 24-channel logic analyzer | 15 | $20 | $800 | $1,100 |
| Lidar line-following car | 10 | $150 | $5,000 | $6,500 |
| Swing-arm tracked robot | 4 | $5,000 | $10,000 | $30,000 |
Total = development fee + units × per-unit price. Most of the difference between projects is the development fee, which follows the engineering work, not the unit count.
Why small batches cost more per unit
- Parts
- About 40% of unit cost in batches of 5 to 20.
- PCB and assembly
- About 40%. Each board-assembly run pays a fixed machine setup charge.
- Enclosure
- About 15%.
- Final assembly and test
- About 5%.
Development fee, as a rule of thumb
- Simple small device
- About $500 to $3,000.
- Larger robot
- About $10,000 to $20,000.
- Note
- These are our engineers' experience ranges, not quotes. Compare against the three projects above.
What totals leave out
- Certification
- None of the three went through FCC or CE. Quoted separately when a product needs it.
- Shipping and duties
- Usually arranged by the customer once units leave the factory.
- Extras
- Tutorials, training or a live demo.
- 100 or 1,000 units
- Not published. None of these were made at that volume, and small-batch prices should not be stretched to it.
Machine-readable data under CC BY 4.0: hardware-prototype-costs on GitHub →
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