Startup Cost Estimator

How to use it

1. Enter a one-time amount and a monthly amount for each of five categories: facilities, technology, legal, marketing, and other. One-time covers deposits, build-out, hardware, incorporation, and launch campaigns; monthly covers rent, software, retainers, and ongoing ads. The split is what reveals whether your budget is front-loaded or carries a heavy monthly tail.
2. Read the first-year total (one-time costs plus twelve months of recurring costs), total one-time costs, total recurring monthly, total recurring annualised, and the per-category breakdown. The first-year total is the number that matters for funding decisions because it captures both the upfront cash to launch and the twelve months of recurring spend to keep the doors open. A budget that looks affordable on one-time costs can still be unsustainable once the recurring tail is annualised.
3. Use the one-time versus recurring split to judge financing structure. Large one-time costs can be covered by a single capital injection, but high recurring costs require ongoing revenue or runway, which is a fundamentally different risk. If recurring costs dominate, the question is not whether you can afford to launch but whether you can afford to keep operating before revenue arrives.
4. Pressure-test by category. If software and tooling already run several hundred dollars a month before you have a single customer, look for free tiers or self-hosted alternatives; if legal and registration dominate the one-time total, that cost is fixed and should be planned for, not optimised away. Test a lean scenario where you defer every non-essential recurring item until after launch.
5. Re-run as quotes firm up and the plan changes, and feed the recurring monthly total straight into the monthly burn rate and startup runway tools to see how long your starting capital actually lasts. Treat this estimate as a planning floor, not a ceiling, since real launches almost always surface costs the initial plan missed.

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Use it from code

The same calculation as a JavaScript module you can import. It runs where you import it, with no request, key or rate limit.

import { compute } from "https://aibizhub.io/engines/startup-cost-estimator.js";

Input and output contract, TypeScript types and the guide for agents.