How much does it cost to build a marketplace
A two-sided marketplace runs A$35,000 to A$120,000 because you are building two products and a payment split, not one product. The honest first step is usually to fake one side entirely and see if the other side pays.
A marketplace is two products that happen to share a database. Buyers and sellers want opposite things, and the thing that makes it work is not software, it is having enough of both at the same time.
What it costs
| Typical range | A$35,000 to A$120,000 |
| Our six-week version | A$38,000 fixed, 6 weeks |
| What you get first | One side self-serve, the other side handled by you manually, real money moving through split payments, and a way to measure whether either side comes back. |
The low end is one category, manual onboarding on the supply side, and payments that split two ways. The high end is self-serve onboarding both sides, disputes, refunds, payouts on a schedule, and any kind of ranking or matching.
The three things that move the number
1. Split payments and payouts. Taking money is easy. Holding it, splitting it, paying it out on a schedule, handling a refund after the payout has already gone, and staying on the right side of the rules is a genuine project of its own. Stripe Connect does most of it and is still the biggest single line in most marketplace builds.
2. Trust. Reviews, verification, dispute handling and what happens when one side behaves badly. None of it is technically hard and all of it is decisions nobody has made yet, which is the expensive kind of work.
3. The cold start. Not a software cost, but it is the reason most marketplace budgets get spent twice. Software cannot fix an empty marketplace, so building the full self-serve version before you have supply is buying a machine for a factory with no raw materials.
What to cut for a first version
- Self-serve supply onboarding. Do it by hand until it hurts. You will learn what the form should have asked.
- Ratings and reviews. With low volume they are noise, and they are trivial to add later.
- Search and filtering beyond a category dropdown. Under a few hundred listings, browse beats search.
- In-app messaging. Email works, and it saves you building a moderation problem in month one.
Marketplaces are the category where the gap between what gets quoted and what actually needs to exist on day one is widest. Almost every feature above is real, and almost none of it is needed before you know both sides will show up.
The line item to read twice
Payments priced as one item. Ask specifically about payouts, refunds after payout, and what happens when a seller disputes. Those three questions separate people who have shipped a marketplace from people who have shipped a shopping cart.
Common questions
Should I build both sides at once
No. Pick the side that is harder to get and serve it manually while you build for the other. Doing it by hand is not a shortcut, it is the research that tells you what to build.
How much does Stripe Connect cost to integrate
As a line item it is usually a meaningful slice of a marketplace build, because the integration is not the hard part. Deciding your money rules is, and those decisions are yours, not your developer's.
Can a marketplace be built in six weeks
A real one that takes money and splits it, yes, if one side is manual. A full self-serve two-sided platform with disputes and scheduled payouts, no, and anyone quoting that in six weeks is describing screens rather than a system.
If you want the whole method rather than one answer, it is written up in the book. Five dollars, and it takes an evening: Turn Your Expertise Into a Real Tech Product. If you would rather just ask, book a call and you will get a straight answer on the call, including if the answer is do not build it.