Marketplace development costs: budget your platform

A marketplace MVP with vendor onboarding, product catalogue and simple payment starts at around EUR 40,000–80,000 excl. VAT. Platforms with split payment, vendor portal and logistics integration run EUR 100,000–250,000. The calculator narrows the range by model, vendor count and payment.

Marketplaces must split payments between buyer, vendors and platform (split payment) and are subject to regulation (PSD2, anti-money-laundering). Providers like Stripe Connect or Mangopay solve this – but integrating payout logic, fees and refunds is a major work package of its own.

B2B marketplaces are usually more complex: tiered pricing, RFQs, company accounts with multiple buyers and invoice payment. Service marketplaces need availability and booking logic instead of a cart. The calculator treats the model as its own factor.

Vendors manage products, stock, prices and orders themselves, see payouts and statistics. A good vendor portal determines scalability: the more vendors self-manage, the less platform staff you need.

We recommend the MVP approach: launch with core features and 5–20 hand-picked vendors, then expand based on real user feedback. This validates commission model and demand before six-figure amounts go into the full build.

Hosting, monitoring and further development typically run EUR 1,000–5,000 per month, plus payment fees per transaction. Also budget for vendor support and content moderation – frequently underestimated.