CompareBuild vs buy

Can't we just build this with Claude?

You can. Here's what it takes to do it for a whole team, what it costs, and when building it yourself is the right call.

What you'd be building

A weekend prototype is easy. Keeping it true is the work.

Connecting Claude to Jira, Slack and GitHub takes an afternoon. Making that context current, shared, permission-aware and useful for specs and agents is a product in itself.

Connectors

Code, tickets, chat, calls and docs, each with its own API, auth and rate limits, maintained as they change.

Prototype: easy

Processing and memory

Turning raw activity into entities, decisions and history that persist between sessions and stay current.

Hard

Permissions and security

Every answer respecting who is allowed to see which source, audited and encrypted.

Hard

Shared across the team

One consistent picture for PMs, engineers, sales and leadership, not a different prompt per person.

Hard

Workflows on top

Ranking requests, writing specs, estimating, syncing tickets, tracking status and flagging risk.

A product

Upkeep

Model changes, API changes, new tools and bug fixes, forever.

Ongoing

The cost

Estimate the engineering time.

Set your own numbers, and pick the Devplan package that matches your usage. The build figure counts engineering time only; model usage comes on top.

Engineers on it 2 Salary per engineer, per year $175,000 Months to build 4 Share of an engineer's time for upkeep after launch 25% Devplan credit package

Build

$116,667

engineers × salary × months

Upkeep per year

$43,750

share of one engineer's salary

Devplan per year

$2,400

your package × 12 months · all capabilities, no per-seat charge

Your inputs only. We don't add assumptions you can't see. Devplan packages from pricing; a typical team of 6 to 10 people uses about $200 of credits a month. Unused credits don't roll over.

Be honest about it

When to build, and when to buy.

Build it yourself if

One or two people need context, not the whole company
You only need answers, not specs, tracking or agent workflows
You have engineers to spare for upkeep, long term

Use Devplan if

Product, engineering and customer-facing teams need the same picture
You want feedback turned into ranked, code-grounded specs
Your AI agents need current product context, not a stale file
Your engineers should build your product, not internal tooling

Questions

Build vs buy, answered

Can I give Claude context with MCP servers instead?

Devplan and single-tool MCP servers solve different problems. MCP servers work for one person and one session. MCP servers for Jira, Slack or GitHub let Claude look things up, but each session starts from scratch, each person sets it up differently, and nothing connects decisions to code and customers over time. Devplan keeps that shared memory for the whole team and exposes it through one MCP connection.

What does the calculator include?

Devplan's build vs buy calculator counts only the numbers you enter: engineers, salary, months to build, a share of engineering time for upkeep, and the Devplan credit package you pick. It leaves out model usage, security reviews and the workflows on top (specs, tracking, agent hand-offs), which add to the cost of building.

Can we start small?

Yes. Devplan gives you $100 in free credits for 3 months, with no credit card. Connect a few tools and see the context Devplan builds before deciding anything.

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