Build vs buy in 2026: a decision framework with actual numbers
Total cost of ownership spreadsheets lie. Our advisory team’s weighted scoring model weighs opportunity cost, exit risk and talent availability honestly.
Daniel Okafor
Fractional CTO, ByteDots
“Should we build or buy?” gets answered by gut feel, sales decks or whoever shouts loudest in the offsite. It deserves arithmetic.
Score five dimensions
We weight: total cost over three years (build and run), strategic differentiation, time-to-value, exit risk, and talent availability. Each factor gets scored 1–10 against written criteria before debate begins.
Price the tail properly
Buying means perpetual licence inflation and integration tax; building means permanent maintenance headcount. Model both tails explicitly — year-three numbers decide most arguments.
Respect the switching cost
An exit-risky vendor is an unpriced liability. Contract terms, data exportability and ecosystem lock-in deserve numeric scores, not adjectives.
Decide, document, revisit
Write the decision record with scores and assumptions, set a review date, and move on. Reversible decisions made fast beat perfect decisions made slowly — most of these are reversible.
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