When you're embarking on the journey of turning your idea into a startup, one of the first questions you might ask is, "What does it cost to start a startup?"
A quick search on the internet shows a wide range of answers, with estimates for the average cost of a startup varying from $3,000 to $400,000.
You'll often hear stories of people spending all their savings to bring their ideas to life, but the cost heavily depends on your business model.
These days, many people think of digital business models when they hear "startup." But for (digital) businesses, the costs don’t need to be exorbitant - or high at all in 2026.
In this article, I'll provide an overview of the real costs of starting a digital startup and share strategies to significantly lower them.
Top 5 startup cost factor in 2026
There are five main areas that can drive costs for starting a (digital) startup. While traditional costs included marketing and sales, legal and administrative fees, office space and equipment, and HR, things have changed significantly in the digital age.
With the ability to test your business model upfront your startup costs can be almost negligible.
However, there are still a few expenses you might need to consider:
1. Digital Infrastructure
To test your business idea and make it visible, you’ll likely need a website.
While some may find paying customers through communities or other channels, having a digital presence is often essential, as many products also need some further explanation.
And the best place for this is your website.
But A simple website is more than enough in the beginning.
For this, you can use a website builder like Carrd, which costs $49 per year in the premium version, covering hosting and providing custom domains.
2. Marketing and Sales
The cost of acquiring your first customers also can depend on your distribution channels.
Social media can be effective and is a must-have for starting a business. Being active there helps you quickly get some attention for your solution.
Premium versions of platforms like LinkedIn can help you identify people who look at your profile and content. These 20€ per month are well invested.
If you are trying to cold outreach to people and sending them emails to create attention for your product, I would recommend using an email tool like Lemlist, which starts at 39€ per month.
3. Legal and Administrative Fees
If you want to make things very serious in the beginning, you might incur some legal and administrative fees for tasks like registering your brand, securing your name, or creating a logo.
For example, registering a brand in Germany costs a one-time fee of 290€. However, these are optional costs and not really necessary at the initial stage.
4. Product Development
In the past, developing your first product version could cost tens of thousands of dollars or require months of coding. This made it easily the highest cost block of starting a business.
Today, you can use no-code tools to build your MVP (read here how to build your MVP with no-code) in just days or weeks at a fraction of the cost.
Even if you seek help from a no-code agency to get a professionally developed product and guidance along your journey, the costs are significantly lower than those of traditional development agencies - thanks to no-code.
5. Time
Your time is probably the biggest cost factor.
Depending on your business model, you could face significant opportunity costs. One way to reduce your time effort for operational tasks would be to hire freelancers on platforms like Fiverr or Upwork.
But of course, this will increase your costs.
Final Words
By examining these startup cost examples, I'm focusing on the funding phase of your startup (excluding HR and other costs). Previously, it took thousands of euros to bring a startup to life.
Now, you can build it with just a few euros per month.
Even using a development agency to build your product is more affordable nowadays, making it possible without breaking the bank.
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