Planning ranges, not a price list
Wallet infrastructure cost depends less on the number of screens and more on the control model, asset movement, recovery requirements and operations. The ranges below are indicative engineering scopes for planning only, not fixed quotes. Provider fees, legal/compliance work, custody pricing and third-party audits are excluded.
Typical engineering ranges
| Scope | Indicative engineering budget | What usually drives it |
|---|---|---|
| Provider SDK / embedded wallet integration | €10k–€25k | Onboarding, wallet UX, basic transfers, backend mapping |
| Production embedded-wallet product | €25k–€60k | Recovery, account abstraction, multiple assets/networks, analytics, support tooling |
| Programmatic deposit / payout infrastructure | €35k–€80k | Wallet registry, transaction states, policy, idempotency, chain/provider observation |
| Treasury + multi-role control plane | €60k–€150k+ | Approvals, policy, multiple wallets/providers, ledger, reconciliation, incident operations |
Cost driver 1: control model
User-controlled wallets shift signing to the user but require excellent onboarding, recovery and transaction-approval UX. Developer-controlled wallets support automation but require stronger application authorization and operational controls. Treasury adds roles, approval and incident procedures.
Cost driver 2: one provider vs provider-neutral architecture
A thin SDK integration is cheaper. A provider-neutral wallet registry, transaction domain model and adapters cost more initially but can reduce migration risk and keep business state independent from a vendor API.
Cost driver 3: deposits and chain observation
Dedicated deposit addresses, on-chain indexing, replay, confirmation policy and reconciliation add significant engineering compared with simply rendering a user wallet. They are valuable when deposits are core product behavior.
Cost driver 4: ledger and treasury
If users have balances, funds are swept, fees are allocated or multiple asset movements must be explained, a product-owned ledger and reconciliation layer become part of the scope.
Cost driver 5: security and recovery
Threat modelling, role separation, audit logs, recovery runbooks, environment isolation, limits and provider-failure scenarios should be budgeted as product work, not postponed to “hardening”.
How to reduce cost safely
- Use a managed wallet provider instead of building low-level signing/key infrastructure.
- Start with one control model, one or two networks and a narrow asset set.
- Keep product state provider-neutral but do not overbuild a generic abstraction.
- Build the operator timeline and reconciliation early; it reduces expensive manual debugging later.
- Separate Phase 1 deposits from later advanced treasury or multi-provider routing.
Discovery deliverable
A useful wallet architecture discovery should leave you with a control matrix, provider shortlist, wallet/account model, transaction state machine, recovery boundary, ledger decision, treasury flow and phased implementation estimate.