Home design & construction budgeting · India
Know what your house costs before you build it.
Answer seven questions and get a complete, itemised cost band — before you have spoken to a single contractor. Then track every rupee against it until you move in.
What the app does
Every estimate is a band
Low to high, never a single figure — because real quotes land in a range, and one number is a promise nobody can keep.
Priced for your city
Labour and cartage vary by nearly 50% across Indian cities. A Bengaluru rate applied in Guwahati is simply wrong.
Structure costed on its own
A frame is priced off spans and steel weight. It does not get cheaper because you downgraded the tiles.
Then it tracks the spend
Log payments in ten seconds and see whether you are paying ahead of the work — the usual way money goes missing on site.
16 architectural styles, 40 facilities and systems, a room-by-room breakdown, and a stage-by-stage guide to what you should check before releasing each payment.
Get the app
Archst for Android
No account, no sign-up, no ads. Everything you enter stays in a file on your own phone.
How to install it — Android asks first
Android warns before installing an app from outside the Play Store. This is normal, and you can switch it back off afterwards.
- Tap Download APK and let the file finish downloading.
- Open it. Android will say installs from this source are blocked — tap Settings.
- Turn on Allow from this source, go back, and tap Install.
- Open Archst. There is nothing to sign up for; the first question is what you are building.
Would rather wait for Google Play? The listing is in closed testing. Message us on WhatsApp and we will add you as a tester — or just check back here, because this page gets the store link the day it goes live.
Priced for your city, not a national average
Labour and cartage vary by close to 50% across India. The same house, same drawings, same finish, costs 45% more to build in Mumbai than in Bhopal — so a national per-square-foot rate is wrong almost everywhere.
What we charge for
Everything the app does is free and always will be. These are the things a person does for you, and every price is stated in full on the services page.
Have a quote checked
₹1,500. We read your contractor's quotation line by line against the budget the app built for you, and tell you what is missing, what is above the market band, and what will cost you later.
Have your plan reviewed
₹2,500. A 45-minute call with a design consultant who has read your brief and budget beforehand, spent entirely on what is wrong with it.
Drawings for your plot
From ₹50 per sqft. Architectural, structural, electrical and plumbing sets, outsourced to independent registered architects and licensed engineers. All four coordinated together at ₹75.
Documents and site
From ₹2,500. A tender-ready bill of quantities at ₹12 per sqft, a 3D elevation at ₹6,000, and a site inspection with a written report at ₹2,500 a visit.
How payment works
The two consultations can be paid online through Razorpay, which accepts UPI, cards and net banking. All prices are in Indian Rupees and include applicable taxes, and your payment details are entered on Razorpay's own page — never seen or stored by Archst.
Drawing work is not paid for online. It is invoiced and settled by cheque or bank transfer once you engage us. Please read our refund and cancellation policy before you pay for anything.
Your money stays on your phone
There is no account, no sign-up and no server holding your project. Your budget, your payments and your checklists live in a single file on your device — we cannot read them, because we never receive them.
Questions people actually ask
How much does it cost to build a house in India?
For a contemporary house at a comfortable finish level, Archst's 2026 bands run roughly ₹2,600–₹4,700 per square foot of built-up area across major Indian cities. Indore sits near the bottom of that range at about ₹2,620–₹3,330, Bengaluru around ₹3,320–₹4,210, and Mumbai near the top at about ₹3,730–₹4,730. The spread is mostly labour and cartage, which vary by close to 50% across the country. These are indicative market bands, not quotations.
How much does it cost to build a 2,000 sq ft house in India?
Between about ₹51 lakh and ₹92 lakh, depending almost entirely on your city and your finish level. At a comfortable finish that is roughly ₹51–65 lakh in Indore, ₹64–82 lakh in Bengaluru and ₹72–92 lakh in Mumbai. Moving from an essential to a premium finish in the same city moves the figure more than a change of city does. A build of that size typically runs about 14 months.
Why does Archst give a range instead of one number?
Because real contractor quotes land in a range, and a single figure to the rupee is a promise nobody can keep. If we told you ₹47,32,180 you would believe it, and then blame us rather than the market when the build came in at ₹53 lakh. Archst carries a low and a high all the way through the estimate and only collapses to one figure at the very end, because a spend tracker needs something to track against.
How much advance should I pay a contractor before work starts?
Around 10% of the contract value is customary in Indian residential work. 20% is on the high side but does happen. Above 25% before a single brick is laid, you are financing the contractor's business and you are unsecured. The more useful rule is what comes after: tie every further payment to a stage that has visibly finished rather than to a date in a schedule.
What is the most common way homeowners lose money on a build?
Not being overcharged — paying ahead of completed work. A contractor holding 70% of the money for 40% of the work has no reason left to finish and every reason to move his crew to the next site. He is not a crook; he is responding to the incentive he was handed. Archst tracks the gap between money paid and work completed, and will tell you before you make a payment whether it puts you ahead of the site.
Is the Archst app free?
Yes. The cost estimate, the spend tracker, the stage-by-stage site guide and the handbook are all free and will stay that way. There is no account, no sign-up and no advertising. You only pay if you ask a person to do something for you — read a contractor's quote, review your plan on a call, or prepare drawings.
Does Archst store my budget on a server?
No. There is no account and no server holding your project. Your budget, your payments and your checklists live in a single file on your own phone, and we cannot read them because we never receive them. Android's automatic device backup is switched off deliberately so those figures are not copied to anyone's cloud, ours included.
Is Archst a firm of architects?
No. Archst is a design and budgeting consultancy and is not registered with the Council of Architecture. Drawing work is outsourced to independent registered architects and licensed engineers whom we engage for your project; they prepare the drawings and, where a statutory signature is required, they sign them.
What we are not
Archst is a design and budgeting consultancy, not an architectural firm, and is not registered with the Council of Architecture. Drawing work is outsourced to independent registered architects and licensed engineers who prepare it and, where a statutory signature is required, sign it.
Every figure the app produces is an indicative Indian market band, not a quotation, and no contractor is bound by it. The drawing rates are rates, not quotations — your area and scope are agreed in writing before anything is invoiced.
Are you an architect?
The same cost model, pointed at the other side of the table. Answer a client’s “what will this cost?” in ten minutes with a banded estimate on your own letterhead, instead of a number off the top of your head that they hold you to for two years.