Architect fee calculator
What the fee works out to — and, more usefully, when each part of it is actually payable. Percent of project cost or per square foot, split across the six stages, with the cumulative position at the end of each.
Free, no signup. The percentages are what practices commonly quote in India, not a published scale — every figure here is editable.
₹1.2 Cr
Commonly 5–12% depending on size and typology.
Optional — used to show the per-sqft equivalent.
Professional services are taxed at 18%.
Total fee
₹9,60,000
₹9.6 L · ₹300/sqft
With GST
₹11,32,800
includes ₹1,72,800 GST
Concept design
Site study, massing, options. The client picks a direction.
Fee
₹1,44,000
Paid by end of stage
₹1,44,00015%Schematic design
Plans, elevations and sections developed to scale.
Fee
₹1,92,000
Paid by end of stage
₹3,36,00035%Design development
Detailing, materials, consultant coordination.
Fee
₹1,92,000
Paid by end of stage
₹5,28,00055%Construction drawings (GFC)
The set the site actually builds from.
Fee
₹2,40,000
Paid by end of stage
₹7,68,00080%Tender
BOQ, tender documents, contractor comparison.
Fee
₹48,000
Paid by end of stage
₹8,16,00085%Construction stage
Site visits, RFIs, instructions, completion.
Fee
₹1,44,000
Paid by end of stage
₹9,60,000100%The share column is editable — practices split fees differently, and a studio that front-loads concept or bills nothing for tender should see its own numbers.
What this fee does not include
A percentage fee covers the practice's own work. These are normally billed at actuals on top, and folding them in is the commonest way a practice ends up paying its consultants out of its own fee:
- —Structural, MEP and other consultant fees
- —Statutory and municipal sanction fees
- —Soil investigation and land survey
- —Printing, plotting and document sets
- —Travel and site-visit expenses beyond the agreed number
- —Interior, landscape or specialist design, if not in scope
The other thing worth writing into the agreement: what the percentage is a percentage of. A fee agreed against an early estimate that the building then outgrows is a fee the practice has quietly discounted — the work scaled, the fee did not.
This table is a screen inside Houscade, not a spreadsheet.
Set the fee once, and each stage raises its own invoice when the client signs it off — on a link, with no login and no app. Hours logged against a stage show how much of that stage's fee is gone, while there is still time to price a variation.
The number that causes the argument is not the total
A client hears “8% of a crore and twenty” as one figure at the end of the job. The practice needs 15% of it before a single working drawing exists, and another 20% before the drawings the site builds from have been started.
That mismatch is why the cumulative column above matters more than the headline. By the end of schematic design a practice has collected about a third of the fee and produced most of the thinking. The largest single share — 25% for construction drawings (gfc) — is released only when the longest stage is finished, which is exactly the stretch where a practice is carrying salaries against nothing.
Writing the split into the agreement, stage by stage, is the whole fix. It costs one table and it settles the question before the project starts rather than in month five — what to tie each release to, and why the heaviest stage pays last.
Running a practice on this?
Houscade holds the fee agreement against the project, raises each stage's invoice when the client approves that stage, and shows how much of a stage's fee the hours have already used — while there is still time to price a variation rather than absorb it. The client approves on a link, with no login and no app.