In 2026, society management software in India costs 4 to 15 rupees per flat per month for the mainstream apps, 15 to 25 for the accounting-led suites, and 35 to 50 for premium bundles with gate security and visitor management. For a 200-flat society that is somewhere between 800 and 10,000 rupees a month, against a custom build that starts around 8 lakh.
That comparison answers the question most committees are actually asking, and the answer is unambiguous: a single society should never build. The interesting question is the one underneath it, which is what the per-flat number does not include, and this guide spends most of its length there.
If you manage rental units for owners rather than running a society, that is a different product with different economics, and it is covered in our property management software guide.
What the apps charge
Indian society apps price per flat per month, usually billed annually to the society rather than to residents. It is the same per-unit shape as the fleet market, where software is sold per vehicle, as school ERP, where it is sold per student, and as hospital software, where it is sold per bed. In all of them the published rate is rarely the whole bill; our fleet software cost guide, school ERP cost guide and hospital software cost guide work through the others. The spread here is wide because the category contains three different products wearing similar names.
| Tier | Typical price per flat per month | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| Mainstream community apps | 4 to 15 rupees | Notices, complaints, visitor entry, amenity booking, a resident directory, basic dues tracking |
| Accounting-led suites | 15 to 25 rupees | The above plus a real ledger: maintenance billing with arrears, expense heads, vendor payments, and reports an auditor will accept |
| Premium security bundles | 35 to 50 rupees | The above plus gate hardware integration, vehicle recognition, staff attendance, and a manned helpdesk |
Published rates from the better-known names sit inside the first two rows: ADDA from about 4 to 10, MyGate about 5 to 12 with higher tiers for the security features, ApnaComplex about 6 to 12, NoBrokerHood about 8 to 15 with a free tier and paid add-ons. Several have minimum monthly charges of 200 to 500 rupees, which matters to small societies more than the per-flat rate does.
Most have a free tier, usually capped by flat count. For a society of fewer than fifty flats the free tier is often genuinely enough, and our property guide says the same thing about the small end of the market.
What a 200-flat society actually pays
The per-flat number is the smallest line on the invoice. Here is a realistic first year for a 200-flat society moving off spreadsheets and a WhatsApp group.
| Line | Year one |
|---|---|
| Subscription at 20 rupees a flat a month | 48,000 |
| Onboarding: loading members, flats, opening balances and arrears | 15,000 to 40,000, sometimes waived |
| Payment gateway on maintenance collection, about 0.5 to 2 percent of what you collect | 30,000 to 1.2 lakh on a 60 lakh annual budget |
| SMS and WhatsApp notifications, if not bundled | 6,000 to 25,000 |
| Gate hardware, if you take the security tier: tablet, scanner, mounting | 25,000 to 60,000, one time |
| Committee and guard training, and the parallel run | A month of somebody's evenings |
| Total, first year | 1.2 to 3 lakh, of which the subscription is under a fifth |
The payment gateway is the line that surprises committees. Collecting 60 lakh of maintenance a year through a gateway at 1 percent costs 60,000, which is more than the software. It is worth asking whether the gateway charge is absorbed, passed to residents, or avoided for bank transfers, because on a large society that single answer is worth more than the choice of vendor.
GST on maintenance, which the billing module has to get right
This is the part that is specific to India, specific to societies, and done badly in most comparisons, so here it is carefully.
Maintenance charges collected by a resident welfare association or co-operative housing society are exempt from GST unless both of these are true:
- The charge per member exceeds 7,500 rupees a month, under the exemption at entry 77 of Notification 12/2017 Central Tax Rate, and
- The society's aggregate annual turnover exceeds 20 lakh, which is the registration threshold, or 10 lakh in the special category states.
Both conditions must be breached. A society charging 9,000 a month per flat with turnover under 20 lakh does not charge GST, and nor does a society with a two crore turnover billing 4,000 a flat.
Two details that cause the most billing errors:
- When GST applies, it applies to the whole amount, not the excess. A member billed 8,000 pays 18 percent on 8,000, not on the 500 above the threshold. A billing module that taxes only the excess is wrong, and the society carries the liability.
- The 7,500 limit is per apartment, not per person. A member who owns two flats and is billed separately for each gets the exemption twice.
Ask any vendor to show you a generated invoice for a member just above and just below the threshold. If they cannot produce both in the demo, their tax handling is a configuration promise rather than a feature. The same applies to the sinking fund and corpus contributions, which sit outside the maintenance charge and are accounted for separately.
The seven things that move the price
- Flat count, and the minimum charge. Below about a hundred flats the minimum monthly fee usually decides your bill, not the per-flat rate. Above a thousand, ask for a volume rate; most vendors have one and few publish it.
- Security depth. Visitor passes and a guard app are included nearly everywhere. Vehicle number recognition, face recognition at the gate, staff attendance and panic alerts are the tier above, and they are the reason the premium row costs three times the mainstream one.
- Accounting depth. Collecting dues is easy. Producing an auditable ledger with expense heads, vendor bills, TDS where applicable and a balance sheet the auditor accepts is the real difference between the first and second rows.
- Who collects the money. A gateway inside the app is convenient and costs a percentage of everything collected. Bank transfer reconciliation is cheaper and more work. Many societies run both and reconcile monthly.
- Hardware. Tablets at the gate, boom barriers, cameras. Software vendors who also sell hardware will quote the bundle; the hardware is usually the larger number and is rarely in the per-flat price.
- Data migration. Two years of arrears, member records, and opening balances have to arrive correctly or the first AGM after go-live becomes an argument about the software rather than about the accounts.
- Who actually administers it. Every society app needs one person who maintains it. In practice that is a committee member with a day job, which is the single biggest predictor of whether the thing is still in use a year later.
When building is sane, and when it is not
For one society, never. Run the arithmetic honestly.
| Scenario | Yearly product cost at 20 rupees a flat | Against a build of about 9 lakh |
|---|---|---|
| 200 flats | 48,000 | Pays back in nineteen years |
| 1,000 flats, a large township | 2.4 lakh | Pays back in about four years, before upkeep |
| A managing agent with 3,000 flats across societies | 7.2 lakh | Pays back in a year and a half |
| A managing agent or developer with 5,000 flats and up | 12 lakh and up | Pays back inside a year |
The crossover sits somewhere above three thousand flats under one management. That is not a society. It is a facilities management company, a developer handing over several projects, or a chain of townships under one operator, and those are the only buyers for whom a build is rational.
Even then, the reason to build is rarely price. It is that the operator needs one view across every society, their own branding in front of residents, and reporting that no product produces because no product is designed for the operator rather than the committee.
What that operator is buying is a multi-tenant platform, where each society is a tenant with its own members, ledger and rules. That shape has its own cost drivers and its own traps, and they are set out in our SaaS development cost guide.
Where the build money goes, if you are that operator
| Work package | Person-days |
|---|---|
| Discovery: the billing rules, the approval chain, what the auditor needs | 5 |
| Members, flats, blocks, ownership changes and tenants in occupation | 8 |
| Maintenance billing: per flat, per square foot, arrears, waivers, interest on late payment | 12 |
| Accounting: expense heads, vendor bills, sinking fund, reports the auditor accepts | 12 |
| Payments: gateway, bank reconciliation, receipts, GST on the invoice where it applies | 8 |
| Visitor and gate: passes, guard app, resident approval, staff entry | 7 |
| Complaints and amenity booking | 5 |
| Notices, polls and the AGM pack | 4 |
| Resident app and web portal, on phones people actually own | 10 |
| Testing, migration of arrears and opening balances, and a parallel run | 10 |
| Total | 81 |
At the blended 16,000 rupees a person-day we use across these guides, that is about 13 lakh, with a first usable version in ten to twelve weeks and 15 to 25 percent of the build a year in upkeep. The range for a platform like this is 8 to 20 lakh depending on how much of the accounting and security you take on, which sits inside the 8 to 30 lakh band in our property management guide.
Notice that billing and accounting together are 24 of the 81 days. The gate, which is what everyone demonstrates, is 7.
Why society software fails, and it is rarely the software
Our property guide makes this point about governance and it is worth repeating with the society specifics, because it decides the purchase more than any feature list.
A society is run by volunteers who change every year or two. The software outlives the committee that chose it. So the question is not which app has the most features, it is which app a new treasurer can pick up in an evening, and whether the previous committee's decisions are visible inside it.
Three failure patterns we see repeatedly:
- The parallel spreadsheet. The treasurer does not trust the app's ledger, so the real accounts live in Excel and the app becomes a notice board. Every society that ends here chose on features rather than on accounting.
- The guard who waves people through. Visitor management works only if the guard uses it at the gate under pressure at 7pm. If the flow takes more than a few seconds per visitor, it is abandoned inside a month, and the gate tablet becomes an expensive clock.
- The handover gap. The outgoing committee holds the admin login and the vendor relationship. If neither is documented, the new committee starts by negotiating with a vendor they did not choose, about data they cannot export.
That last one is worth a contract clause. Ask, before signing, how you export every member, every invoice and every receipt if you leave, and in what format.
What to ask a vendor, in ten minutes
- Show me an invoice above and below the GST threshold. As described above. This is the fastest way to find out how real the accounting is.
- Show me the arrears report the committee will read at the AGM, not the dashboard.
- What does a visitor entry take at the gate, in seconds, with the guard doing it? Watch it, do not take the number.
- What is the minimum monthly charge, and what happens to our rate if flats are vacant?
- Who absorbs the payment gateway fee, and what is the rate on UPI against cards?
- How do we export everything if we leave, and is that in the contract?
How to spend less without a worse result
- Start on the free tier if you are under the flat cap. Several are usable, and the limits appear in accounting depth rather than in daily use.
- Take the accounting tier and skip the security tier unless your gate is a genuine problem. Most societies buy security features and then discover their actual pain was arrears.
- Collect by bank transfer where you can. On a 60 lakh budget the gateway percentage is larger than the software.
- Buy hardware separately rather than through the software vendor, unless the bundle is genuinely cheaper when you price the tablets yourself.
- Migrate arrears carefully once rather than cheaply twice. Opening balances that are wrong on day one poison the ledger for a year.
- Agree who administers it before you sign, and write the handover into the committee's annual routine.
Questions people ask
How much does society management software cost in India?
Four to 15 rupees per flat per month for the mainstream community apps, 15 to 25 for suites with proper accounting, and 35 to 50 for premium bundles that include gate security and visitor hardware integration. Most vendors also have a minimum monthly charge of 200 to 500 rupees, which is what a small society actually pays.
What does a 200-flat society pay in a year?
About 48,000 rupees in subscription at 20 rupees a flat, but 1.2 to 3 lakh once onboarding, payment gateway charges, notifications and any gate hardware are counted. The gateway is usually the second largest line: collecting 60 lakh of maintenance at 1 percent costs 60,000, more than the software itself.
Is there free society management software?
Yes, and several are usable. The free tiers are typically capped by flat count, often around 50, and the limits show up in accounting depth, audit trails and support rather than in daily features. For a small society, start there and upgrade when the treasurer's spreadsheet reappears.
Should a housing society build its own app?
No. At 200 flats a product costs about 48,000 a year and a build costs about 13 lakh, which is nineteen years of subscription. Building makes sense above roughly three thousand flats under one management, which means a facilities management company, a developer or a township operator rather than a single society.
Is GST charged on society maintenance?
Only when both conditions are met: the charge per member exceeds 7,500 rupees a month, and the society's aggregate turnover exceeds 20 lakh, or 10 lakh in special category states. When it applies, 18 percent is charged on the full amount rather than on the excess, and the 7,500 limit applies per apartment, so a member owning two flats billed separately gets it twice.
What does a custom society platform cost to build?
Eight to 20 lakh depending on how much accounting and security you take on, with the worked estimate above landing at about 13 lakh for 81 person-days, plus 15 to 25 percent of the build a year in upkeep. A first usable version takes ten to twelve weeks.
Which is more important, the gate app or the accounting?
The accounting, in almost every society we have seen. The gate is what gets demonstrated and the arrears are what get argued about. In the build estimate above, billing and accounting are 24 of 81 days and the gate is 7, which is roughly the right ratio of attention.
What happens to our data if we change vendors?
That depends entirely on a contract clause most societies never read. Ask, before signing, how you export every member record, invoice and receipt, in what format, and how long it takes. A vendor who cannot answer in one sentence is telling you the answer.
Getting a real number
If you run one society, this guide should have talked you out of a build, and that is the honest outcome. If you operate across several societies and the per-flat fees have grown into a project, that is the conversation worth having, and it starts with your billing rules rather than with features. What that looks like is on our property management software page.