What you’re really paying a developer for
When you hire an ERPNext or Odoo developer, you’re buying two different things at once. One is typing: DocType JSON, addon manifests, views, access rules, the same patterns written for the hundredth time. The other is judgement. Knowing that your approval rule will deadlock when the manager is on leave, that the naming series clashes with one from 2019, or that the client’s accountant will reject a certain journal entry.
The typing part is where erpfly is simply faster. The judgement part is where a good developer earns their rate, and no tool changes that. Most bad experiences with freelancers come from paying senior rates for the typing and getting too little of the judgement.
Where erpfly is faster, and where it isn’t
For a module with a clear description, erpfly produces a working first version in the time it takes to get a freelancer to reply. You can click through it on a sandbox, change your mind twice and see the result the same day. Our write-up of how an ERPNext custom module is generated shows what arrives in the pull request.
It isn’t faster when the problem is unclear. If your sales and finance teams disagree about when an order counts as confirmed, generating code just produces a quick, confident version of one side’s opinion. A human consultant can get both teams in a room. It also isn’t a replacement for someone who has done a go-live weekend and knows what to check when the opening stock doesn’t match.
How the costs really compare
We won’t quote developer rates as facts. They vary a lot by region, by platform (Frappe specialists are scarcer than Odoo developers in many countries) and by whether you hire a freelancer or an agency. What we can describe is how the costs behave.
A developer’s cost grows with every round of changes. That’s fair, since changes take their time, but it means people stop asking for improvements once the budget runs out. With erpfly, the cost of another round is close to nothing, so you tend to end up with a module that fits better. On the other hand, a subscription doesn’t carry responsibility. If you need someone accountable for the outcome, that’s what a contract with a person or agency gives you. Current plans are on the pricing page, and our breakdown of what ERPNext customization tends to cost covers the developer side.
The jobs that still need a person
- Data migration from an old system. Scripts can be generated. Deciding what to do with eight years of inconsistent customer codes can’t.
- Integrations with badly documented APIs. The first draft is useful. The weeks of edge cases with a bank or a courier’s API need someone persistent.
- Accounting changes. Anything that alters how GL entries post should be reviewed by someone who understands both the code and the books.
- Performance problems on large databases. Diagnosing a slow report on millions of rows needs a person with access and experience.
- Training and handover. Someone has to sit with the warehouse team on the first Monday and explain why the pick list now looks different. Software doesn’t do that part.
The setup we’d recommend
Use erpfly to produce the module, then have an experienced developer review the pull request before it reaches production. The developer spends their time on the parts that need judgement, you get a first version in hours, and the code is in your repository in a shape anyone can maintain.
Here’s how that split tends to look on a real project. Say a distributor on Odoo needs bin locations, pick lists and a sync with their web shop. erpfly generates the warehouse management module and a first pass at the sync. A freelancer spends a few days reviewing, then handles the ugly part: orders edited after payment, partial refunds, the shop’s rate limits. They also run the cutover. The freelancer’s hours go into the problems only they can solve, and none of them go on writing a manifest file by hand. We explain what a reviewer should look for in our guide to reviewing AI-generated ERP code.
If you’re still at the stage of choosing a platform, that matters more than who writes the code. Start with our ERPNext vs Odoo comparison, then look at the Odoo module development process if Odoo wins.