I'm currently live across multiple platforms, and I'm working on my projects. For fun, I wanted to do some additional research to see how much some of the software would cost in regards to what went into it to be able to even use it in the first place. And I'll be honest, I was pretty shocked and blown away to see the value of the software that you can simply install & use with a single command.
My average project that I currently run these days is $80 million, but that's not to count all of the infrastructure and the hosting and all of that that goes into it furthermore! What a fun (probably highly inaccurate ha ha) way to think of software. So the next time you use npm i think about that $$$
(I believe it will add the extra little bonus question that I added when I asked, "What about JavaScript?" Wow, just wow)
✅ LinkedIn Post (Minimal + Accurate)
💸 Estimated Cost to Build These NPM Packages from Scratch
TensorFlow.js – $50M+
React – $30M+
Next.js – $20M+
Electron – $15M+
TypeScript – $25M+
Playwright – $10M+
Three.js – $10M+
Babel – $5M+
Webpack – $5M+
Monaco Editor – $15M+
I "researched" (aka asked ChatGPT ;P) what it would actually take — team, funding, years of R&D, infrastructure, and talent — to build these without open-source.
Here’s the breakdown I used:
👉 https://chatgpt.com/share/68944a19-3f18-8009-8555-3082c71a3da7
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