The biggest cost driver is not the choice of framework — it is uncertainty. Each unanswered question in the requirements becomes a buffer in the estimate. A vendor that cannot see the edge cases has to assume the worst. Spending a week on a discovery phase often reduces the total much more than haggling over hourly rates.
Integrations remain another reliable source of cost. A feature that touches only your own data is low risk; the same functionality wired into an old accounting system is a different problem. The unknown lives in the other system: poor documentation, slow approval cycles, data that does not match your model. Ask any vendor azure consulting services to price integrations separately, since that is where the numbers slip.
Quality attributes silently change the number. An internal tool used by a small internal team has almost nothing in common with the same idea handling thousands of external customers. Compliance work, uptime targets, performance under load, traceability and accessibility each add real engineering time. Write them down at the start or else expect the estimate to move later.
The mix of people behind the number matters a great deal. A rate card reveals little on its own: articles on software outsourcing an experienced engineer at a premium rate frequently turns out to be cheaper per delivered feature than a pair of junior developers who need constant review. Ask as well what else appears on the invoice: delivery management, quality assurance, infrastructure work and design have to be done by someone, but they must be named rather than hidden inside a blended rate.
The quoted figure is rarely what you will actually spend. Expect hosting, advantages of laravel vs wordpress third-party licences, observability and a change budget each year. A useful planning figure holds that any production system consumes a meaningful share of the initial investment per year for updates, node.js vs laravel security patches and small improvements. Leaving it out of the budget has always been the most frequent planning error.