Maintain
Platform upkeep per year
The yearly effort to keep the tool itself working: upgrades, framework maintenance, grid and integration plumbing.
- Unit
- hours per year
- Where you enter it
- Maintain tab, Detailed mode, per vendor.
What it means
Maintenance that is not about individual test cases: upgrading the tool, keeping its integrations with CI and the defect tracker working, patching a self-hosted grid, updating drivers and dependencies. It is a flat yearly figure per vendor.
For a hosted platform much of this is the vendor's job; for a homegrown framework it is all yours, and it is where "free" is paid for.
Why it matters to the cost
It is the most under-estimated line in a build-versus-buy comparison. A homegrown framework commonly needs 150 hours or more a year just to stay current with browsers, drivers and libraries — about $10,000 at the default rate, recurring, before a single test is repaired.
Typical values
Hosted platforms: 8–20 hours a year. Script-based tools: around 40. Homegrown frameworks: 150 hours or more.
Typical values describe a category of tool — AI-native, codeless, script-based, homegrown, manual — never a named product. Why we do not price named products.
Where it appears in the model
Maintain — continuously
- cases to repair
- Total test cases × Test breakage rate
- cases healed
- Total test cases × Self-healed cases per year
- Maintenance effort per year
- cases to repair × Repair time per case + cases healed × Review one heal + Platform upkeep per year + New cases added per year × Build a new case
Every name is a link to its definition. See the whole model.
Try it with your numbers
Platform upkeep per year is a row in the calculator. Change it and every total on the page moves with it — free, in your browser, nothing to install.
See how platform upkeep per year impacts the calculation of test automation costsLast reviewed 2026-09-15. All terms.