CubeSat Budget Calculator

This calculator breaks a CubeSat mission budget into the same line items a real program manager tracks, scaled by satellite size (measured in U, where 1U is a 10×10×10 cm, ~1.33 kg unit). Bus cost starts from a size-tiered base ($40K for 1U up to $350K for 12U+) and adds a modest per-unit scaling factor, while components (EPS, ADCS, comms, onboard computer) and power hardware (panels, batteries) scale roughly linearly with unit count. A commercial/academic toggle applies a 50% discount to bus and component costs for academic missions, reflecting the very real effect of volunteer labor, donated parts, and university lab access on non-commercial builds — though it leaves launch, insurance, and hardware costs like power system otherwise unaffected. Launch cost is simply units × your chosen rideshare price per U, referencing real SpaceX Transporter-class pricing in the $50-100K/U range.

Integration and testing is estimated at a flat 20% of total hardware cost (bus + components + power + payload), a common rule of thumb for AIT phases in small-sat programs. Ground segment cost scales with mission duration at a monthly rate that's higher for commercial missions (more staff, paid ground station time) than academic ones. Insurance is 5% of hardware-plus-launch cost, licensing is a flat commercial/academic split reflecting FCC/ITU coordination overhead, and a final 12% program management markup is applied to the sum of everything else — a fairly standard NASA/aerospace contingency-and-management figure. Treat every multiplier here as an industry rule of thumb, not a quote: actual CubeSat costs vary widely by orbit, redundancy requirements, and whether components are COTS or space-qualified.