Contract templates currently German only
Software Development Agreement
From the specification to the source-code handover — the complete framework for custom software development.
The software development agreement governs the commissioning of custom software development — an app, a web application or bespoke software. You choose between a fixed price (a contract for work with milestones and formal acceptance under § 640 BGB) and time and material (fee based on effort with agile sprints). Since § 69b of the German Copyright Act only applies to employed programmers, the contract expressly regulates the grant of rights to the source code — including an open-source disclosure duty and a note on a data-processing agreement (DPA) when personal data is processed.
- Law by country
- GDPR-compliant
- No AI training
- PII masking
- Lawyer handover
- Seven languages
What's in this template
Numbers from the actual definition — not marketing slides.
- Clauses
- 31
- Clause variants
- 0
- Wizard fields
- 37
- Quality checks
- 8
- Legal basis citations
- 8
What the contract contains
- Project description with reference to the specification (annex)
- Remuneration-model switch: fixed price with milestones or time and material with an hourly rate/cap
- Acceptance procedure with a deemed-acceptance rule under § 640 para. 2 BGB (for a fixed price)
- Explicit grant of rights to the source code (§ 69b of the German Copyright Act does not apply to freelance contractors)
- Source-code handover at the end of the project
- Open-source/third-party disclosure duty (copyleft/GPL risks)
- Hosting/deployment responsibility
- Limitation of liability and a note on a data-processing agreement (DPA) under Art. 28 GDPR
Optional additional clauses
- Arbitration clause
- Force majeure
- Prohibition on assignment
- Multiple counterparts / electronic signature
- Form of notices
When you need this contract
- Commissioning app, web or bespoke software development
- Fixed-price projects with a clearly delimited specification
- Agile development based on effort (time and material) with sprints
- Projects requiring a clear source-code/IP transfer
Who it is for: Companies and start-ups commissioning an app, web application or bespoke software from a freelance developer or a software agency.
For complex fields such as the scope of services or the purpose, you can request a suggestion via the sparkle button — the suggestion stays editable before it enters the contract.
Once created, you can hand the contract to a suitable lawyer from our network with one click — including full text and metadata.
For project volumes of around EUR 50,000 or more, multi-stage acceptance structures, or the use of copyleft-licensed open-source components, we recommend a subsequent review by an IT lawyer of your choice.
Our templates are ready-made documents that you adapt to your case. They are not legal advice and do not replace a review by a lawyer; we give no guarantee of correctness, completeness or up-to-dateness. Use is at your own responsibility.
Frequently asked questions
A finished contract in 5 minutes.
Answer a few questions — the wizard does the rest. PDF + DOCX ready to download.
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