OutSystems Contract Renewal? Read This First
Facing an OutSystems renewal with a 2-4x price increase? Here's what you need to know about your options before you sign — and why this renewal might be the last one you negotiate.
The email you've been dreading
Somewhere between 90 and 180 days before your OutSystems contract expires, you'll receive a renewal proposal. If you haven't seen one recently, brace yourself. The numbers are unlikely to resemble what you're paying now.
Across the OutSystems community, renewal price increases of 2x to 4x have become the norm — not the exception. Companies that signed up at competitive rates five or six years ago are discovering that those rates were introductions, not commitments. The actual cost of OutSystems, the one you'll pay from now on, is significantly higher.
And this time, you're negotiating from a position of dependency.
Why renewal negotiations are stacked against you
Contract negotiation only works when both sides have leverage. In a normal vendor relationship, the buyer can credibly threaten to switch. That threat keeps pricing honest.
OutSystems renewals don't work that way. Here's why:
Your applications are hostage. Everything you've built lives inside OutSystems' proprietary environment. Your code, your data models, your business logic, your integrations — all of it exists in a format that only OutSystems can execute. Walk away from the contract, and your applications stop running. Not eventually. Immediately.
Switching costs are astronomical. OutSystems knows the conventional wisdom: rebuilding from scratch takes 12-18 months, costs as much as 2-3 years of licensing, and carries enormous risk. As long as you believe those are your only alternatives, the rational choice is always to renew — even at a higher price.
Your negotiation window is narrow. Most organizations begin renewal discussions 90 days out. That's not enough time to evaluate alternatives, build a business case, get board approval for a migration, and execute. OutSystems knows this. The timeline pressure alone pushes companies toward signing.
The AO model punishes success. If your applications have grown — more users, more features, more integrations — your Application Object count has grown with them. You're not just paying more per AO; you have more AOs to pay for. Growth on OutSystems is a compounding cost, not a scaling advantage.
The result: a "negotiation" that feels more like a notification. The price went up. Here are your options. None of them are "pay less."
What you're actually paying for
Before you sign, step back and audit what your licensing fee actually covers. Not what OutSystems tells you it covers — what it concretely provides.
You're paying for the runtime. OutSystems hosts and executes your applications. Without an active license, your applications don't deploy. This is the core lock-in mechanism: not a feature, but a dependency.
You're paying for the IDE. Service Studio is the only way to build and modify OutSystems applications. There's no alternative editor, no command-line interface, no API for programmatic development. If you want to change a screen, a query, or a workflow, you use their tool or you use nothing.
You're paying for the platform team you don't have. OutSystems handles infrastructure, patching, scaling, and deployment pipelines. This is genuinely valuable — but it's also something every modern cloud provider offers for standard applications. The premium you're paying for managed infrastructure is bundled with the premium you're paying for lock-in.
You're not paying for your code. This is critical. Your OutSystems applications are not stored as code. They're stored as visual models in a proprietary format. You cannot export them, version them independently, or run them outside the platform. Even the detach process — OutSystems' own exit mechanism — produces unusable output. When the contract ends, what remains is your institutional knowledge — and whatever documentation your team managed to keep current.
Ask yourself: how much of this licensing fee is for genuine value, and how much is simply the cost of having no alternative?
The three renewal outcomes (and the one nobody mentions)
Most companies approaching renewal see three options:
Option 1: Negotiate and renew. Accept a smaller increase, extend the contract term for slightly better rates, and revisit the same problem in two or three years. This is the default. It's also what OutSystems is optimized for — their sales team is trained to make renewal the path of least resistance.
Option 2: Reduce scope. Decommission applications, consolidate environments, cut AO counts. This buys some breathing room on price, but it means giving up functionality your organization actually uses. You're paying more for less, and your teams feel the squeeze.
Option 3: Accept the increase. Sign the renewal, absorb the cost, escalate the budget. Hope that next year's renewal is gentler. (It won't be.)
There's a fourth option that doesn't appear in the renewal conversation because OutSystems has no reason to tell you about it:
Option 4: Migrate. Move your applications off OutSystems entirely — to modern, open-source technology you own and control. React, Next.js, PostgreSQL. Standard tools with massive talent pools and zero licensing fees. Not someday. Before the next renewal.
This isn't theoretical. A structured migration process can move OutSystems applications to modern code in weeks, not years. And if you're an O11 customer being pushed toward ODC, you're already facing a rebuild — the question is whether you rebuild into the same lock-in or into code you own. The cost is typically a fraction of what you'd pay in licensing over the next three years. And unlike a renewal, migration is a one-time investment. Once your applications run on code you own, the compounding cost stops permanently.
Timing your exit: why the renewal cycle matters
If you're going to migrate, the renewal cycle is your strategic window. Here's how to use it:
12+ months before renewal: This is the ideal starting window. You have time to run a proper assessment, build a business case, get stakeholder alignment, and begin migration before the renewal even reaches your desk. When the proposal arrives, you respond from a position of strength — either negotiating from real leverage or declining outright.
6-12 months before renewal: Still viable, but the timeline tightens. Start with an assessment immediately. Focus on your highest-value or highest-cost applications first. You may negotiate a shorter renewal term (12 months instead of 36) to buy time for a phased migration.
3-6 months before renewal: Tight but not impossible. A focused assessment can determine which applications are migration candidates and estimate timelines. Even if you can't complete a full migration before renewal, having a credible plan changes the negotiation dynamic. You're no longer bluffing.
Under 3 months: You're likely signing this renewal. But use the pressure to push for the shortest possible term. A 12-month contract gives you a defined exit window. Begin migration planning immediately after signing — don't wait for the next renewal to start the same cycle.
The key insight: your leverage increases directly with your preparedness. A company that walks into renewal with an active migration plan, a timeline, and preliminary cost estimates isn't just negotiating harder — they're genuinely ready to leave. OutSystems can tell the difference.
The ROI of walking away
The financial case for migration is straightforward, even if the numbers are large.
The cost of staying: Take your current annual licensing fee. Multiply by the proposed increase. Project that over 3-5 years. Add the opportunity cost of your team managing platform constraints instead of building features. Add the recruitment premium for OutSystems-specific developers (who are increasingly scarce and expensive). Add the cost of the next renewal after this one, which will almost certainly be higher.
The cost of leaving: A one-time migration investment, typically comparable to 1-2 years of licensing. Infrastructure costs on standard cloud providers (AWS, Azure, GCP) that are a fraction of OutSystems hosting. A team that can now hire from the entire JavaScript/React talent pool instead of the shrinking OutSystems ecosystem.
The break-even: Most organizations reach ROI within 18-24 months. After that, the savings compound every year the applications continue to run — because there's no renewal. Ever.
This doesn't account for the strategic value: faster development cycles, no vendor dependency, full control over your deployment pipeline, and the ability to evolve your architecture without asking permission.
What a good assessment tells you
If migration is even a possibility, the first step is understanding what you have. A proper assessment answers the questions your board will ask:
- How complex are your OutSystems applications, really?
- Which applications are migration candidates and which should be decommissioned?
- What's a realistic timeline for a phased migration?
- What does the target architecture look like?
- What's the total cost — and how does it compare to 3-5 years of licensing?
If you're approaching a renewal and want those answers, start with an assessment. It takes days, not months. And it gives you something you don't currently have: a credible alternative to signing whatever OutSystems puts in front of you.
The renewal that changes everything
Every OutSystems customer faces this moment. The contract is up. The price is higher. The options feel limited.
But the options aren't actually limited. They just look that way from inside the platform. From the outside, the path is clear: migrate to code you own, eliminate the dependency, and make this the last renewal conversation you ever have.
The companies that recognize this early negotiate better renewals, plan better migrations, and spend less money overall. The ones that don't keep signing — and keep paying more, every time, for the same applications they already built.
Your next renewal doesn't have to be the same conversation. But only if you start planning before the proposal arrives.