Custom Epic integrations average $200K and 6 months

Epic CLI vs. Building It Yourself

A custom Epic FHIR integration costs your team 4–9 months and $150K–$300K. Epic CLI is $199/yr and works in 5 minutes. Here's the full breakdown.

$150K–$300K
Typical custom build cost
Engineering + certification + audit
4–9 months
Time to production
Epic review alone takes 2–6 weeks
5 minutes
Epic CLI time to first query
From $199/yr — no review queue

What a Custom Epic Integration Actually Costs

These aren't worst-case numbers. They're what teams actually spend.

Cost Item
Low Estimate
High Estimate
Senior backend engineer (4–6 months)
$80,000
$120,000
Epic technical review & certification
$10,000
$30,000
SMART on FHIR OAuth implementation
$8,000
$15,000
Security audit & HIPAA assessment
$15,000
$25,000
QA, staging environment, regression testing
$10,000
$20,000
Documentation & internal training
$5,000
$10,000
Ongoing maintenance (per year)
$20,000
$40,000
Total (Year 1)
$148,000
$260,000
Epic CLI Starter Plan
$199/yr
Everything you need. No engineers. No review queue. No surprises.
Get Started for $199/yr

Timeline Comparison

Every week your integration isn't live is a week you can't ship.

MilestoneCustom BuildEpic CLI
First FHIR query running4–8 weeks5 minutes
Epic sandbox approval2–6 weeks (review queue)Included — pre-approved
SMART on FHIR OAuth wired2–4 weeksBuilt in
Production-ready4–9 monthsSame day
First patient data retrieved3–6 monthsUnder 1 hour
Team onboardingWeeks of documentationnpm install, 1 command

Feature Comparison

Custom builds give you full control — of every bug, upgrade, and Epic API change.

Feature
Custom Build
Epic CLI
Epic FHIR R4 patient search
SMART on FHIR OAuth 2.0
Sandbox + production environments
TypeScript-first API
Build it yourself
CLI + SDK in one tool
Compliance audit logs
Build it yourself
Quota management
Build it yourself
Epic certification support
On your own
Version upgrades
Your team's problem
Included
Time to first query
4–8 weeks
5 minutes
Annual cost
$150K–$300K
From $199/yr

Common Objections

Real questions we hear from engineering teams.

We need full control over the integration.

Epic CLI is API-first and TypeScript-native. You call it from your own code, control the data flow, and own the business logic. You're not locked into a black box — you're replacing the boilerplate plumbing, not the architecture.

Our security team won't approve a third-party tool.

Epic CLI runs in your own environment, on your infrastructure. No data leaves your stack. It's a library and CLI — not a cloud service with access to your patient data. SOC 2 documentation available on request.

We already have engineers who can build this.

You do. The question is whether you want them spending 4–6 months on FHIR plumbing or on your actual product. Epic CLI handles the OAuth handshakes, rate limiting, FHIR resource parsing, and Epic-specific quirks so your team doesn't have to.

What if Epic changes their API?

That's exactly why you don't want to own this. When Epic updates, we update Epic CLI. Your integration keeps working. If you built it yourself, your team owns every breaking change.

Stop building plumbing. Start shipping product.

14-day free trial. No credit card. First FHIR query in 5 minutes.

Starter $199/yr · Professional $499/yr · Team $999/yr · Enterprise custom