Build vs. buy fraud prevention

The true cost of building it in-house, piecing it together from point vendors, or running it on Rupt. Public list prices, your numbers.

Cost of ownership

What each path costs in year one.

Set your traffic and your team. An evaluation is one check on a login, signup or other action. Vendor prices are public list prices, checked September 2026.

1,000,000

Evaluations that end in an SMS or email code

ID and selfie checks a month

Your team

Engineers to build and run it in-house

Engineers to connect and run vendors

Engineers to run Rupt

$200,000

Year one cost

  • Software and data
  • Engineering
  • Build in-house$743,476
  • Assemble point vendors$331,864
  • Rupt$111,333
Saved vs building
-$632,143 in year one
Saved vs assembling
-$220,531 in year one

Year one at list prices. Rupt counts a 4-week integration. Defaults: 2 engineers to build, 0.5 to run vendors and 0.1 to run Rupt.

Line by line.

Each line is a list price, one of your inputs, or an assumption we state.

Build in-house

  • Engineers

    2 × $200,000 a year

    $400,000
  • Email and IP reputation

    IPQS at 2 lookups per evaluation. No published price above 75,000 lookups, estimated at the SMB+ rate of $0.0133 each

    $319,680
  • Bot challenge

    Cloudflare Turnstile, free

    $0
  • SMS and email codes

    Twilio Verify, $0.05 per successful code plus $0.0083 per US SMS, with 80% succeeding

    $5,796
  • ID and selfie checks

    Stripe Identity, $1.50 per verification

    $18,000
Year one$743,476

Plus building fingerprinting, rules, challenges and dashboards.

Assemble point vendors

  • Device fingerprinting

    Fingerprint, $99 for 20,000 calls, then $4 per 1,000. Includes IP blocklist signals

    $48,228
  • Email intelligence

    IPQS at 1 lookup per evaluation. No published price above 75,000 lookups, estimated at the SMB+ rate of $0.0133 each

    $159,840
  • Bot challenge

    Cloudflare Turnstile, free

    $0
  • SMS and email codes

    Twilio Verify, $0.05 per successful code plus $0.0083 per US SMS, with 80% succeeding

    $5,796
  • ID and selfie checks

    Stripe Identity, $1.50 per verification

    $18,000
  • Engineers to connect them

    0.5 × $200,000 a year

    $100,000
Year one$331,864

Plus building the rules and challenge flows between them.

Rupt

  • Evaluations

    $99 for 20,000, then $0.005 each

    $59,988
  • SMS and email codes

    $0.10 per delivered challenge

    $12,000
  • ID and selfie checks

    $0.33 per check

    $3,960
  • Integration

    4 engineer-weeks

    $15,385
  • Upkeep

    0.1 × $200,000 a year

    $20,000
Year one$111,333

All-inclusive: fingerprinting, rules, challenges and the AI agent.

Popular tools at 1,000,000 evaluations a month.

The advertised price covers one piece. Red is what the rest costs.

  • Fingerprint

    Device fingerprinting

    $4,019 / moHidden cost~$21,553 / mo
    • + Email intelligence ~$13,320
    • + OTP codes $483
    • + ID checks $1,500
    • + Challenge flows, account sharing, user view $6,250
  • IPQS

    Email and IP reputation

    ~$26,640 / moHidden cost$8,233 / mo
    • + OTP codes $483
    • + ID checks $1,500
    • + Rules, account sharing, user view $6,250
  • FreeHidden cost~$40,975 / mo
    • + Fingerprinting $4,019
    • + Email and IP reputation ~$26,640
    • + OTP codes $483
    • + ID checks $1,500
    • + Rules, challenge flows, account sharing, user view $8,333
  • Twilio Verify

    SMS and email codes

    $483 / moHidden cost~$40,492 / mo
    • + Fingerprinting $4,019
    • + Email and IP reputation ~$26,640
    • + ID checks $1,500
    • + Rules, challenge flows, account sharing, user view $8,333
  • Stripe Identity

    ID and selfie checks

    $1,500 / moHidden cost~$39,475 / mo
    • + Fingerprinting $4,019
    • + Email and IP reputation ~$26,640
    • + OTP codes $483
    • + Rules, challenge flows, account sharing, user view $8,333
  • Rupt

    Everything above, one platform

    $6,329 / moHidden cost$0
    • No hidden cost

Public list prices, checked September 2026. IPQS publishes no price above 75,000 lookups a month, so above that we extend its SMB+ rate of $0.0133 per lookup. Build work is your vendor engineers split evenly across rules, challenge flows, account sharing and a user view, and each row pays only for the parts it lacks. Integration and upkeep apply to every option, Rupt included, so the table leaves them out.

The first version is the cheap part.

AI writes version one fast, and version one is often as little as 10 to 20 percent of the work. The rest is owning it.

Attackers adapt.
New anti-detect browsers and AI agents ship every month.
Signals decay.
Browsers change what they expose. Throwaway domains appear daily.
Expertise takes time.
You hire it or grow it in-house. Ours comes with every plan.

Keeping up is Rupt's whole job.

Frequently asked questions.

See Rupt on your traffic.

Book a demo and we'll walk through your use case, show you the signals on real evaluations, and price out your volume.

  • A walkthrough tailored to your use case.
  • How detection, the rules engine, and challenges fit your stack.
  • Pricing and a rollout plan for your volume.

Prefer to read first? Start with the docs or check pricing.