Most RFP templates in circulation were written before AI-augmented delivery was normal, and it shows. They ask about timeline, team and pricing. They say nothing about who owns AI-generated output, or how a vendor's AI usage affects your invoice.
This software development RFP template is current, free, and ungated. You do not have to give us your email address to read it. Vendors can quote against it as it stands.
Download the template
- Markdown version, for pasting into a doc or a repo
- Plain text version, for pasting into Word, Google Docs or an email
Both files are identical in content. Copy it, edit it, send it under your own name. No attribution required.
What is in it
Nine sections, each one there because it produces a comparable, quotable answer.
| Section | What it forces a vendor to commit to |
|---|---|
| 1. Project overview | Understanding your problem, not your feature list |
| 2. Scope and requirements | What is explicitly out of scope, which stops padding |
| 3. Timeline | Whether your deadline is real or a preference |
| 4. Budget | A number you can compare across bids |
| 5. Team and engagement model | Named people, and who replaces them |
| 6. AI usage disclosure | Tooling, pricing and review, on the record |
| 7. IP and code ownership | The exact assignment wording, quoted |
| 8. Evaluation criteria | Your weights, published before responses arrive |
| 9. Response format | One structure, so proposals are comparable |
It also carries a scoring rubric with blank weights, and an appendix listing what a weak answer sounds like for each question.
The two sections most software RFP templates still miss
AI usage disclosure
Most vendors building software in 2026 use AI tooling. That is fine. The question is whether your invoice reflects it.
Ask directly. Do your engineers use AI coding tools, and which ones? Does AI-accelerated work bill at the same hourly rate as manual work? Who reviews AI-generated code before it merges? Is our code excluded from training?
A vendor billing full manual-speed hours for AI-accelerated work, without saying so, is a pricing transparency problem. Finding that out before you sign costs nothing. Finding out after the first invoice costs a renegotiation.
If the thing being built contains AI features itself, add one more question. Which transparency rules does the vendor already build for? For conversational and generative features sold into the EU, that means Article 50 of the EU AI Act.
IP and code ownership
Ask the vendor to quote their actual assignment clause in the response. Not to describe it. To quote it.
You are looking for present-tense wording. "Hereby assigns" transfers ownership now. "Agrees to assign" is a promise about the future, and a promise can be broken, forgotten, or lost in an acquisition.
Then ask the follow-up that most templates never reach. Are AI-generated portions of the deliverable covered by that clause, or does it only cover "work product" in wording written before the question existed? We wrote a whole post on why that distinction matters.
How to score responses
Set your weights before you send the RFP. Not after responses arrive. Scoring against criteria you invented once you had seen the answers is how a procurement decision becomes indefensible.
The template ships this table with the weights blank, so you fill them in yourself.
| Criterion | What a strong answer looks like |
|---|---|
| Understanding of the problem | Restates your problem better than you did |
| Relevant evidence | Comparable systems shipped, described specifically |
| Team | Named, senior-weighted, with a replacement answer |
| Technical approach | A real architecture, with reasons for each choice |
| Delivery plan | Working software early, with dated checkpoints |
| AI usage transparency | Direct answers, no deflection |
| IP terms | Present-tense assignment, quoted, covering AI output |
| Commercial terms | Clear price, clear assumptions, clear change process |
A worked example
Here is the code-ownership question, and three real shapes of answer. Same question, same RFP, very different scores.
Vendor A. "IP ownership is addressed in our standard MSA."
That is a non-answer. It is also the most common answer. Score it low and ask again in writing.
Vendor B. "You own all deliverables on final payment."
Better, but it hides a condition. Ownership that depends on payment status is normal, and worth knowing. It still does not tell you the assignment wording, and it says nothing about AI-generated code.
Vendor C. "Clause 8.1 reads: Supplier hereby assigns to Client all right, title and interest in the Deliverables, including any portions generated with the assistance of automated tools. Assignment is effective on creation."
That is the answer you want. Present tense, quoted, and it names AI-generated output explicitly.
You will not get many Vendor C answers. That is the point. The question sorts the field quickly, and it costs you one line in the document.
What a sample RFP response should contain
Tell vendors the structure you expect, then hold them to it. The template asks for eight parts.
- Executive summary, one page
- Their understanding of the problem, in their own words
- Proposed approach and architecture
- Delivery plan with dated milestones
- Team, with named individuals
- Answers to every numbered question in sections 6 and 7
- Commercial proposal, with assumptions and exclusions
- Two references, or an explanation of why not
Part 2 is the one to read first. A vendor who restates your problem more clearly than you wrote it has done the thinking. A vendor who paraphrases your own words back at you has not.
RFP format for software projects
The format matters more than most buyers expect. Send every vendor the same document, in the same order, with the same deadline.
A free-text brief feels friendlier. It also lets each vendor answer a slightly different question, which is exactly what makes proposals impossible to compare side by side. Structure is not bureaucracy here. It is the thing that makes the comparison honest.
One more thing. State a budget range, even a wide one. Withholding it produces over-scoped proposals from vendors guessing high, and no-bids from vendors guessing wrong. If you do not have a range yet, benchmark against what custom software actually costs before you write the number down.
Before you send it
Read the questions worth asking any AI development company alongside the template. Several of them belong in your RFP rather than in a conversation, because an answer in writing is an answer you can hold someone to.
If your project is an AI-built prototype that now needs to survive real users, the scope section should say so plainly. What that actually involves is its own problem, and vendors price it very differently depending on whether you name it up front.
Send it to us
We respond to RFPs in five business days. Named engineers read the actual scope. You do not get a templated proposal deck assembled by someone who will never work on your project.
Send us your RFP in whatever format you like. This template is what we would suggest, not a condition of replying.
Common questions
Directly from this page, in Markdown or plain text, with no email address required. It is free to copy, edit and redistribute without attribution. Both files contain the same nine sections, a scoring rubric with blank weights, and an appendix of weak answers to watch for while you read responses.
Two sections most templates still lack. An AI-usage disclosure requirement, which asks vendors how they use AI in delivery and whether that changes what you are billed. And an explicit code-ownership requirement, which asks for present-tense assignment language rather than leaving it to the vendor's standard contract.
Long enough for a serious vendor to scope properly, short enough to keep your timeline moving. Two to three weeks is a reasonable default for mid-sized projects. State it explicitly in the RFP, because an unstated deadline produces inconsistent response quality across vendors.
Generally yes, even a wide one. Withholding budget entirely tends to produce either wildly over-scoped proposals or vendors declining to bid rather than guessing wrong. A stated range, even "$80,000-$150,000," gets you comparable proposals.
Structure wins for comparability. A free-text RFP lets each vendor answer a slightly different question, which makes proposals genuinely hard to compare side by side. A structured template with the same sections for every vendor produces responses you can actually evaluate against each other.