$3,000 – $6,000
1–2 weeks
One flow, done properly
A single job end to end — a booking flow, a calculator, an internal tool, a scraper that feeds a spreadsheet. Real auth if it needs it, deployed and monitored. Not a product, but a thing that works.
Guide · 7 min read
What an MVP actually costs in 2026
Every agency answers this with “it depends” and a contact form. It does depend — but on five things, and you can work out roughly where you land before you talk to anyone. Here is the honest version, including what we charge and why.
The three bands
Almost every first build falls into one of three. Find yours before you read anything else — the difference between them is scope, not quality.
$6,000 – $15,000
3–6 weeks
A version one you can charge for
Accounts, the data model, payments, an admin screen, and one or two features that make it yours. This is what most founders mean when they say MVP, and it is where the majority of first builds land.
$15,000+
8+ weeks
Regulated, integrated, or multi-sided
Marketplaces with two user types, anything touching health or financial data, or a product whose value depends on integrating with systems you do not control. The cost is in the edges, not the screens.
The five things that move the number
Not the feature list. These five decide the cost, and four of them are decisions you make rather than things you discover.
- 01
How many user types it has
One user type is a product. Two is roughly twice the product — every screen, permission and email has to be decided twice, and the admin view becomes real software rather than a table. Marketplaces are the classic underestimate: buyers and sellers are two products that happen to share a database.
- 02
Whether money moves
Taking a payment once is a day. Subscriptions, proration, failed payments, refunds, invoices, tax and dunning are weeks. Most founders budget for the checkout and forget that every one of those states needs a screen and an email.
- 03
What it has to integrate with
The single biggest source of overrun. Your own code is predictable; somebody else's API is not. An undocumented system, a partner who takes two weeks to issue credentials, or a CSV export that changes shape monthly will cost more than the feature it powers.
- 04
Whether anyone is regulated
Health, finance, children's data, or EU personal data all add real work — consent, retention, audit trails, data residency. It is not optional and it is not quick, so it belongs in the first estimate rather than the second.
- 05
How finished it has to look
A functional interface built on a component library is cheap. A designed product with its own visual identity, custom states and motion is a separate discipline on top. Both are valid; pretending the second costs the same as the first is how projects slip.
Five things to cut from version one
Each of these feels essential and is not. Cutting all five typically halves a first build without changing what a customer can do.
Custom design system
Use a component library for v1. Redesign once you know which screens people actually use.
Native mobile apps
A responsive web app reaches everyone on day one. Ship native when usage justifies two more codebases.
Your own auth
Use a managed provider. Rolling your own is a week of work and a permanent security liability.
Admin tooling
Run v1 from the database or a spreadsheet for the first ten customers. Build the admin panel when a non-engineer needs it.
Scale you don't have
Queues, caching and microservices for ten users are a cost with no benefit. A single Postgres box takes you further than you think.
What we charge, and why it is a subscription
A fixed quote forces both sides to guess in advance, then argue about the guess. The agency pads for risk, you pay the padding, and every change becomes a negotiation rather than a decision.
We charge $2,000 a month instead. You queue requests, we build them one at a time and deploy as we go, and you pause or cancel whenever you like. A version one usually takes one to three months, so most first products land between $2,000 and $6,000 — cheaper than the fixed quote, because nobody had to price the risk of being wrong.
If you would rather have a fixed number, the starter kits are fixed scope and fixed price: $4,900 for SaaS foundations, $3,900 for a grounded AI agent, both in two weeks.
Next step
Want the number for your idea?
Thirty minutes, free, no proposal. Describe it the way you would to a colleague and you’ll leave with a scope, a number and a date — or an honest reason we’re not the right people.
Or read how we work on MVP development.