MVP development services for startups
The smallest product that proves your idea with real users - scoped, priced and dated before we write a line.
MVP development is building the minimum viable product: the smallest version of your product that real users can sign up for and use, so you learn whether the idea works before you spend on the full build. It is not a prototype or a clickable mock-up - it is working software, in production, on your accounts.
We build MVPs as fixed-scope projects from $4,500, most landing between $8,000 and $25,000, in three to twelve weeks. One written scope, one price, one date. Before you pick a partner, read how to choose an MVP development company.
Who this is for
Founders with a problem they understand deeply and no engineering team yet - or a team that is busy running the existing business. You need something real to put in front of design partners, early customers or investors, and you need it before the runway or the window closes.
An MVP development company is the right call when speed matters more than building the team first. If you already know you will hire, we can build the MVP and hand it to that team, or you can hire dedicated developers from us to work inside it.
What every MVP build includes
- 01A scoping workshop that cuts the feature list to the one workflow that proves the idea.
- 02Product design for the screens that workflow needs, and nothing else.
- 03Front end, back end, database and authentication, built to be extended rather than rewritten.
- 04Analytics on the actions that tell you whether it is working.
- 05Weekly demos on a staging environment you can click through.
- 06Production deployment on your cloud accounts, with monitoring.
- 07Documentation and a recorded walkthrough, so the next developer starts on day one.
MVPs we build
The same process, four shapes of product. The scoping workshop decides which one you actually need - often it is not the one you walked in asking for.
Web app MVP
The default for most startups. A responsive web application in Next.js and React on a Postgres back end, shippable in weeks and changeable without app-store review. Most MVP web development we do starts here.
Mobile app MVP
When the product needs the phone itself - camera, location, push notifications or offline use. Built in React Native, so one codebase ships to iOS and Android, with store submission handled.
SaaS MVP
Multi-tenant from the first release: sign-up, teams and roles, subscription billing through Stripe, and an admin view. Getting tenancy right at the MVP stage is far cheaper than retrofitting it.
AI MVP
A product whose core is an LLM feature - search over documents, an agent, a classifier. Shipped with an evaluation harness so you can tell whether it still works after the next prompt change.
Building an AI product specifically? Read what AI MVP development involves, or see two systems we built end to end on the case studies.
How an MVP build runs
- 0160 minutes
Discovery call
Who the first user is, the one job the product does for them, and what number would tell you it worked. We also say what we would leave out.
- 022-3 days
Scope and fixed quote
A written scope, an explicit out-of-scope list, one price and one launch date. The number moves only if the scope does, and you approve it before it does.
- 033-12 weeks
Design and build
Short cycles with a demo every week on staging. You see real software early, so a wrong assumption costs days rather than the whole budget.
- 04final week
Launch
Production deployment on your accounts, analytics wired to the actions that matter, and monitoring so problems surface before users report them.
- 05included
Handover
Code in your repositories, documentation, runbooks and a recorded walkthrough. Iterate with us, with your own team, or with both.
MVP development company, freelancer or in-house team
Each is the right answer for somebody. This is how they compare for a founder building a first version.
| MVP development company | Freelancer | In-house hire | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Time to start | Days | Days to weeks | 3-6 months to hire |
| Price model | Fixed scope, fixed price | Hourly, open-ended | Salary, ongoing |
| Skills covered | Design, front end, back end, DevOps | Usually one or two | One person's range |
| If someone leaves | The company replaces them | The project stalls | You rehire |
| Best when | You need a launched product fast | The scope is small and well defined | The product is proven and long-lived |
The longer version, with the failure modes of each, is in agency vs freelancer and agency vs in-house.
MVP builds from $4,500, most landing between $8,000 and $25,000, fixed scope and fixed price.
What moves the price, and what a realistic budget looks like at each stage, is in MVP development cost and timeline. Published rates are on the pricing page. Hosting, app-store fees and third-party licences go on your own accounts.
You do not need an engineering team to start
Describe the job you want done in plain words - answering customer questions, sorting incoming requests, pulling figures out of documents. On the first call we tell you whether AI is the right tool for it, roughly what it would cost and how long it would take.
If it is not worth building, we say so. If you are building a whole product rather than one tool, read how an AI product build works.
- Single-purpose agent$4,500-8,000
An assistant that answers your customers' questions from your own help pages and product documents, with a link to where each answer came from.
Typically 2-4 weeks - Production agent$8,000-18,000
An assistant that reads each incoming request, looks the customer up in your systems, drafts the reply and waits for a person on your team to approve it before anything is sent.
Typically 4-7 weeks
Frequently asked questions
Our MVP builds start at $4,500 and most land between $8,000 and $25,000. What moves the number is the count of integrations, whether there is a mobile app as well as a web app, how messy the data is, and how much of the product depends on AI. You get one fixed price against a written scope before anything starts.
Three to twelve weeks from signed scope to launch. A focused web MVP with one core workflow sits at the short end; a product with a mobile app, payments and several integrations sits at the long end. The date is written into the scope alongside the price.
Yes. Most startups are better served by a responsive web app first, because it ships faster and changes without app-store review. When the product genuinely needs the phone - camera, location, push, offline - we build the mobile app MVP in React Native so iOS and Android share one codebase.
That is most of the founders we build for. We explain trade-offs in plain language, write down every decision that is yours to make, and hand over documentation a future CTO or in-house team can pick up without us.
You do, from the first commit - source code, designs, infrastructure definitions and documentation, in repositories and cloud accounts that are yours. We retain no licence and keep no copy after handover.
Your choice. Keep a dedicated developer on a rolling monthly basis to iterate on what users tell you, scope the next version as a new fixed-price build, or take the code in-house. Nothing locks you to us.
Tell us the idea
Describe the product and the first user. We come back with a written scope, one price and one launch date.