Short answer: most custom-built MVPs from a professional team fall somewhere between $15,000 and $80,000, with narrow single-platform products below that and multi-sided or regulated products above it. The rest of this article explains where in that range your product is likely to land and why.
About these numbers. The ranges here are planning estimates derived from typical effort and typical market rates, not survey data and not a BBR price list. Use them to sanity-check quotes. A real quote needs a written scope.
The formula behind every quote
Every software quote, however it is presented, comes from the same arithmetic:
Cost = effort (person-weeks) × blended weekly rate + a margin for risk
Agencies differ in how they estimate effort, what rate they charge and how much risk margin they add. If you can form your own view of effort and rate, you can tell a fair quote from an inflated or an unrealistically low one.
Estimating effort
Effort is driven by what the product does, not by the technology used. The table gives rough build effort for common MVP building blocks, assuming an experienced team and a standard interface.
| Building block | Typical effort | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Accounts, login, password reset, profile | 1–2 person-weeks | Less with a managed auth service |
| Core workflow (the thing the product is for) | 3–8 person-weeks | The widest range; depends entirely on the product |
| Admin panel | 1–3 person-weeks | Often forgotten in early estimates |
| Payments or subscriptions | 1–3 person-weeks | Marketplace payouts sit at the upper end |
| Notifications (email, push) | 0.5–1.5 person-weeks | |
| Search, filters, maps | 1–3 person-weeks | |
| Real-time chat or live updates | 2–4 person-weeks | More if offline support is needed |
| Each third-party API integration | 0.5–2 person-weeks | Depends on the quality of the API |
| Second user role with its own interface | +30–60% of core workflow | E.g. provider side of a marketplace |
| Design (flows and UI for the above) | 2–5 person-weeks | |
| Testing, deployment, store release, project management | +20–30% on top | Not optional |
Add up the blocks your product needs. A simple single-role web product typically lands around 10–15 person-weeks. A mobile app with a backend and admin panel is more often 16–28. A two-sided marketplace on web and mobile can pass 35.
Understanding rates
The same person-week costs very different amounts depending on where the team is and how it is structured. Approximate hourly rates for experienced teams:
| Team type | Approx. hourly rate (USD) | Trade-offs |
|---|---|---|
| US / UK / Australian agency | $100–$200+ | Same time zone, easiest contracting, highest cost |
| Western European agency | $80–$150 | Strong process, high cost |
| Central / Eastern European or Turkish studio | $35–$80 | Senior engineers at lower cost of living; remote-only; good overlap with Europe and the US East Coast morning |
| South Asian agency | $20–$50 | Lowest rates; quality and communication vary widely, so vetting matters most here |
| Freelancer (any region) | $25–$150 | Cheapest for narrow work; you become the project manager |
BBR is an Istanbul-based studio, so we sit in the third row. That is the main reason an international studio can quote well below a domestic US or UK agency for the same scope: the engineering effort is the same, the cost base is not.
Three worked examples
1. Single-role web product
A B2B tool where users sign up, upload data, get a processed result and pay a subscription. One role, web only, Stripe billing, small admin area. Around 12 person-weeks. At $50/hour that is roughly $24,000; at $150/hour roughly $72,000.
2. Consumer mobile app with backend
iOS and Android from one codebase, accounts, a content feed, favourites, push notifications, in-app subscription and an admin panel to manage content. Around 20 person-weeks: $40,000 at $50/hour, $120,000 at $150/hour.
3. Two-sided marketplace
Customers book, providers accept, platform takes a commission. Customer app, provider app, admin panel, payments with payouts, messaging, reviews. Around 32–40 person-weeks: $64,000–$80,000 at $50/hour. This is where founders most often need to cut scope, for example by launching the provider side as a simple web page first.
What pushes the cost up
- More than one platform at launch. Picking web or mobile first is the single biggest saving available to most founders.
- Custom everything. Bespoke design systems, animation and illustration add weeks without validating anything.
- Vague scope. Uncertainty gets priced as risk margin. A clear scope document lowers quotes.
- Compliance. Health, payments and children’s data bring audits, policies and extra engineering.
- Integrating with legacy systems. Undocumented or unreliable APIs are slow to work with.
- Changing direction mid-build. Inevitable to a degree; budget a 10–15% contingency for it.
Where founders overspend
In our experience the waste is rarely in the hourly rate. It is in building things the first release did not need:
- Native iOS and Android apps when a responsive web app would have tested the same hypothesis
- Social login, referral systems and gamification before there is a single retained user
- Infrastructure sized for a million users
- An elaborate onboarding flow for a product whose core value is still unproven
A useful test for each feature: if we removed this, could a user still get the main benefit, and could we still tell whether they did? If yes, it moves to the second release. Our step-by-step MVP guide covers prioritisation in more depth.
Costs beyond the build
| Item | Typical cost |
|---|---|
| Apple Developer Program | $99 per year |
| Google Play developer account | $25 one-off |
| Hosting and database at MVP scale | Roughly $20–$200 per month |
| Email, SMS, maps and other metered services | Usually small at first; scales with usage |
| Payment processing | A percentage of each transaction, set by the provider |
| App store commission on digital goods | 15–30% of in-app revenue, depending on programme eligibility |
| Maintenance and iteration | Plan for it monthly; this is where the product actually improves |
How to get a quote you can trust
- Write a one-page brief. Who the users are, the core job, must-have features, platforms, deadline, and any budget ceiling.
- Share your budget range. It feels like giving away leverage. In practice it lets a good team tell you what is achievable within it, which is more useful than three incomparable quotes.
- Ask for a line-item scope. You want to see design, admin panel, testing, deployment and store submission listed explicitly.
- Ask what is excluded. The answer tells you as much as the inclusions.
- Tie payments to milestones. Working software on a staging link, not dates on a calendar.
If you are comparing vendors, our guide on how to choose an MVP development company has a checklist of questions. If you would like BBR to estimate your product, the MVP development page explains how we scope and price.