How much does it cost to build an MVP in 2026?

A minimum viable product costs $15,000 to $60,000 built with an offshore team, or $60,000 to $180,000 with a US agency. The biggest driver is the developer hourly rate: $25 to $40 offshore versus $100 to $250 in the US. Scope is second: payments, user accounts and multi-platform delivery each add materially to the total.

What you get at each price point

Rough bands, based on what we quote and what we see clients quoted elsewhere. These assume a competent team either way. The difference is rate, not quality.

If a quote sits far below the offshore column, something is wrong: usually scope has been misunderstood, or the plan is to hand you a template with your logo on it.

What actually drives the cost up

Founders often assume the number scales with the feature count. It scales more with these four things:

• User accounts and permissions. The moment you have logins, roles and password resets, you also have security, session handling and an admin surface. This is the most common cost jump.
• Payments. Taking money means integrating a processor and handling failures, refunds, receipts and edge cases. Budget weeks, not days.
• Two platforms instead of one. iOS and Android together isn't double the work if built cross-platform, but it's roughly 1.4x, and there are two app store review processes.
• Unclear scope. The most expensive projects are the ones that changed direction three times. Every rebuild is paid for twice.

Why offshore is cheaper, and where the savings leak back out

The rate gap is real: senior developers run $25 to $40 per hour in Bangladesh against $100 to $250 per hour in the US. That's roughly a fourfold to sixfold difference on the largest line item in any software project.

The honest version includes what you give back:

• Communication overhead: typically 5 to 15% more hours, from timezone gaps and asynchronous feedback.
• Slower iteration when you need something looked at right now and the team is asleep.
• Higher quality variance. The offshore market has excellent teams and terrible ones, and the terrible ones are cheaper. Vetting matters more than it does domestically.

Net, most clients save 50 to 70% of total project cost rather than the 75 to 80% the raw rate difference implies. Still a very large saving, but plan against the real number.

The costs nobody quotes you

The build price isn't the total price. Budget for these separately:

• Hosting and infrastructure: from $0 for a static site to $200+/month once you have a database and background jobs.
• Third-party services: payment processing fees, email delivery, SMS, mapping APIs.
• Maintenance: realistically 15 to 25% of the build cost per year for dependency updates, security patches and small fixes.
• App store fees: $99/year for Apple, $25 once for Google.

A $20,000 app isn't a $20,000 commitment. It's $20,000 plus roughly $4,000 a year to keep it healthy.

How to get a quote that means something

Vague briefs get vague quotes, and vague quotes get revised upward. Before approaching anyone, write down:

• Who the user is, and the one thing they need to do
• Whether people need accounts, and whether money changes hands
• Web, mobile, or both, and whether you honestly need both on day one
• Your actual budget ceiling and your deadline

A page of that gets you a fixed quote instead of an hourly estimate that drifts. Any team that won't commit to a number after a proper scoping conversation is telling you something.

What we charge

We work at $25 to $40 per hour and quote fixed prices per project rather than billing hourly, so the number you approve is the number you pay. Scope changes are quoted before we do them, not billed afterwards as a surprise.

For a real figure on your project, send us a short description and we'll come back within a day or two with a number and a timeline. No charge, and we'll say so if we think you'd be better served elsewhere. If you're still weighing up who to hire, our offshore versus US agency comparison covers the trade-offs.