What an MVP Really Costs
What should your MVP cost? This free report puts a public number on each line of an MVP budget, from the prices 66 agencies, 27 cost guides and 14 software services publish, with a one-page worksheet to fill in.
By MVP Development · October 2026 · Findings free to cite below
What you’ll learn
- What an MVP build costs at the agencies that publish a price, and why most do not
- Why online cost guides disagree by ten times, and how few show their source
- What it costs to keep an MVP running before you have users
- What technical leadership costs, and how to tell whether you need it
- Whether you will own your app's code, and what leaving costs
- A one-page budget worksheet to fill in before you sign anything
The findings, free to cite
Every figure links to the dataset it came from. Each one was read by a person against its source, in September 2026.
- 1
MVP Development read the sites of 66 reachable MVP development agencies: 53 publish no price.
Dataset: agency-transparency-2026-09-23.json - 2
The 8 that publish a clear entry price for a build start between $3,999 and $45,000, with a median of $15,000.
Dataset: agency-entry-prices-2026-09-23.json - 3
Across 27 articles quoting an MVP cost, the median range is $15,000 to $150,000, and only 2 link to a source for it.
Dataset: mvp-cost-claims-2026-09-23.json - 4
All 14 services in a typical SaaS MVP stack can start at $0 a month. Outgrowing every flat first paid plan at once costs $176 a month, before payment fees.
Dataset: saas-mvp-stack-pricing-2026-09-24.json - 5
At the measured middle half of fractional CTO rates, 15 hours a week of technical leadership costs $10,200 to $15,000 a month.
Dataset: fractional-cto-rates-2026-09-28.json - 6
Only 7 of 66 agencies say on their site that the client will own the code.
Dataset: agency-code-ownership-2026-09-24.json - 7
None of the 4 classic no-code builders lets you take your app's code with you; all 4 AI app builders do.
Dataset: no-code-export-2026-09-23.json
Look inside
Who made this
MVP Development builds MVPs at a fixed price, so we are part of the market this report measures. We measured our own site with the same code as every other agency. Our price is in the data and left out of the median: $1,450 for our Lean AI MVP package, delivered in 21 days.
What $1,450 includes
- Everything in the prototype
- Login and a database
- One user role
- 3 to 5 screens
- Chatbot or AI feature integration
- Deployed, source code yours
- 2 revision rounds
What it does not include: Payments, admin panels or several user roles; that is Premium.
A smaller first step: our Working AI Prototype package, $350 in 7 days. It is a prototype, not a full MVP.
See all packagesBudget worksheet (CSV)
The four budget lines with the public figure for each. No email needed.
All 7 datasets
The raw data behind every figure, as JSON, with the definitions used.
How to cite
MVP Development, What an MVP Really Costs, October 2026, mvpdevelopment.company/research/what-an-mvp-really-costs
Get the full report
13 pages of sourced figures, and a one-page worksheet to fill in before you sign anything.