Short answer
At the midpoint of Clutch's US development company band, our worked MVPs come to $22,000 (one platform, logins and analytics), $55,000 (SaaS web app with subscriptions) and $133,000 (two-sided marketplace on iOS and Android). Cheaper teams and harder cuts move those numbers a long way; the tables below show how far.
Three MVPs, three rates
| Scenario | Hours | US agency | Latin America | US in-house |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Validation MVP (one platform)The smallest testable version: iPhone only, logins, analytics, managed backend. | 295 h | $22,000$13,000 to $39,000 | $16,000$12,000 to $24,000 | $25,000$17,000 to $44,000 |
| SaaS web MVPWeb app with logins, card subscriptions, an admin view and analytics. | 738 h | $55,000$31,000 to $99,000 | $39,000$29,000 to $60,000 | $63,000$41,000 to $110,000 |
| Two-sided marketplace MVPCross-platform, listings, search, chat, payments and an admin dashboard. | 1,786 h | $133,000$76,000 to $239,000 | $95,000$71,000 to $145,000 | $154,000$100,000 to $268,000 |
What each cut saves
Removing one feature at a time from the marketplace MVP and recomputing everything (design, testing and project management shrink too):
| Drop this feature | Hours saved | Saving |
|---|---|---|
| Chat / messaging | 278 h | $21,000 |
| Admin dashboard | 158 h | $12,000 |
| Sign-up and login | 128 h | $9,500 |
| Card payments / checkout | 123 h | $9,200 |
| Photo / video upload | 113 h | $8,400 |
| Search and filters | 88 h | $6,600 |
| User profiles | 67 h | $5,000 |
| Push notifications | 62 h | $4,600 |
| Product analytics | 33 h | $2,500 |
| Ship iPhone only instead of cross-platform | 174 h | $13,000 |
| Managed backend instead of custom | 398 h | $30,000 |
A scoping order that keeps MVPs small
- Write the one assumption the MVP must test, in a sentence.
- List the features a user needs to experience that assumption. Everything else waits.
- Pick the platform your first users already use. Add the second one when you have a reason.
- Use a managed backend and a UI kit unless the product's value is in the backend or the design itself.
- Price the result in the calculator, then get quotes against the written scope and compare their hours line by line.
Questions
How much does an MVP cost?+
It depends on what the MVP has to prove. Our three worked MVPs at the midpoint of Clutch's $50 to $99 US development company band: a one-platform validation app at $22,000, a SaaS web MVP at $55,000 and a two-sided marketplace MVP at $133,000. The hours behind them are this site's published planning assumptions.
What is the cheapest way to build an MVP?+
Ship one platform, use a managed backend, use a UI kit, and leave out the features that do not test your core assumption. In our marketplace example, launching on iPhone only instead of cross-platform cuts the estimate from $133,000 to $120,000, and a managed backend instead of a custom one cuts it to $103,000.
Which features should I cut from an MVP first?+
The expensive ones that are not the reason people will use the product. In our marketplace example, chat and the admin dashboard are the two most expensive features. Many marketplaces start with email or SMS contact instead of in-app chat, and run admin tasks directly in the database or a no-code tool until volume justifies a dashboard.
Should an MVP be built in-house or outsourced?+
If the product is the company, the people who build the MVP carry knowledge you will need for every later version, which favours hiring or a long-term partner. If the MVP is an experiment for an existing business, a fixed-scope outsourced build is easier to stop. The in-house vs agency page prices both for the same scope.
Sources for this page
- Clutch (Software Development Pricing Guide). Software Development Company Pricing Guide, updated September 21, 2026. clutch.co/developers/pricing (read 2026-10-02)
- Accelerance (blog post by Peter Griffin, November 24, 2025, summarising the Accelerance 2026 Global Software Development Rates & Trends Guide). Price Pressure and Performance: The New Equation for Global Dev Rates. www.accelerance.com/blog/2026-outsourcing-rate-trends-asia-europe-latam (read 2026-10-02)
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS). Software Developers (SOC 15-1252), national, May 2025 estimates. www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes151252.htm (read 2026-10-02)
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Employer Costs for Employee Compensation (ECEC). Employer Costs for Employee Compensation, June 2026. www.bls.gov/news.release/ecec.nr0.htm (read 2026-10-02)
Hours are this site's own planning assumptions, set out line by line on the methodology page. Full quotes for every figure are on the sources page.