"How much does an MVP cost?" is the question I get most often on intro calls, and it has the worst answers on the internet. Every agency landing page says it depends. Every Upwork quote is either €800 or €80,000 with no way to tell which is real. Here's the range, where the money actually goes, and what makes a quote fair.
The short answer, in ranges
Three tiers I quote against every week:
- €3.5K–€6K — landing page or small marketing site. 2–4 weeks. Responsive, CMS-lite, SEO in order, contact form routed to your inbox.
- €12K–€25K — a real SaaS MVP. 6–12 weeks. Login, a dashboard, your core data, at least one billing-related thing, deployed and monitored.
- €25K–€60K — MVP plus mobile or complex integrations. 12–20 weeks. Native app, real-time sync, non-trivial third-party APIs, or multi-tenant architecture.
These are rates for a solo full-stack developer working fixed-scope (me, specifically, but comparable independents quote in the same bands). Agencies charge 1.5–3× for the same scope because they layer in PM, account manager, design lead, and account margin.
Where quotes drift past €40K for no good reason
Three patterns I see again and again:
- Agencies with a PM layer. The PM doesn't write code. Their time is ~30% of your bill.
- Ex-FAANG freelancers charging by the hour. €250/hr × 30 hrs/week × 12 weeks = €90K. The same codebase a €15K fixed quote would produce.
- "Scale-ready" architecture before you have a user. If someone's pitching you Kubernetes, microservices, and a service mesh for a pre-revenue MVP, they're solving their résumé, not your product.
A €15K MVP, line by line
Concrete example. 10 weeks, one developer, fixed price. Close to the shape I quote most months.
Week 1 — Discovery + architecture (~€1.5K)
- Scope written down, signed
- Data model, API contracts, login approach decided
- Tech choices justified in writing (not "we'll use X because I like it")
- Deliverable: a written spec you could hand to another developer tomorrow
Weeks 1–2 — UX + UI design (~€3K)
- Wireframes for every screen in the MVP
- High-fidelity Figma for the 3–5 core flows
- A small design system: colors, typography, component library
- Deliverable: clickable prototype plus the Figma file you own
Weeks 2–8 — Core build (~€7.5K)
- Login and signup (email/password or social login), roles, permissions
- Core database structure, migration scripts, initial test data
- The 3–5 primary user flows, front-to-back
- Stripe checkout or subscription if the product needs it
- An admin dashboard so you can see what's happening without opening the DB
- Deliverable: shipped weekly to staging, demo every Friday, you approve each milestone
Weeks 9–10 — Polish, deploy, handoff (~€3K)
- Production deploy, domain, SSL, database backups
- Monitoring (Sentry or similar), structured logs
- Legal pages, cookie notices, GDPR if relevant
- README, deploy docs, a team walkthrough call
- Deliverable: a live, monitored product with everything documented
The split is ~10/20/50/20 across discovery/design/build/polish. Individual projects shift a percentage or two, but the shape stays.
What €15K does not buy
Equally important, here's what the price doesn't cover:
- A custom native mobile app (that's the €25K+ tier)
- More than one non-trivial third-party integration
- Enterprise features — SSO, audit logs, SOC2 prep
- Multi-language support beyond two locales
- 24/7 on-call coverage
- Feature development after launch (that's a retainer, not part of the build)
- A separate marketing site alongside the product (usually €3.5K on top)
If a quote bundles all of those at €15K, either the scope is promises-on-paper or someone will ship broken work and disappear before you can complain.
Three variables that swing the number
Same feature list, same quality bar, very different price. Why:
Design complexity. An off-the-shelf design system (say, shadcn/ui) cuts 2 weeks off a project that would otherwise need a bespoke one. For an MVP, worth it 9 times out of 10. Save the custom design work for product-market fit.
Integration count. Each third-party service you wire in (Stripe, Intercom, Segment, Sentry, Supabase, SendGrid, PostHog) adds ~2 days of plumbing. Five integrations, two weeks. Pick them on purpose, not because you saw them on a stack page.
How well you've already validated. A founder who's done 20 user interviews and has written requirements usually costs 30% less to serve than a founder discovering requirements during the build. The difference is the scope-change tax of not knowing what you want.
How to get a fair fixed quote
Before you ask anyone to quote, write down:
- The 3 user flows required for launch (not the nice-to-haves)
- The single metric you'll use to judge the MVP 30 days after launch
- The integrations you already know you'll need
- The deadline, and why it exists
Ask any developer to quote against that document. You'll get quotes you can compare apples-to-apples, and the gap between two quotes will tell you something about each developer rather than about the work.
The one number to look at when comparing quotes
Compare price per milestone, not total. A €15K quote broken into four €3.75K milestones is a real commitment to shippable chunks. A €15K quote with 50% upfront and 50% at delivery is a risk I wouldn't take.
The shape of a quote I'd sign: 25–30% upfront to start, the rest in milestones of 2–3 weeks. Each milestone ends in something you can open in a browser and decide — continue or walk away.
If you're sitting with a wireframe and a number in your head, I can tell you in a 20-minute call whether that number is realistic and what you'd get for it. Book a call. Worst case, you leave with a clearer mental model of what you're actually buying.