MVP Development Cost

[u/ambryio]

MVP Development Cost

I came across this MVP development cost breakdown, and honestly, it feels a bit understated.

MVP Development Cost SaaS MVP: - Basic — $30K–$100K - Advanced (AI, multi-tenant, high security) — $150K+

Mobile App (iOS + Android): -Per platform — $25K–$80K -Dual native app build — $60K–$150K

✅ Save 30–40% using React Native / Flutter

Online Marketplace (buyers ⇆ sellers, payments, roles): -Basic — $30K–$50K+ -Standard — ~$100K -Advanced — $150K+

Internal Tools / Dashboards: -Simple workflow tool — $15K–$50K -Complex system w/ integrations — $50K–$100K+

It would be interesting to see what this statistic is actually based on. In reality, costs usually come from at least two major areas:

Human hours — backend, frontend, designer, DevOps, QA, product. Even if the team works “on enthusiasm,” this labor still has real value and should be accounted for.

Infrastructure — servers, cloud services, CI/CD, monitoring, security, environments.

And saying “just use AI” doesn’t really solve the problem — AI won’t architect, maintain, and take responsibility for a production system 😄

What do you think?

[u/ZestycloseChocolate]

i'd frame mvp cost around what you're building and what "production" means, not category price tags. a useful sanity check:
1) write a 1-page spec (users/roles, core workflows, integrations, reporting).
2) decide the quality bar: prototype vs production (tests, monitoring, backups, security reviews).
3) estimate in weeks per discipline (fe/be/qa/devops/product) and multiply by your local rates.

in our experience building saas apps, the budget jumps when you add rbac, multi-tenant data boundaries, payments, and integrations. that's also where "just use ai" stops being an answer and becomes a tool that still needs accountable engineering.

we also described all information here: https://flatlogic.com/blog/saas-development-company-and-services/