The Real Cost of Building an MVP (And How to Budget Smart)

The Budget Reality

Let's be honest about numbers. MVP development costs typically range from $5,000 to $50,000, with timelines of 3-8 weeks. That's a wide range, and understanding where you land depends entirely on what you're building and who's building it.

But here's what often gets overlooked: the cheapest option usually ends up costing twice as much. Poor development leads to rewrites, delays, and lost traction. What seemed like cost savings becomes a liability.

What Drives MVP Costs

Complexity Factors

• User authentication: Simple email/password vs. OAuth + roles + permissions
• Data model: Single user type vs. marketplace with multiple actors
• Integrations: Each API connection adds development and maintenance time
• Real-time features: Chat, notifications, live updates all add complexity

Design Investment

A custom UI takes longer than using a component library. For MVPs, I typically recommend:

• Use shadcn/ui or similar for common components
• Invest design time only in unique, differentiating features
• Polish the first impression (landing page, onboarding)

The "Build vs. Buy" Calculation

Before writing custom code, ask: does a solution already exist?

• Authentication: Use Clerk, Auth0, or Supabase Auth
• Payments: Stripe handles 99% of use cases
• Email: Resend or Postmark, not custom SMTP
• File storage: Cloudflare R2 or AWS S3

Each custom implementation you avoid is development time you can spend on what makes your product unique.

Realistic Budget Tiers

£450-£950: Landing Page MVP

Validate your idea before building features. This gets you:

• Professional landing page
• Email capture
• Basic analytics
• Waitlist functionality

£1,600-£3,000: Functional MVP

Core features that demonstrate your value proposition:

• User authentication
• Basic CRUD operations
• Simple dashboard
• Mobile-responsive design

£3,000-£10,000+: Full MVP

Ready for early adopters and investor demos:

• Complete user flows
• Admin dashboard
• Integration with key services
• Analytics and monitoring

Hidden Costs to Plan For

Your MVP budget should include:

• Hosting: £20-100/month initially (scales with usage)
• Domain: £10-50/year
• Email service: £20-50/month
• Monitoring: Often free tier works initially
• SSL: Free with Let's Encrypt or most hosts

Where to Invest (And Where to Save)

Worth Investing

• Core user experience
• Performance from day one
• Clean, maintainable code
• Security fundamentals

Save for Later

• Advanced analytics
• Complex admin features
• Multi-language support
• Advanced reporting

The ROI Question

42% of startups fail due to no market need. An MVP's job is to answer one question: do people want this?

The right budget isn't the lowest one-it's the one that gets you a reliable answer quickly. Spend enough to build something worth testing, but not so much that you can't afford to iterate based on what you learn.