MVP development cost: $6,000 per two-week sprint, and what one sprint ships
An MVP built by me costs $6,000 per two-week sprint. Four weeks is two sprints: $12,000. Each sprint buys ten working days of one engineer, working code on a live URL at the end of week two, and a repository that's yours from day one. You pay one sprint at a time, so you never owe more than $6,000 in advance.
Below: what the other routes cost, with the page each number comes from. Then what one sprint ships, and what adds sprints. If your budget is under $6,000, the table will save you an email. A marketplace freelancer is the realistic route at that budget, and that's a fine choice.
What an MVP costs, by route
Route | Price seen | What you get for it | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
Marketplace freelancer | $900 to $4,000, as fixed budgets in buyer posts. Netguru gives $4,000 to $15,000 for freelancers | Depends on the freelancer. The posts give a budget, not a result | Buyer posts on Reddit, X and Upwork, sampled November 10, 2026 (samples, not totals); Netguru, updated April 29, 2025 |
Agency | $10,000 to $150,000+, as market estimates on agency blogs. The low ends are for a narrow scope, and two of the pages tie them to a lower-cost region. US team: $50,000 to $200,000+ (Space-O) | A team, usually with a designer and a project manager. RaftLabs quotes 6 to 8 weeks | Upsilon, RaftLabs, Netguru, SolveIt, Space-O (see Sources) |
Full-time senior engineer | Roughly $180K to $220K a year, all-in, for a senior Svelte or SvelteKit engineer in the US or EU. My estimate, not an outside figure | One person, for as long as you keep them | Okupter sprint page |
Okupter sprint | $6,000 per two-week sprint. Four weeks: $12,000 | Ten working days of one engineer. Working code on a live URL at the end of each sprint |
A few notes on these numbers.
The freelancer budgets are what buyers posted, not what got built. Buyer posts sampled on November 10, 2026 offered fixed MVP budgets of $900, $1,000, $1,500 and $4,000.
The agency ranges come from agencies that sell the build. They are market estimates, not price lists or quotes. Upsilon puts a lean MVP at $15,000 to $30,000 and a standard one at $30,000 to $65,000. Its $15,000 start assumes one primary use case and a team in a lower-cost region such as Eastern Europe. Space-O gives $50,000 to $200,000+ for a team in the United States, and $10,000 to $50,000 in India. Some agencies price scoping on its own: Leanware charges $5,000 to $15,000 for a discovery sprint, then prices the build.
The engineer row is my own estimate. I wrote it on the sprint page: "A senior Svelte (Kit) engineer in the US or EU costs roughly $180K–$220K all-in per year." At $6,000 a sprint, that's 30 to about 37 sprints. For comparison, Netguru puts a whole in-house team, not one engineer, at about $25,000 a month.
What one $6,000 sprint ships
One sprint ships one of these. Each comes with the line that tells us it's done.
A dashboard your team can use. A dashboard with agreed metrics, filters and a detail view, on your existing API. Done when: the agreed metrics match the source data, filters work, and loading, empty and error states are covered. The dashboard works on mobile and is deployed for your team.
Sign-in and account settings. Sign-in, sign-out, protected routes and a profile settings screen, with one auth provider. Done when: a test user can sign in, update the agreed profile fields and sign out. Signed-out users can't access protected data, and expired sessions and failed requests are handled.
A CMS-backed section. One CMS content type connected to a listing page and a detail page. Done when: published entries render at the agreed URLs with metadata and working pagination where needed. Missing entries return a 404, and content updates appear through the agreed publishing flow.
These have limits. They're example scopes for an existing SvelteKit app, not a list of features every sprint includes. I review your codebase and dependencies before we agree on what ten working days can cover.
For a new product, the first sprint is usually the spine: sign-in, the core data model, and the one screen your users come for, deployed on your domain.
What makes an MVP cost more
The sprint price doesn't change. The number of sprints does.
More than one core piece. A product with accounts, billing, a dashboard, and a CMS usually needs more than one sprint.
Unresolved dependencies. No API access, no provider account, no test credentials, no agreed designs. Each one has to be settled before a sprint can finish, and work that waits on them needs more sprints.
Work that is bigger than it sounds. Enterprise SSO, complex organization permissions, migrating an existing user database, a new data pipeline, a real-time backend. Each of these needs its own scope.
Design from scratch. Design isn't included. I work from your designer's files, or I introduce a designer I work with.
What doesn't add cost: no hourly overflow, no setup fee, no "this took longer than expected" addendum. You can pause or stop between sprints, and the price stays the same when you come back.
The usual way to keep the number down is to cut the first release until it fits the sprints you agreed to. The features that don't fit go to a later sprint, and you decide if you book it.
Four weeks in practice: Updraft
Cyfrin needed a learning platform for Web3 developers. Updraft went from brief to live MVP in four weeks. I built the MVP alone: API, database, and SvelteKit frontend. Later I owned the frontend as the team grew.
At the end of week four, Updraft had:
Courses, sections, and lessons, served by a REST API and a headless CMS.
A lesson screen with code examples, interactive challenges, and autosaved progress.
Sign-in and account management.
A dashboard of course progress and completed lessons.
A working deployment with a first course and beta users in it.
Certificates, quizzes, and multi-language support came after the MVP. Updraft has since taught 200,000+ students.
"Justin did a killer job for us, organizing and planning out the first part of our education platform, and honestly, we wouldn't have been able to launch it without him."
Mikhail Karan, Lead Developer, Cyfrin
I use Updraft here for the timeline. Your price comes from your scope, counted in sprints. The full story is in the Updraft case study.
The refund
Something usable after the first sprint. Or I refund it. If the first sprint doesn't ship something usable, you get the full $6,000 back. I've never had to issue one, but the option exists because it should.
FAQ
How much does it cost to build an MVP?
With me, $6,000 per two-week sprint. Agency cost guides give $10,000 to $150,000+. Their low ends are for a narrow scope. For a US team, Space-O gives $50,000 to $200,000+.
What does MVP app development cost?
The same $6,000 per sprint. New builds are SvelteKit with TypeScript, and the repository is yours from day one.
Do I pay for the whole build up front?
No. You pay one sprint at a time, upfront, after we agree on scope and a start date.
How long does it take to build an MVP?
Updraft took four weeks from brief to a live MVP. For yours, we cut the first release until it fits the number of sprints you agree to.
Get your price
Send me what the product does and your launch date. I reply within one business day. We agree on the first release by email, with a short call if useful.