MVP development services with the price on the page and the engineers on the call
Most MVP development services quote after a call and hand the build to people you never meet. Deepsel publishes the price. A typical startup MVP ships inside 1 to 2 months on a $15,000 a month retainer that includes the fractional CTO and the senior engineers, so the build costs $15,000 to $30,000 and then drops to $0. If you've already built a prototype in Lovable, Replit or Cursor, a $3,000 fixed one-week sprint audits it, fixes the critical bugs and security holes, and hands you a written roadmap. The code sits in your accounts from the first commit, and if the first 30 days don't work out, you get your money back.
What MVP development is, and which MVP you are buying
A minimum viable product, an MVP, is the first version of a product that real users can use and you can learn from. MVP software development is the work of scoping that version, designing it, building it, testing it and putting it live. The catch is that "MVP" means two different things, and the quote depends on which one you mean.
To builders it often means one user and one flow, enough to test a guess. To a founder with customers waiting, an MVP for startups means a usable first product: accounts, the core workflow, payments if you charge, and nothing that embarrasses you in front of a paying customer. We quote the second kind. Three kinds of reader hire us for it.
A brief and a budget, and nobody to build it
You have a waiting list, signed letters of intent or a business that needs the tool. You want a price and a date before you commit, and someone who tells you when a feature should wait.
A prototype built with AI tools that hit a wall
Lovable, Replit or Cursor got you a working demo. Now it needs real sign-in, permissions, payments and a deploy that survives strangers, and every developer you ask says start over. Our first step here is the $3,000 sprint, and the default is keep and repair.
Quotes in hand, from $9,000 to $80,000
You sent one brief to several shops and got same-day numbers with no questions and six-figure numbers with no breakdown. You want a scope that shows its working and a price you can defend to a cofounder or an investor.
What you get from an MVP build, and when
Every item below is something you can open, read or click. None of it depends on taking our word for it, which matters when you can't read the code yourself.
In the first two weeks
- A written scope, architecture, timeline and estimate. Assumptions shown. Yours to keep whoever builds it.
- Screens and a data model, drawn together. What you approve is what gets built.
- Repos and cloud accounts in your name. Set up before the first line of code, so there's nothing to hand over later.
Every two weeks after that
- A working version you can click. A demo from the engineers who built it, in your own environment.
- Tests and code review on every release. Automated tests, review by a second engineer, and load checks before launch.
- A plain-English scorecard each month. What shipped, what slipped and what we're doing about it.
At launch
- A staged rollout with a rollback plan. Real users arrive in groups, and there's a way back if anything breaks.
- Documentation and a handover session. Written for the next engineer, whoever that is.
- Your choice of what comes next. Step back to $0 a month, keep one engineer for upkeep, or keep the team building.
How long
A typical startup MVP ships inside 1 to 2 months. Published claims run longer. Across 17 articles that state a timeline, the median claim is 8 to 12 weeks (MVP Development, September 2026), Forcoda calls 8 to 16 weeks realistic (July 2026), and Netguru puts the average near four months (March 2026). We hold a shorter window three ways: the people who scope the work build it, the scope is fixed before the first cycle, and the engineers build with AI tools and read every line they ship.
MVP development pricing, published and worked out
Three published prices, the same three as on our fractional CTO page, and the MVP arithmetic from each. No setup fee, no deposit held against you, no hourly meter. How the $15,000 retainer compares with advise-only CTO rates is in our fractional CTO cost guide.
Technical Leadership
$15,000 / month
A fractional CTO who makes the architecture and scope calls, plus the senior engineers who build. A typical startup MVP ships inside 1 to 2 months, so the build is $15,000 to $30,000, and then you step back to $0 a month.
- Written scope, architecture, timeline and estimate before the build
- Senior engineers who build and demo every two weeks
- Investor and tech-diligence support
- Monthly plain-English scorecard
For founders and owners with no technical lead and an MVP to ship from a brief.
Rescue Sprint
$3,000 fixed, one week
One week, one time, for a prototype you built with AI tools or inherited from someone else and can't trust yet.
- Full audit of product, code and architecture
- Critical bugs and security holes fixed and shipped
- Plain-English scorecard and roadmap, yours to act on with Deepsel or anyone
For Lovable, Replit, Bolt or Cursor builds, and for codebases a previous developer left behind.
Senior Product Engineer
$4,000 / month half-day, or $8,000 / month full-time
One dedicated senior engineer, a demo every two weeks, a daily overlap window with US hours. Two months full-time is $16,000; your lead and the scope set the number of months.
For teams that already own the technical decisions and need more hands.
For comparison, published vendor ranges for a first version, each vendor's own figure: UXPin lists no-code MVPs at $5,000 to $15,000 and simple custom builds at $15,000 to $50,000 (October 2026); Ardura's table puts a web application at $15,000 to $40,000 over 6 to 10 weeks and a SaaS platform at $40,000 to $100,000 (April 2026); Purrweb's own price is $25,000 to $60,000 with most near $30,000 (July 2026); Continuum's starts at $15,000 fixed once scoped (September 2026). Founders report quotes further up, such as $80,000 fixed against $150 an hour for 400 to 500 hours (r/SaaS, October 2025). One small shop published its last twelve first-version builds: $6,500 to $61,000, median about $21,000 (June 2026). The whole picture, with what each route gets you, is in our MVP development cost guide; the wider custom software development cost guide covers builds beyond an MVP.
Guarantees on every plan
- Month-to-month, 30 days' notice, no termination fees.
- First 30 days: full money-back guarantee.
- IP yours from the first commit under a US-jurisdiction agreement; repos and servers in your own accounts.
- Any engineer replaced within 7 days if not a fit.
- Happiness Index: you score us every month on delivery, accepted work and incidents. A month under 50 is refunded.
How an MVP build runs, and what you hold after each step
Five steps. Each one ends with something in your hands that you could take to another builder, which is the point: you're never paying for progress on trust.
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Discovery call
Thirty minutes with Tim, free. You leave with an honest read on what you have and the smallest version worth building, whether or not we go further.
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Scope and estimate
We map users, workflows, integrations and risks, then write it up. The scope, architecture, timeline and estimate are yours to keep, assumptions shown, whoever ends up building it.
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Design
Screens and the data model, drawn together, so what you approve is what gets built. The engineers build from exactly those.
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Build in two-week cycles
Senior engineers build with AI tools and read every line. After each cycle there's a working version you can click, in your own repos and servers, with tests and a scorecard.
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Launch, then step back or scale
Staged rollout with a rollback plan, documentation and a handover session. The product is live and yours. Go to $0 a month, keep one engineer, or keep the team.
If you arrive with an AI-built prototype or an inherited codebase, the $3,000 sprint follows the call, and its scorecard and roadmap stand in for the scope and design steps. Changes have one rule. Anything outside the written scope gets a written note on what it adds to the date before anyone builds it, and on a flat monthly retainer that note is the whole bill. One founder who sent the same brief to seven shops described how he chose, and it's how we'd want to be judged:
An MVP development company with live products you can open
The surest test of an MVP builder is whether what they shipped is still running. Three of ours are below: a nightlife booking marketplace that takes bookings and payments, a consumer app with a live map, and the central login of the Swiss federal administration, rebuilt in stages with zero downtime. Open any of them. Gemina AI, our own developer tool from 2023 to 2024, was one of the first AI coding tools to understand a whole codebase on disk and edit across many files; we retired it when modern agent tools caught up.
Clubloungery
A booking marketplace for nightclubs. Guests pick a lounge on the floorplan and reserve in a few clicks; club owners upload a floorplan and draw their own bookable areas, so no developer is needed to onboard a venue.
See the project →FitFoodies
A consumer app that finds fitness-friendly dishes from nearby restaurants on a live map, filtered by dietary tags, with protein and calorie counts on every dish.
See the project →eIAM
The central login of the Swiss federal administration. We replaced the whole front end while the system stayed live, rolled out in stages, without touching the backend.
See the project →The people who do the work
I'm Tim Tran, Deepsel's founder. I'm on the discovery call, I write the scope, and I lead every build; nothing is sold by one person and built by another. Khuong Pham (7+ years, full-stack React and Python) and Trang Hoang (QA, 6 years, test automation) do the building and the testing. The team works from Hanoi, Vietnam, on a daily overlap window with US hours, and we keep it small on purpose: a handful of retainer clients at a time, and a waitlist when we're full.
What you can check before you sign
- Deepsel Inc. is a Delaware C corp; the contract, the IP assignment and the invoice are US-jurisdiction.
- The products above are live. Open them, click around, and judge what you find.
- Ask for a past client who was non-technical, and ask them what broke after launch and how it was handled.
MVP development company vs doing it yourself, a freelancer, an agency or a hire
Each route works for someone. Here's what each costs in 2026, with sources, and where it tends to go wrong.
Build it yourself with AI tools
The cheapest route to a demo. Lovable's Pro plans run $25 a month for 100 credits up to $2,250 for 10,000 (Lovable, October 2026); Bolt Pro is $25, Replit Core $20 and Pro $100 billed annually, and Cursor's listed tiers run $8 to $200 (live pages, October 2026). People report totals from under $50 to over $6,000. Sign-in, permissions, payments and deploy are the parts the tools leave for last. That's where the AI MVP development page and the $3,000 sprint pick up.
A freelancer
Self-funded founders report paying $2,500 to $20,000 for a first version through freelance platforms (2025 to 2026). Fast for a defined feature. The trouble founders describe comes after delivery: "Bug fixes took weeks because the freelancers had moved on to other projects" (r/SaaS, March 2026). If a freelancer left you with code you can't run, our software project rescue page covers the takeover.
An agency
Founders report agency quotes of $35,000 to $130,000 to $510,000 for a first version, and the two ends get the same reaction: the low one sounds too good to be true, the high one won't itemise. Larger agencies also sell with a senior and build with juniors. Our guide on how to choose a software development company lists the questions that expose both.
Hire an engineer
The median US software developer earned $135,980 in May 2025 (BLS). Benefits add about 30% of employer cost (BLS, June 2026), a recruiter takes 15% to 30% of first-year salary (Dover, August 2026), and a senior opening takes about 71 days to fill (Ashby benchmarks via Ideaware, September 2026). The right call once the MVP has customers and a roadmap to keep one person busy.
Ours is $15,000 to $30,000 for a typical MVP with the decisions and the hands included, month-to-month, with the IP yours from the first commit. If you're weighing small shops against each other, our list of the best small software development companies for startups names the competitors too, and the software development for startups page covers what changes after the MVP.
A good fit
- Self-funded professionals and business owners with a product to put in front of real customers and $15,000 to $30,000 to do it properly.
- Builders who started in Lovable, Replit or Cursor and now have users, or are about to.
- Funded founders who need a usable first product and a senior person to answer the technical questions in the next round.
Buy something else
You have an idea and no savings yet. Build the demo with an AI tool for a few hundred dollars. Come back with it and $3,000 when you have users or a serious investor conversation.
You already have a technical lead. You need hands: one senior engineer at $4,000 or $8,000 a month, under your lead's decisions.
Your first version is a multi-tenant platform with billing, roles and usage limits. That's a SaaS build, and our SaaS development page and SaaS development cost guide price it.
The product replaces a system that already runs the business. That's a staged rebuild behind the running system, which our legacy software modernization page covers.
MVP development questions founders ask
How much does MVP development cost?
A typical startup MVP at Deepsel ships inside 1 to 2 months on the $15,000 a month Technical Leadership retainer, so $15,000 to $30,000, then $0 a month. A prototype you built with AI tools starts with the $3,000 one-week sprint. Published vendor ranges run wider, from UXPin's $15,000 to $50,000 for a simple custom build to Ardura's $40,000 to $100,000 for a SaaS platform, and every figure is sourced in our MVP development cost guide.
How long does it take to build an MVP?
A typical startup MVP ships inside 1 to 2 months here. Published claims run longer: the median across 17 articles that state a timeline is 8 to 12 weeks, Forcoda calls 8 to 16 weeks realistic, and Netguru puts the average near four months. What stretches a build: a second platform (a native mobile app has its own list of steps, in our guide to the steps involved in creating a mobile app), payments and subscriptions, each outside integration (Ardura prices them at $1,000 to $5,000 apiece) and compliance such as HIPAA or SOC 2. The written scope names which of those are in.
What counts as an MVP in your quote?
A usable first product, the kind a paying customer can use without you apologising: accounts, the core workflow, payments if you charge, an admin view, on one platform. The thinner meaning, one user and one flow to test a guess, is a prototype, and AI tools now build those for a few hundred dollars. The scope document says which flows are in, which are out, and what each one would add.
Do you build MVPs with AI tools?
Yes. Senior engineers write the first draft of code and tests with AI tools, then design the data model, review every change, write the tests the tools skip and run the security checks. The prices are fixed or flat, so when the tools make us faster you pay for fewer months. The AI MVP development page explains the method and prices an AI product too.
Can you finish an MVP I started in Lovable, Replit or Cursor?
Yes, and the default is to keep what you built. The $3,000 sprint audits the product, code and architecture, fixes the critical bugs and security holes, and gives you a written scorecard and roadmap. If a rebuild would be cheaper, usually because the data model has to change under live customers, the scorecard says so and shows why. You decide with the findings in hand, and you keep them whether or not we continue.
Who owns the code, and what happens if we stop?
You do, from the first commit, under a US-jurisdiction agreement with Deepsel Inc., a Delaware company. Repos, cloud accounts and documentation sit in your own accounts from day one, so leaving is a decision rather than a migration. Every plan is month-to-month with 30 days' notice, no termination fee, and a full refund if the first 30 days don't work out.
Who fixes the product after launch?
We do, for as long as you want us to. The usual shape after an MVP ships is one senior engineer at $4,000 a month half-day, who knows the codebase because the same people built it. Or you take the documentation and a handover session and run it with your own team. There's no third option where the builder has moved on and your bug waits.
I need an MVP to raise money, and I have no money until I raise. What then?
Build the demo yourself with an AI tool; founders report getting there for under $500 in credits. When a conversation with an investor turns serious, the $3,000 sprint makes the demo safe to show and gives you a roadmap with numbers for the pitch. A monthly retainer only makes sense once there's cash to fund 1 to 2 months of it. We'll say that on the call rather than sell you a plan you can't pay for.
Fixed price or hourly?
No hourly meter. The sprint is a fixed $3,000. The retainers are flat monthly fees against a written scope and timeline, cancellable with 30 days' notice, and a change outside the scope gets a written note on what it adds to the date before anyone builds it. Founders with quotes in hand describe the two things they fear as a big number up front and hourly with no ceiling. This is neither.
Where is the team, and how do we work together?
Deepsel Inc. is a Delaware company. I'm Tim Tran, the founder; I'm on your discovery call and I lead the build. The engineering team works from Hanoi, Vietnam, with a daily overlap window on US business hours; our guide to outsourcing for startups and small businesses covers how that runs day to day. Calls, demos and documents are in English, and the demo every two weeks comes from the same people who scoped the work.