There is no single price for an MVP, but the cost is predictable once you know what drives it. Almost every estimate comes down to one formula: the number of weeks of work multiplied by the cost of the team doing it. Your job is to keep the first number small and make sure the second buys real seniority.
1. Scope is the biggest lever
Every extra user role, workflow and screen adds design, development and testing time. The cheapest MVP is the one that delivers a single core outcome for one type of user. List every feature, then ask which ones a first customer would actually pay for—most lists shrink by half.
2. Every SaaS needs the same foundations
Sign-up and login, teams and permissions, subscription billing, transactional emails, an admin panel and production hosting appear in almost every product. A team that has built them before should deliver them quickly and reliably; budget for them up front rather than discovering them mid-project.
3. Integrations and AI add uncertainty
Connecting to payment providers, CRMs, accounting tools or AI models is usually where estimates go wrong, because third-party APIs have limits and edge cases. Ask for these to be priced separately, or tested in a short prototype first.
4. Where your team is based changes the rate, not the work
An offshore team in India typically costs a fraction of US, UK or Australian rates for the same weeks of work. The trade-offs to manage are seniority, communication and time-zone overlap—so ask who will actually write the code, how often you will see working software and when you can talk live.
5. Get a fixed price for a defined first release
Ask for a written scope, a milestone plan and a fixed price for the first release, with optional features priced separately. That turns an open-ended cost into a decision you can make—and makes it easy to compare proposals like for like.
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