An MVP costs anywhere from €3,000 with no-code to over €80,000 with a traditional agency, with a sweet spot around €15,000 for a fixed-price V1. But the sticker price tells you nothing about the real cost: every method hides fees, risks or debt that only surface later. Here is what each option truly costs, and which one to pick based on your situation.
The four methods and their price ranges
- No-code (Bubble, Webflow, Glide…): €3,000 – €15,000. The fastest and cheapest way to validate a simple idea.
- Freelance: €300 – €700/day, i.e. €12,000 – €50,000 for an MVP. Highly variable quality, reliance on a single person.
- Traditional agency: €40,000 – €100,000 over 3 to 6 months. Heavy process, vague quotes, endless back-and-forth.
- Fixed-price V1 (Khufu): €15,000, delivered in 7 days, source code yours to keep.
What each option hides
The entry price is rarely the final price. With no-code, platform and plugin subscriptions balloon with volume, and you get no clean codebase: hitting a ceiling means rewriting everything. Freelance concentrates the risk on one person — unavailability, undocumented code, an unpredictable exit. Traditional agencies bill by the hour: every scope change becomes an addendum, and the budget slips.
- No-code: recurring subscription costs, a technical ceiling, no ownership of the code.
- Freelance: single-person dependency, uneven quality, uncertain maintenance.
- Agency: long timelines, hourly billing, scope creep.
- Fixed-price V1: a tight scope to respect — anything outside the initial frame moves to maintenance.
The real hidden cost: time
The most underestimated factor is not the quote, it is time-to-market. An MVP delivered in 6 months means 6 months with no users, no feedback and no revenue — while a competitor moves ahead. An MVP in real code, delivered in one week on a production stack (Next.js, NestJS, PostgreSQL), buys you that time without paying the technical debt of no-code.
The price of an MVP is not measured by the quote, but by what it costs to rewrite it — or to arrive too late.
Which method for your situation
- Unvalidated idea, minimal budget: no-code to test within days, accepting you will throw the prototype away afterwards.
- A one-off, well-defined need and you can steer the tech: a good freelance may be enough.
- A product meant to grow, you want code you own and a fast time-to-market: a fixed-price V1 (€15,000, delivered in 7 days) offers the best speed/quality/risk ratio.
There is no universal method — there is the one that fits your stage. The question is not “what is the lowest price”, but “which option will cost me the least a year from now”.