The median UK contract rate for a Next.js developer was £548 a day in the six months to 28 October 2026, across 142 adverts that quoted a rate (IT Jobs Watch). Multiply that by the number of person-weeks your feature list needs and you have the honest core of any SaaS MVP quote. Everything else is overhead, margin and risk.
This guide builds the cost up from that arithmetic: a scoping table of feature blocks in person-weeks, then published rates for four team types, then the time each scope takes. The rates come from IT Jobs Watch, Clutch, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Stack Overflow 2025 survey. The person-week estimates are our planning heuristic, and we say so wherever they appear.
Why every MVP quote is the same formula
Strip a quote back and three numbers remain: how many people, for how many weeks, at what weekly rate. Fixed-price quotes hide the formula and add a margin for expected scope changes; time-and-materials quotes show it openly.
That is why the ranges published by MVP agencies are so wide. In MVP Development Statistics 2026 we compared three agency guides; two of them, AddWeb Solution and CMARIX, put a simple MVP anywhere from $8,000 to $35,000 between them (agency estimates). The gap is not mystery pricing. It is mostly a different weekly rate applied to a slightly different idea of "simple".
So the useful question is how many person-weeks your list needs, and whose weeks you are buying.
The scoping table: feature blocks in person-weeks
The table below is the heuristic we would use to size a SaaS MVP before any design exists. It is not measured project data; it is a planning range for one experienced full-stack developer working in a conventional stack such as Next.js with a managed Postgres database. Use it to see which blocks dominate your budget, then test it against any quote you receive.
| Feature block | What it includes | Person-weeks |
|---|---|---|
| Foundation | Sign-up, sign-in, organisations or teams, roles, settings, deployment pipeline | 2 to 3 |
| Core workflow | The one job the product exists for: data model, screens, validation | 2 to 4 |
| Each extra workflow | A second or third job a user can complete end to end | 1 to 3 |
| Subscription billing | Plans, trials, payment webhooks, a customer billing page | 1 to 2 |
| Transactional email | Invites, password resets, notifications | 0.5 to 1 |
| File uploads | Storage, previews, permissions on files | 0.5 to 1.5 |
| Admin back office | Support view of accounts, impersonation, manual fixes | 1 to 2 |
| Reporting dashboard | Charts and exports over the product's own data | 1 to 2 |
| Each integration | One CRM, accounting or calendar connection, both directions | 1 to 3 |
| AI feature | A model call over the customer's data, prompts, evaluation, cost limits | 1 to 4 |
| Enterprise sign-on | SAML or OIDC single sign-on and audit log | 1 to 2 |
| Real-time collaboration | Live cursors, presence, conflict handling | 3 to 6 |
Source: Octo Agency planning heuristic, 2026; not measured data.
Design, QA and project management sit on top of build time. We would add about 30% for them, which is where the tier totals below come from.
| Tier | Blocks included | Build person-weeks | With 30% for design, QA and management |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lean | Foundation, one core workflow, billing, email | 5.5 to 10 | About 7 to 13 |
| Standard | Lean plus two extra workflows, file uploads, admin, dashboard, one integration | 11 to 24.5 | About 14 to 32 |
| Complex | Standard plus enterprise sign-on, an AI feature, two more integrations, real-time collaboration | 18 to 42.5 | About 23 to 55 |
Source: our arithmetic on the heuristic above.
The Agile Business Consortium's MoSCoW guidance keeps Must Haves to "typically no more than 60%" of effort, with around 20% held as Could Haves that are cut first if time runs short. Applied here, a founder with a standard-tier budget should expect to ship the Must Haves of a standard list, not all of it. Our MVP Spec Template walks through writing that list on one page.
What a person-week costs, by team type
The second half of the formula is the weekly rate. Four team types cover almost every MVP, and each has a public reference point.
Agencies, by region. Clutch's software development pricing guide, updated 21 September 2026, lists most firms at $25 to $49 an hour. By location it places India, the Philippines, Ukraine and Mexico at $25 to $49, the United States, Poland and Spain at $50 to $99, and Canada and Australia at $100 to $149. These are marketplace listings, so treat them as a floor for each region rather than a typical senior rate.
UK contractors. IT Jobs Watch reports a median of £548 a day for Next.js contracts in the six months to 28 October 2026, with a 10th percentile of £400 and a 90th of £674. That is roughly £2,000 to £3,370 a week, before you add anyone to manage the work.
US in-house hires. The Bureau of Labor Statistics gives a median annual wage of $135,980 for software developers in May 2025. Its employer cost survey shows wages and salaries are 70.0% of private-sector compensation costs in June 2026, with benefits the other 30.0%. Used as a proxy, since the survey covers all private industry rather than developers alone, that puts a median developer at about $194,000 a year, or $3,700 a week, before recruiting time and management.
Salaries elsewhere, as a proxy. The Stack Overflow 2025 survey puts the median full-stack developer salary at $138,000 in the US, about $85,400 in the UK, $75,410 in Germany and $13,949 in India, against $72,509 for all respondents. Salaries are not agency rates, but the ratios explain why the same MVP is quoted at very different prices around the world.
| Team type | Published reference | Weekly cost |
|---|---|---|
| Agency, India or Ukraine | $25 to $49 an hour | $1,000 to $1,960 |
| Agency, US, Poland or Spain | $50 to $99 an hour | $2,000 to $3,960 |
| Agency, Canada or Australia | $100 to $149 an hour | $4,000 to $5,960 |
| UK contractor | £400 to £674 a day | £2,000 to £3,370 |
| US in-house, fully loaded | $135,980 median wage at 70% of cost | About $3,700 |
Sources: Clutch pricing guide, 2026-09-21; IT Jobs Watch, six months to 2026-10-28; BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook and Employer Costs for Employee Compensation, 2026. Our arithmetic.
SaaS MVP cost by tier and team type
Multiply the tiers by the weekly rates and the ranges below fall out. The low figure is the low end of the tier at the low rate; the high figure is the high end at the high rate.
| Team type | Lean (7 to 13 person-weeks) | Standard (14 to 32) | Complex (23 to 55) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Agency at $25 to $49 an hour | $7,000 to $25,500 | $14,000 to $62,500 | $23,000 to $108,000 |
| Agency at $50 to $99 an hour | $14,000 to $51,500 | $28,000 to $126,500 | $46,000 to $218,000 |
| Agency at $100 to $149 an hour | $28,000 to $77,500 | $56,000 to $190,500 | $92,000 to $328,000 |
| UK contractors at £400 to £674 a day | £14,000 to £44,000 | £28,000 to £108,000 | £46,000 to £185,000 |
| US in-house at the median, loaded | $26,000 to $48,500 | $52,500 to $119,500 | $86,000 to $205,500 |
Source: our arithmetic on the person-week heuristic and the weekly rates above. Excludes discovery, running costs and compliance.
Contractors and in-house hires need someone to manage them; agencies usually include a project lead but price in a margin for change requests. And the cheapest cell is rarely the cheapest outcome: a build that has to be rewritten costs both numbers.
Clutch's own project data shows how skewed real spend is. It reports an average software project cost of $132,480 but a typical project range of $10,000 to $49,999, which means a minority of very large projects pull the average up. For budgeting, the typical range is the better guide.
For scale, Y Combinator's standard deal is $500,000. A standard-tier MVP from a $50 to $99 agency would use roughly 6% to 25% of it, which is why accelerators push founders to cut scope rather than shop for cheaper rates.
How the stack changes the bill
Stack choice changes cost less than feature count, but it does move it in three places.
Custom code. We build applications in Next.js, so our bias is on the table. A conventional stack (React, Postgres, a managed host) costs more per feature than a no-code tool at first, but nothing caps it later and you can hire for it. Our post The MVP Tech Stack We Recommend in 2026 prices the hosting, auth, payments and monitoring layers month by month; at MVP scale they are small next to the build.
No-code. Bubble's published plans run from $59 to $549 a month billed annually, with 175,000 to 500,000 workload units included (vendor page). The build can be faster for simple workflows, but builder time is still person-weeks, and the platform fee scales with usage. Our comparison Wized vs Custom Code in 2026 covers where that ceiling sits.
Backend as a service. Using Supabase, Xano or Firebase removes part of the foundation block, mostly auth and database administration. On our heuristic that saves about half to one person-week, not a third of the budget. Xano vs Supabase in 2026 and Supabase vs Firebase for a B2B SaaS MVP compare the options.
The stack decision that moves cost most is whether you need enterprise sign-on or real-time features on day one. Both are easier to defer than to remove.
How long it takes to build an MVP
Duration follows the same arithmetic, divided by team size. With two developers working in parallel, and allowing for the fact that two people are never twice as fast as one, the tiers translate roughly as follows.
| Tier | Discovery | Build and QA | Total to first paying user |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lean | 1 to 2 weeks | 4 to 7 weeks | About 5 to 9 weeks |
| Standard | 2 weeks | 7 to 16 weeks | About 9 to 18 weeks |
| Complex | 2 to 3 weeks | 12 to 28 weeks | About 14 to 31 weeks |
Source: our estimate from the tier person-weeks, two developers, about 85% parallel efficiency.
Basecamp's Shape Up method offers a useful cap. Its teams work in six-week cycles followed by two weeks of cool-down, and a big project takes a whole cycle. A lean MVP fits inside one cycle; a standard one needs two or three. If your plan needs more than that before a single customer touches it, the scope is the problem, not the team.
The costs that sit outside the build
Discovery. One to three weeks of scoping and a clickable prototype, the cheapest place to remove a feature.
Running costs. Hosting, database, auth, email and error tracking. At MVP scale these are usually low hundreds of dollars a month, priced in detail in our stack post.
Maintenance. Dependency upgrades, security patches and small fixes. CMARIX puts it at 15% to 25% of build cost a year and AddWeb Solution at about 20%; both sell MVP builds, so treat those as vendor estimates.
Compliance. If you sell to larger companies, security questionnaires arrive before revenue does. Vanta, which sells compliance software, says a SOC 2 audit fee usually runs $10,000 to $50,000 and a first SOC 2 costs $10,000 to $80,000 or more all-in, including readiness work and tools. That is a vendor figure, and it can match the build itself.
What this means for budgeting a SaaS MVP
Start with the scoping table, not with a quote. List your Must Haves as blocks, add up the person-weeks, add 30% for design and QA, then multiply by the weekly rate of the team type you are actually considering. If the result is far from a quote you have, ask which blocks the quote assumes and which version of each.
Then cut. Hold a fifth of the effort as Could Haves, defer enterprise sign-on and real-time features until a customer asks, and set a calendar cap of one or two six-week cycles. A smaller first release costs less and teaches you sooner what the second one should be.
We quote per project rather than publishing prices, because two products with the same feature names can differ by a factor of two in effort. Our web apps service page explains how we scope an MVP before pricing it.
