How much does it cost to build an MVP?
An honest breakdown of what drives software cost, and how to scope a first version that answers a business question.
Cost follows scope, integrations and unknowns
The number of screens matters far less than the number of integrations, the number of user roles and how much of the domain nobody has written down yet. A five-screen product with three third-party integrations and an approval workflow costs more than a twenty-screen catalogue.
An MVP is an experiment, not a discount
A good MVP answers one business question: will these users pay for this outcome? Everything that does not serve that question — settings pages, edge-case roles, an admin panel nobody has asked for — belongs in version two.
What we do not cut
Authentication done properly, backups, deployment automation and basic monitoring stay in scope even for a small MVP. They are cheap now and very expensive to retrofit after you have real customers.