Free tool · No signup · Real catalog rates

App Development Cost Calculator.

How much does it cost to build an app? Pick what you're building. We'll size the smallest viable team and show your monthly burn — priced from our live catalog of 1,200+ vetted developers.

1. What are you building?

Pick one

2. What stage?

Pick one
Recommended team
Mobile App · MVP2.5 FTE
1× Mobile (React Native)mid

iOS + Android from one codebase.

React Native Developer

$2,024/mo
1× Backendmid

APIs, auth, push notifications.

Node.js Developer

$1,590/mo
0.5× QA (part-time)mid

Device-matrix testing.

QA / Test Engineer

$759/mo
$1,518/ea
Monthly burn
$4,373
6-month total
$26,238
12-month total
$52,476
Match a specific JD instead

Costs are P50 medians from Witarist's live catalog of vetted India developers. Contracts are billed in USD; conversion uses live rates updated daily. Numbers are honest mid-band estimates — actual rates for a specific candidate depend on stack depth and engagement terms.

How the team is sized

Smallest viable team — nothing inflated.

Every template is the smallest team that can credibly ship the stated product at the stated stage. Bench mark counts come from the actual team shapes Witarist has staffed across 80+ contract engagements, not from a generic "x developers per feature" rule.

MVP — 2 to 3 people

One generalist full-stack plus one specialist (mobile / AI / payments / data — whatever your product hinges on). Goal: ship the riskiest assumption in 8-12 weeks with the team small enough to fit in one Slack channel.

V1 — 4 to 6 people

Production-ready means dedicated frontend + backend + DevOps + QA. Plus the specialist from the MVP. This is the team that gets you to first paying customer and the first 6 months of operating without burning out.

Scaling — 7 to 10 people

Post-PMF you split into specialised pods. Two seniors per discipline, a dedicated SRE for the infra layer, a data engineer if the product runs on data. The calculator shows the lower bound — at this stage your hiring is bottlenecked by leadership, not headcount.

What's NOT included

Design, product management, and growth/marketing roles are excluded — those are typically 0.5-1 FTE each at the V1+ stages but are bought differently (often as part-time / agency engagements). Add roughly $2.5K-$5K/mo per role when budgeting holistically.

Common questions.

How much does it cost to build an app?
Roughly $4,000–$6,000/mo for a 2-person MVP team and $15,000–$25,000/mo for a 6-person V1 launch team when staffed via India contractors. The calculator above shows real numbers from our live catalog, broken down by role and experience band, so you can compare against the equivalent US-loaded cost.
What's the smallest team that can build a SaaS?
A two-person MERN-stack team (one full-stack developer plus half a DevOps engineer) can ship a credible MVP in 8–12 weeks. Past PMF you typically need 4–6 people: senior frontend, senior backend, DevOps, QA, and (depending on data complexity) a data engineer.
Why is hiring from India cheaper?
Indian contractor rates reflect Indian cost-of-living and tax structure, not lower skill or output. A senior React developer in India costs roughly 30–35% of the fully-loaded cost of a US equivalent (base + benefits + taxes), with no quality compromise when sourced through a vetted channel.
Does the calculator include design and product management?
The calculator focuses on engineering — the largest and least-predictable line item. Product and design typically add 0.5–1 FTE each at the V1+ stages; budget another $2,500–$5,000/mo each if you're staffing both via Witarist's network.
Are these contractor rates or full-time salaries?
Contractor rates. Witarist staffs dedicated India-based developers on month-to-month contracts. The cost on this page is what you'd actually invoice — no platform fees, no markup teasers, no surprise onboarding costs.