How much does it cost to build a SaaS MVP

A SaaS MVP that real customers can sign up for and pay runs A$25,000 to A$60,000. Accounts, billing and permissions are most of it, and none of them are your idea. Your idea is usually the cheap part.

Here is the uncomfortable arithmetic of a first SaaS build. The part that makes your product different is often two weeks of work. The other four weeks are the machinery every SaaS has, and you cannot skip it, because without it nobody can pay you.

What it costs

The low end is single-user accounts, one plan, card payment. The high end is teams, seats, multiple plans with different limits, usage metering, and a trial that has to behave correctly when it expires.

The three things that move the number

1. Billing that is not just a checkout. Taking a first payment is a day. Plan changes, proration, failed cards, dunning, cancellations that need to keep working until the period ends, and refunds are collectively bigger than most people's actual product.

2. Teams and seats. Single-user is a fraction of the work of multi-user. Invitations, roles, who pays, what happens when the payer leaves. If you can launch single-user, launch single-user.

3. Usage limits. Any plan that says up to N of something needs counting, enforcing, and a sensible thing to do at the boundary. Counting is easy. Deciding what happens at 101% at 2am is the work.

What to cut for a first version

• Teams. Ship single-user, add teams when someone asks to invite a colleague.
• Annual plans. Monthly only until you have retention data worth discounting against.
• A free tier. Free users are a support and infrastructure cost before they are a funnel.
• Admin dashboards for yourself. Query the database until that genuinely hurts.
• SSO. Nobody buying your first version needs it, and everyone who does will tell you loudly.

The one thing not to cut is cancellation. Making people email you to cancel is a support burden, a refund risk, and the fastest way to earn the kind of review that outlives the feature.

The line item to read twice

Stripe integration as a single line. Ask whether it covers plan changes, failed payments and cancellations, because those three are most of the real work and they are routinely priced as if they are the checkout button.

Common questions

What is the minimum a SaaS MVP needs

Someone can sign up, pay, get the value, and cancel themselves. If any of those four is missing you do not have a product, you have a demo with a payment link.

Should I use a boilerplate or starter kit

Yes, for the machinery. Accounts and billing are solved problems and writing them again is spending your budget on the part that is not yours. Keep the custom work for the part that is.

How much of a SaaS build is my actual idea

In our builds, roughly thirty percent is genuinely unique and seventy percent is proven tools and patterns. If a quote is mostly custom, ask which parts and why.