What's Actually in a £15K SaaS MVP? A Line-by-Line Breakdown

When we quote "production SaaS MVPs from £15K," the most common follow-up question is the right one: "What does that actually mean?" Here's the honest, line-by-line breakdown — what £15,000 buys you, what it doesn't, and where every hour of the engagement actually goes. No fluff, no hidden caveats.

What does £15,000 actually buy in a SaaS MVP?

A £15,000 SaaS MVP buys you approximately 6–8 weeks of senior product-team work covering discovery, design, frontend, backend, authentication, one third-party integration, deployment, testing, and project management. It's a shippable product on a stack your future in-house team can extend — not a prototype, but not a feature-complete V2.

The £15K price point is calibrated to do one thing well: validate a single core workflow with real users at production quality. Everything outside that scope sits in a "version 2" list.

The phase-by-phase breakdown

We sequence the engagement into four phases. Here's where the budget goes:

Phase 1 — Discovery + Design (Week 1–2): ~£3,000

What happens:

• 2–3 hours of scoping conversations with you to lock the core workflow
• A documented critical path: every screen and action a user needs to complete the workflow end-to-end
• A version-2 list (features explicitly out of scope)
• UI/UX design for the core screens — typically 4–8 screens, mid-fidelity
• A clickable Figma prototype you can show users for early feedback
• The technical plan: stack, integrations, database schema, deployment target
• A week-by-week build schedule

Who does it: senior PM (lead), senior designer, senior engineer (technical input).

Why it's worth £3K: this is where most MVPs go wrong. Skipping or rushing this phase is how budgets blow up. Two weeks of disciplined scoping prevents six weeks of scope creep.

Phase 2 — Frontend + Backend scaffolding (Week 3–4): ~£4,000

What happens:

• Next.js + TypeScript app set up, deployed to staging
• Design system implemented (typography, colour, spacing, base components from the Figma)
• API layer scaffolded (Next.js API routes or separate service if scope demands)
• Database set up (Postgres on Supabase / Neon / Railway), schema migrated
• CI/CD wired up (push to deploy)
• Repo handed to you on GitHub from day one — you own the code throughout

Who does it: senior frontend engineer, senior backend engineer, PM keeping scope honest.

Why this matters: by end of week 4 you should be able to log into the deployed app and see the shape of the product, even if no features work end to end yet. Visible progress every week is non-negotiable.

Phase 3 — Core workflow end-to-end (Week 5–6): ~£4,000

What happens:

• Authentication (Clerk / Supabase Auth / NextAuth — chosen in Phase 1)
• The core workflow works end-to-end: a user can sign up, reach the core action, complete it, and see the result
• The primary CRUD operations on the main data model
• Email confirmation flows (powered by Resend, Postmark, or your provider)
• Mobile-responsive across the critical screens
• Empty states, loading states, basic error handling

Who does it: same team, now executing.

Why this matters: by end of week 6 the product works. Not polished, not edge-case-complete — but a user can do the thing the product exists to do. If the core action isn't working by mid-week-6, scope was too big and needs cutting.

Phase 4 — Integration, polish, deployment (Week 7–8): ~£3,000

What happens:

• One third-party integration wired up. Common picks for an MVP:
  • Stripe for payments / subscriptions
  • Slack or email for notifications
  • One specific API your product depends on (e.g., Google Calendar, Twilio)
• Testing pass — critical-path flows verified, top 5 edge cases handled
• Production deployment (Vercel typically), with monitoring (Sentry) wired
• Sitemap, robots.txt, basic SEO meta tags
• Handover documentation: how to deploy, how to add features, how the data model works
• A 1-hour walkthrough call so your team understands the codebase

Who does it: same team. Final polish + ship.

Why this matters: this is the difference between "a prototype on a developer's laptop" and "a product your customers can use." Production-grade deployment is included in £15K, not an extra.

Project management is built in, not extra

Every £15K engagement has a dedicated PM throughout. They:

• Run weekly standup with you (30 min)
• Send a Friday end-of-week summary
• Triage scope-change requests as they come up
• Keep the team aligned on the agreed scope
• Are your single point of contact

Other agencies bill PM separately ("PM-as-a-service" tiers). We don't — because an MVP without active scope management is the surest way to over-run.

What's NOT in a £15K build

To be honest about it, here's what £15K does not include. Each of these needs either a larger budget or a separate engagement:

| Excluded | Why | Approx extra cost | |---|---|---| | Native mobile apps (iOS / Android) | A second codebase doubles the scope | +£15K–£25K | | Multiple complex integrations | Each integration is 3–5 days of work | +£2K–£4K per integration | | Complex permissions / multi-tenant roles | Architectural depth beyond CRUD | +£3K–£8K | | AI / LLM features beyond a simple call | Prompt engineering, evaluation, cost monitoring | +£3K–£10K | | Real-time features (chat, collaboration) | WebSockets, presence, conflict resolution | +£4K–£10K | | Heavy data migrations | If you have legacy data to import | +£2K–£5K | | Native white-labelling / multi-brand | UI theming infrastructure | +£3K | | Custom illustration / brand-led design | We use clean editorial design; bespoke art is extra | +£2K–£8K | | Penetration testing / formal security audit | Done by specialised firms | +£5K–£15K | | Marketing site beyond a homepage | We design 1 homepage + auth pages; full marketing site is more | +£3K–£5K |

A £15K MVP is focused. That focus is what makes it ship on time.

Where the £15K actually goes (rough split)

For a typical engagement, the budget split is:

| Role | Share | What they do | |---|---|---| | Senior engineer(s) | ~55% | Frontend + backend + DB + integration | | Senior designer | ~20% | UI/UX, design system, prototypes | | PM / scoping | ~15% | Discovery, weekly management, handover | | Infrastructure / tooling | ~5% | Hosting setup, CI/CD, monitoring | | Buffer | ~5% | Handling the unforeseen — every project has some |

That's not the price plus margin. That's how the £15K is spent inside the engagement.

"But that's more than a freelancer charges"

True. A freelance developer in the UK at £400/day, full-time for 8 weeks, is about £16K — roughly the same total. The differences:

| | Coderacle (£15K) | One freelancer (£16K) | |---|---|---| | Designer included? | Yes | No (add ~£3–5K) | | Project management? | Yes | You | | Architecture / scoping? | Yes (week 1–2) | Variable | | What if they get sick? | Senior backup on team | You wait | | Code review? | Built in | None | | Handover docs? | Built in | Variable | | Fixed price? | Yes | Often hourly | | Production deploy + monitoring? | Yes | Variable |

So when comparing, you're not comparing £15K agency to £16K freelance — you're comparing £15K-all-in to £16K-freelance + £5K-design + your time as PM + risk of solo-dev illness. The all-in is usually £25K+ once everything's counted.

We covered this in more depth here.

When £15K isn't enough

The £15K tier suits MVPs where the scope can genuinely be narrowed to one core workflow. It's not the right number when:

• The product has two distinct workflows that both need shipping
• You need native mobile alongside web from day one
• The core feature is substantively AI — requires prompt evaluation, cost monitoring, guardrails (add £5–10K)
• You need complex billing — usage-based pricing, multi-currency, invoice generation (add £3–5K)

In those cases, we'd quote £20K–£35K and tell you upfront. The £15K number isn't a hook; it's an honest floor for the scope band it actually covers.

The bottom line

£15,000 buys 6–8 weeks of senior team work that ships a focused, production-grade SaaS MVP — discovery, design, frontend, backend, auth, one integration, deployment, and management. Fixed price, no hidden extras, code in your GitHub from day one.

What it deliberately doesn't buy: feature-rich V2s, native mobile, multiple integrations, or anything you don't need to validate your core hypothesis. That focus is the feature.

Want a fixed price for your specific idea — based on what's actually in scope rather than a guess? Book a free 30-minute scoping call. You'll leave with a clear scope, a firm number, and a timeline. No commitment, no upsell.