How much of my feature list can the first release include?

Roughly twenty to twenty five screens of custom UI, which is enough for one core loop plus the account, profile, and payment screens around it. Everything else goes onto an exclusion list that we agree in writing before development starts. If you want a second core loop in the first release, we either extend the timeline or cut something of similar size.

Our prototype was built with AI coding tools. Can you work from it?

Yes. We treat it as a working description of what you want, and we read the screens to understand the flow before anything else. Then we rebuild accounts, data handling, and billing to a standard that holds up with real users and store review. Feature work on top of that usually moves faster than starting from an empty folder.

Will we have to rewrite the MVP in a year?

The expensive things to change later are the backend, the data model, and authentication, so we build those properly from the start. Screens, copy, and individual features get replaced as you learn, which is normal and cheap. You own the repository, the cloud accounts, and the store listings, so another team could take it over.

What does a mobile MVP typically cost?

Our pricing page lists a mobile MVP for iOS and Android at around twenty to twenty five screens as a typical order of $4,800 to $8,500 across four to six weeks. Backend choice, subscriptions, and third-party integrations move that range, and we quote fixed scope after discovery. Hourly work runs at our flat rate of $39 per hour.

Do you handle App Store and Google Play submission?

Yes. We prepare the listings, screenshots, privacy declarations, and data safety forms, then answer review feedback. Review outcomes depend on policy compliance and on how the app handles user data, so account deletion, permission prompts, and privacy disclosures are built before the first submission rather than patched after a rejection.

Mobile MVP Development for iOS and Android

Mobile MVP development for iOS and Android: a scoped first release with real accounts, analytics, and a foundation you can keep building on.

See our work:

Voteme App→Walking Cure→Wish Manifestation→

Mobile MVP Development for iOS and Android

Most first releases fail because they try to answer every question at once. A founder arrives with a feature list covering onboarding, social sharing, subscriptions, a referral scheme, and an admin dashboard. Eighteen weeks later there is still nothing on a phone, and the question that decides the business, whether anyone uses the product a second time, has not been tested.

We scope MVP work around that question. What you get is a real app in both stores with real accounts, real data, and real analytics, sized to ship in weeks, with early users installing it and the analytics showing what they do.

What an MVP is here

A prototype is a demo. It looks right on a laptop and tends to break the moment two people use it at once. An MVP is a smaller production system, and the difference sits in the parts nobody puts in a pitch deck: password recovery, data that survives a device change, crash reports with a stack trace attached, and a build that reaches a store listing without a week of patching.

We build the MVP as version one of your product. The screens you show users in month two will not be the screens you ship in month twelve. The account system and the database underneath them should not need replacing.

Who this is for

The work suits a founder with an idea and no code who needs something installable before raising, a team turning a spreadsheet into an app, a company that needs a demonstrable build for an investor conversation this quarter, and anyone whose AI-assisted prototype falls apart on a real device.

If your requirements are already broad, with several user roles and a long integration list, the wider mobile app development scope fits better. If you want one codebase for both platforms, see the cross-platform app development page.

What we build correctly from day one

Most of an MVP can change cheaply later. Five areas cannot, so they get real attention even when the release is small.

Accounts and identity

We pick the smallest sign-in set that matches your users, from Apple ID and Google Sign-In to email and SMS codes. Account recovery, session refresh, and a deletion path ship in release one, since Apple requires deletion and lost-account support is expensive at any scale.

Data ownership and the backend

Firebase, Supabase, or a custom Node.js API behind backend and cloud infrastructure, chosen on cost and query shape. The project lives in cloud accounts registered to your company, the schema is documented, and you can export your data without asking us.

Analytics and crash reporting

We instrument the core loop before launch: sign-up completion, the action the product exists for, and return visits in week one. Crashlytics or Sentry reports arrive with a stack trace and a release version, so a broken build on one Android model shows up as a number instead of a one-star review. Our app analytics and crash reporting page covers the tooling.

Deployment and store submission

Builds run through CI, signing certificates are stored where a team can reach them, and each release goes to internal testers first. We prepare the store listings, privacy declarations, and data safety forms, since review outcomes depend on policy compliance and on how the app handles data.

A foundation that can grow

Usually one Flutter or React Native codebase serving both platforms, with tests around authentication and payment flows where a bug costs money. Migrations are versioned, secrets stay out of the repository, and a new developer can run the project from the README.

What an MVP deliberately leaves out

An MVP is defined as much by its exclusion list as by its feature list. We draft that list during discovery and both sides agree it before the first line of code: no admin dashboard in release one, no referral program, no second language, no social feed, no elaborate role permissions, no companion web app. Each exclusion is written down with the reason and the trigger that would bring it back, so nothing is quietly forgotten and nothing gets argued about twice.

Anything added later either replaces an item of similar size or moves to a second phase with its own estimate. That is what keeps a launch date meaningful. The exclusion conversation also settles which single behaviour tells you whether the product works.

Where the project starts

A plain idea means we begin with discovery. We map the user journey, pick the one loop worth proving, and design the core screens. There is nothing to reuse, and estimates carry a wider range until the flow is settled.

An existing conventional codebase means we audit what is there first. We keep the parts carrying real business logic, retire what fights the new requirements, and build the MVP around the result. The audit decides whether that path beats a fresh start, and we tell you even when the answer is a rebuild.

An AI or vibe-coded prototype means the product thinking is ahead of the engineering. We read the prototype as a specification of intent, keep what is good about the flow, and rebuild authentication, data handling, and billing properly. That work is covered on the vibe-coded mobile app rescue page, and it usually shortens the design phase because the screens already exist in some form.

How the engagement runs

Discovery and scoping take a few days with the founder or product owner in the room. Design covers the core screens and the states around them, including the empty, loading, and error screens that demos skip. Build runs in two-week cycles, each ending with a build you can install on your own phone. Then internal testing on real devices, store submission, and a short hardening window after launch while the first analytics data and crash reports arrive.

What it costs

Work runs at our flat rate of $39 per hour, or as a fixed scope once discovery has produced a feature map. The published rates on our pricing page list a mobile MVP for iOS and Android at roughly twenty to twenty five screens as a typical order of $4,800 to $8,500 across four to six weeks.

Scope moves that figure in ways you can predict. Every extra core loop adds weeks. A custom backend with reporting takes longer than Firebase behind the same screens. Subscriptions, marketplace payments, mapping, and third-party integrations each add their own slice, and compliance work for health or finance data carries real review steps. We put those drivers in the estimate by phase.

Proof

Voteme is a cross-platform social app we built for iOS and Android, combining voting, credits, chat, notifications, and moderation in one product. It shows what a first release looks like when the core loop depends on other people being present, and why a social product needs abuse controls in version one.

Wish Manifestation turned a founder's manifestation methodology and the Yamatech tool into a guided mobile product on both platforms. The client brought the domain knowledge, we shaped the flow users follow, and the app shipped to iOS and Android from one delivery programme.

Walking Cure is a website rather than an app, and it belongs here because of how it was scoped. The clinic's advantage was an unusual treatment method, so the first release explained that method and captured enquiries. The same discipline applies to an app MVP: build the part that carries the value, leave the rest for a later phase.

Related services

Mobile app development for our full iOS, Android, and Flutter practice
Cross-platform mobile app development for one codebase serving both platforms
Vibe-coded mobile app rescue when a prototype needs to become stable and publishable
Mobile backend and cloud infrastructure for the API, database, and hosting layer
Payment gateway integration when the first release needs to take money

Next step

Send us the idea, the notes, the prototype, or the spreadsheet you use today. We will tell you what a first release would contain, what it would leave out, and roughly how many weeks it takes.

Contact us with a short description of the product and who it is for, or run the same details through the Vasilkoff.info estimator to get a first scope and cost range before we speak.