RapidDev builds custom mobile and web apps in Austin, TX, typically shipping a production MVP in 6–12 weeks for a fixed $13,000–$25,000. That is a fraction of the cost of hiring an in-house team in Austin (roughly $430,000–$470,000 a year for two engineers, loaded) or commissioning an Austin agency ($120,000–$400,000 per build). One team ships the iOS app, the Android app, and the web app on shared infrastructure, and the founder owns all of the code.
One team for your iOS, Android, and web build. We help Silicon Hills founders go from Figma or a Lovable prototype to a production app your users — and your investors — actually trust.
Austin has become the country's most-watched relocation story: Tesla put its headquarters and Gigafactory here, Oracle moved its HQ to town, Apple built its second-largest campus, and Samsung and TSMC anchored a full semiconductor corridor just northeast of the city. That gravity pulled in senior engineers and, in 2025, a record $7.19 billion of venture funding into Austin-headquartered startups — more than double 2023's total. The money is concentrated in AI, robotics, health tech, and energy, so the products getting funded here are data-heavy and hardware-adjacent, and diligence goes deep. But Austin founders operate with an advantage the coasts don't have: no state income tax and costs 30–40% below the Bay Area, so a seed round stretches further. We build for that reality — the polish that survives a Capital Factory pitch, the architecture that survives technical diligence, and the pace that keeps a lean Austin raise from burning out before launch.
Capital Factory has been the most active investor in Texas since 2010, with roughly 2,000 investments made. Its All Access Fund terms — about 1% equity for up to $100K — are unusually founder-friendly next to accelerators that take 5–10%. If you're building in Austin, the ecosystem runs through its downtown tower, and the demos there set the bar you build toward.
Austin's 2025 funding split — roughly 32% AI/ML, 24% health tech, 18% fintech, 15% robotics and advanced manufacturing — tells you what gets funded here. Deals like Saronic's $600M, Apptronik's $415M+, and Base Power's ~$1B are hardware- and data-heavy. We prioritize the flows that demo well and the foundations that hold up when a technical partner digs in.
Tesla, Oracle, Apple, Meta, and Samsung all hire aggressively in Austin, which is great for the ecosystem and brutal for a seed-stage founder trying to staff up. Austin engineer base salaries run $144K–$180K, and you're bidding against Gigafactory offers. Bringing us in lets you ship your v1 now and hire deliberately later, from a position of traction.
No state income tax and costs well below the Bay Area mean Austin founders raise leaner and stretch every dollar — but users and investors still expect App-Store-quality polish on day one. Weekly deployed builds keep a capital-efficient Austin team moving at the pace the ecosystem now expects.
Austin by the numbers
Who we build for in Austin
LLM products and robotics dashboards — the category that took 32% of Austin's 2025 venture funding, from Apptronik-style hardware to agent tooling.
HIPAA-aware patient and provider apps for Austin's life-sciences and digital-health corridor — 24% of the city's 2025 startup funding.
Payments, lending, and neobanking apps that need Stripe, real compliance, and rock-solid security — 18% of Austin's venture dollars.
Grid, battery, and clean-energy platforms — Austin-born Base Power raised ~$1B, and energy founders here need data-heavy mobile + web.
Multi-tenant dashboards, admin panels, and role-based access for Austin's deep bench of vertical SaaS and IT-management startups.
Two-sided platforms and high-polish consumer apps with payments, matching, and the mobile performance Austin users expect.
RapidDev builds native and cross-platform mobile apps, Next.js web apps and dashboards, full MVP-to-scale product builds, and production AI features for Austin founders — mobile and web ship from one team on shared infrastructure.
No stitching together an app shop and a web agency. We scope and ship your iOS, Android, and web product on shared infrastructure — so everything actually works together.
One codebase, both stores. We build React Native and Expo apps that pass App Store and Play Store review the first time, with the native feel your users expect.
Fast, SEO-ready web apps on Next.js. From investor-facing marketing sites to the logged-in product itself — dashboards, admin panels, and customer portals.
The whole thing, mobile and web, on shared infrastructure. Ideal when you're moving off a Lovable or Bubble prototype that's hit its ceiling and need production code that raises well.
Ship the AI feature your product actually needs — chat, search, or agents — wired to your data with streaming, evals, and cost controls, not a demo that falls over.
You see a working, deployed build every single week. Here's the exact path from a first call to a launched app — five steps, no surprises.
We map your idea (or your stuck prototype) to a concrete feature list, a fixed price, and a timeline. You leave with a plan whether or not you hire us.
What you get
A fixed price + timeline
Clickable Figma flows and a technical architecture you sign off on before a line of production code is written. No surprises later.
What you get
Clickable Figma + signed-off architecture
You get a working, deployed build every single week — not a black box. Test on real devices, give feedback, watch it take shape.
What you get
A deployed build every week
We handle App Store and Play Store submission, production deploy, and a full handover — code, docs, and access are yours to keep.
What you get
Live app + all code and access
Keep us on a retainer for new features and fixes, or take the wheel with your own team. Your call — we don't lock you in.
What you get
A retainer — or a clean exit
Production-grade, boring-in-the-best-way tools that your future in-house team can hire for and maintain. No lock-in, no proprietary magic.
Building a custom app in Austin costs anywhere from $13,000 with RapidDev to over $400,000 with a large agency, depending on who builds it. Here is the honest math on the four realistic paths — with real 2025–2026 Austin numbers, not a vendor's guesswork.
Hire a team in-house in Austin
true first-year cost of a minimal 2-engineer team
Austin / US agency
typical price for a comparable custom build
Offshore / freelance
typical Eastern Europe / LatAm blended rate
RapidDev
fixed price, quoted before we start
| Path | Typical cost | Time to first shipped product |
|---|---|---|
| Hire a team in-house in Austin | ~$430K – $470K / yr | 2–4 months just to hire, then build |
| Austin / US agency | $120K – $400K+ | 4–9 months |
| Offshore / freelance | $25 – $50 / hr | Highly variable — often 2–3x quoted |
| RapidDev | $13K – $25K | 6–12 weeks to a live, submitted app |
The numbers behind this, sourced
For the price of about two months of one Austin engineering team's loaded cost, RapidDev ships your entire app — mobile, web, and backend — in 6 to 12 weeks.
App development in Austin with RapidDev costs a fixed $13,000–$25,000, quoted before any code is written rather than billed by the hour. A focused single-platform MVP starts at $13,000; a full mobile-plus-web product with payments and AI features runs up to $25,000.
You get a fixed price before we write a line of code — quoted, not billed by the hour. Every Austin build lands in the $13K–$25K range depending on scope.
Solo founders and pre-seed teams validating one core flow with real users.
Seed-stage startups shipping a fundable v1 to the App Store and the web.
Series A teams replacing a no-code MVP or adding serious AI features.
A few of the builds we've shipped for Austin founders. Details generalized to protect client confidentiality.
Challenge: An Austin founder had a Lovable prototype for a patient-intake app but couldn't pass a HIPAA-aware security review to onboard their first clinic partner.
What we shipped: We rebuilt the backend on Supabase with real RLS, added audited access controls, and shipped native iOS + Android — clearing the clinic's compliance checklist.
Challenge: A Capital Factory team's LLM ops dashboard worked in a demo but fell over under real fleet data and had no way to bill customers for usage.
What we shipped: We shipped a streaming dashboard, added vector search over their telemetry, and wired per-customer usage metering into Stripe before their Series A raise.
Challenge: A Series A team had outgrown a Bubble MVP — every new feature broke two others, and hiring Austin engineers to work in it was impossible.
What we shipped: We migrated their data into a proper Postgres schema and rebuilt the product on Next.js with role-based access, so they could finally hire and scale.
190+ people across 17 countries, a 4.9 rating on Clutch, and 600+ apps shipped. Here's the leadership standing behind your build.
CEO & Founder
Founder of RapidDev, a global software firm whose team has delivered 1,000+ client projects. He helps founders cut through the hype and ship practical, production-grade software — fast.
Columbia University · Harvard Business School · U.S. Navy veteran · 1,000+ client projects
Matt on LinkedInCOO
Runs operations across RapidDev's 190+ person, 17-country team — the person making sure your build ships on time and on scope.
CTO
Owns the technical bar for every build: the architecture, code quality, and security review that has to survive investor diligence.
Dev Lead
Leads the engineers who ship your weekly builds across iOS, Android, and web on shared infrastructure.
Both — that's the whole point of working with us instead of stitching two vendors together. We build your mobile app (iOS and Android from one React Native codebase) and your web app on shared infrastructure, so your data, auth, and payments live in one place instead of three.
Yes, and it's one of the most common reasons Austin founders come to us. No-code prototypes are great for validation but hit a ceiling on security, scale, and hiring. We migrate your data into a real database and rebuild the product in production-grade code you own — usually without losing any of your existing data.
Most builds land between $13,000 and $25,000, quoted as a fixed price before we start — not billed by the hour. After a free 45-minute scope call we send a concrete feature list, price, and timeline. The band depends on scope: a focused single-platform MVP sits near the bottom, a full mobile + web product with payments and AI features toward the top.
Typically 6–12 weeks from kickoff to a live, submitted app. A focused MVP can ship in 4–6 weeks; a full mobile + web product with AI features runs closer to 9–12. You get a working, deployed build every week, so you're never waiting months to see progress.
No — we work with Austin founders remotely and asynchronously, which is how most Silicon Hills teams operate anyway. You'll have a dedicated point of contact, weekly demos, and a shared board. If you prefer a video kickoff or working sessions, we're happy to schedule around Central Time.
You do — completely. The code lives in your GitHub, the App Store and Play Store listings are under your accounts, and we hand over full documentation at launch. We never hold your product hostage, and you're free to bring the work in-house or hire your own team whenever you want.
That's a big part of what we do for seed and Series A teams in Austin. In a market that raised a record $7.19B in 2025, investors expect a real product, not a clickable mockup — so we prioritize the flows that demo well, ship App-Store-quality polish, and make sure the architecture holds up to technical diligence. Many of our Austin clients raise on the version we ship.
Absolutely — most of the founders we work with are non-technical or first-time technical founders. We handle every technical decision, explain trade-offs in plain English, and give you a product you can maintain or hand to a future CTO. You focus on customers and fundraising; we handle the build.
It comes down to structure, not corners cut. We scope a fixed set of features up front, so there is no open-ended hourly meter. A small, senior-only team does the work directly — you are not paying for account managers, sales overhead, or junior engineers learning on your budget. And we reuse hardened production patterns for auth, payments, and infrastructure instead of rebuilding them from scratch each time. An in-house Austin team carries $144K–$180K base salaries, benefits, and months of ramp-up before anything ships — and you're bidding against Tesla and Oracle for those hires. We simply do not carry those costs.
Every build includes a 30-day bug-fix window after launch — if something we shipped breaks, we fix it at no extra cost. Beyond that, you can keep us on an optional monthly support retainer for ongoing fixes and new features, or take the code in-house and maintain it yourself. You own the code either way, so you are never locked in.
Small adjustments within the agreed scope are just part of the weekly sprint — you review a working build every week and give feedback we fold in. If you want to add or swap something bigger that changes the scope, we handle it with a simple change order: we tell you the price and timeline impact before doing the work, you approve it, and only then do we build it. No surprise invoices, and no silent scope creep.
Grab a 45-minute slot with our team below. We'll map your idea — or your stuck Austin prototype — to a concrete feature list, a fixed $13K–$25K price, and a timeline. You walk away with a real plan either way.
Prefer email? Contact us instead.
We serve founders across Austin and Austin — from first scope call to a launched, submitted app. Our Google Business Profile below is the quickest way to see us on the map, save us for later, or leave a review after we ship.
View our Austin profile on Google MapsRemote-friendly · Serving the greater Austin area
Book a free 45-minute scope call. You'll walk away with a concrete feature list, a fixed price, and a timeline — whether or not you decide to work with us.
Serving Austin and Austin · Remote-friendly · You own everything we build
