RapidDev builds custom mobile and web apps in Los Angeles, 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 LA (roughly $420,000–$470,000 for a two-engineer first year) or commissioning a Los Angeles agency ($120,000–$450,000 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 LA founders — from Silicon Beach and DTLA to the Hawthorne aerospace corridor — go from a Figma or Lovable prototype to a production app your users and your investors actually trust.
Los Angeles is now the third-largest startup ecosystem in the United States by funding and the fourth-largest tech-talent market in North America, with an ecosystem estimated around $155 billion and more than 258,000 tech workers — but its real edge is breadth, not any single vertical. In one quarter of 2025 LA startups raised $3.1 billion, and the AI slice alone pulled in $1.8 billion in a single quarter in 2024, putting the city second nationally for AI funding. Yet the same metro is the densest hardware and aerospace cluster in the country: SpaceX runs a million square feet of manufacturing in Hawthorne, Relativity is headquartered in Inglewood, and Anduril has taken old aircraft factories near Long Beach. That range means a founder here might be shipping a creator-economy app one office over from a defense-tech team — and both expect production-grade craft. We build for that spread: the consumer polish that survives an LA user's three-second judgment, and the architecture that survives a technical diligence.
From Santa Monica and Venice out to Culver City, Silicon Beach is now framed as America's third major tech hub. Unlike single-vertical metros, LA has real depth across entertainment tech, consumer brands, healthtech, fintech, and AI — so we've shipped everything from creator platforms to compliance-heavy fintech in the same city.
SpaceX, Relativity Space, and Anduril anchor a hardware and defense cluster that has driven aerospace tenants from ~2% to 11% of new industrial leases since the start of 2025. These teams need dashboards, telemetry tooling, and internal apps that are as serious as the hardware — production code, not clickable mockups.
Techstars LA offers roughly $220K for 6% and backs Southern California startups across every sector, and Tech Coast Angels runs 425 members across three funds. LA-based firms like Upfront Ventures, Greycroft, and March Capital now direct over half their funding to local startups — so a fundable v1 shipped fast keeps you on their radar.
Snap, TikTok, Netflix, and Riot Games all built here, and they trained LA users to judge an app in seconds. That raises the floor for anyone launching a consumer product locally — the flows have to feel native and fast on day one, which is exactly the craft we prioritize.
LA by the numbers
Who we build for in LA
Streaming, creator-economy, and fan-engagement apps that need real-time feeds, media pipelines, and the polish LA audiences expect by default.
Mission dashboards, telemetry viewers, and internal tooling for the Hawthorne–Inglewood–Long Beach hardware corridor around SpaceX, Relativity, and Anduril.
LLM-powered products with streaming UIs, vector search, and usage-based billing — LA pulled in $1.8B of AI venture funding in a single quarter.
Shopping, loyalty, and subscription apps for LA's dense direct-to-consumer and commerce scene, with Stripe billing wired in from day one.
HIPAA-aware patient and provider apps for LA's large healthtech and telehealth base across the Westside and DTLA.
Payments, lending, and neobanking apps that need Stripe, real compliance, and security that survives investor diligence.
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 Los Angeles 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 LA users expect from the apps they grew up on.
Fast, SEO-ready web apps on Next.js. From investor-facing sites to the logged-in product itself — dashboards, admin panels, telemetry viewers, 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 in front of LA investors.
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 under real load.
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 Los Angeles costs anywhere from $13,000 with RapidDev to over $450,000 with a large agency, depending on who builds it. Here is the honest math on the four realistic paths — with real 2025 Los Angeles numbers, not a vendor's guesswork.
Hire a team in-house in LA
true first-year cost of a minimal 2-engineer team
LA / 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 LA | ~$420K – $470K / yr | 3–5 months just to hire, then build |
| LA / US agency | $120K – $450K+ | 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 roughly two months of one LA engineer's loaded salary, RapidDev ships your entire app — mobile, web, and backend — in 6 to 12 weeks.
App development in Los Angeles 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 Los Angeles 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 Los Angeles founders. Details generalized to protect client confidentiality.
Challenge: A Santa Monica founder had a Lovable prototype for a fan-subscription app but couldn't get the real-time feed and media uploads to feel fast enough for a consumer launch.
What we shipped: We rebuilt the app on React Native with a Supabase backend, added a proper media pipeline and push, and shipped native iOS + Android that held App-Store-quality polish under load.
Challenge: A Hawthorne-corridor hardware team was tracking telemetry in spreadsheets and needed a real internal dashboard before an investor review — but had no front-end engineers to spare.
What we shipped: We shipped a role-based Next.js dashboard with live telemetry views and admin tooling on a Postgres backend, so the team could hand a stakeholder a real product instead of a screenshot.
Challenge: An LA seed team's LLM chat product demoed well but fell over under real traffic and had no way to bill customers for usage.
What we shipped: We shipped a streaming chat UI, added vector search over their docs, and wired per-customer usage metering into Stripe before their next raise.
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 Los Angeles 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 LA founders remotely and asynchronously, across a metro where a Santa Monica team and a Pasadena team already collaborate over video 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 schedule around your timezone.
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 LA. With local firms like Upfront, Greycroft, and March Capital directing over half their funding to local startups, a real product beats 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.
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 each time. An LA in-house team carries ~$138K–$148K base salaries plus benefits and months of ramp before anything ships; an agency layers overhead on top of the build. 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 Los Angeles 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 Los Angeles and LA — 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 Los Angeles profile on Google MapsRemote-friendly · Serving the greater LA 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 Los Angeles and LA · Remote-friendly · You own everything we build
