RapidDev builds custom mobile and web apps in New York, 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 New York City (roughly $430,000–$470,000 a year for two engineers) or commissioning a Manhattan agency ($150,000–$500,000 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 Alley founders go from Figma or a Lovable prototype to a production app your users — and your investors — actually trust.
New York is the second-largest startup ecosystem on earth and, by a wide margin, the most diverse — and that changes what a launch has to be. NYC startups raised a record $16.6 billion in 2024, up 74% year over year, and the New York metro pulled in $28.5 billion overall, second only to the Bay Area. But unlike a single-industry hub, New York's money is spread across fintech, media, healthtech, adtech, and proptech, so your app is rarely judged on polish alone. A fintech investor wants to see SOC-2-shaped foundations; a hospital-system pilot wants HIPAA-aware data handling; a media buyer wants a demo that looks Madison-Avenue clean. We build for that reality: the flows that demo well in front of a partner, and the architecture that holds up when a bank's security team or an acquirer's diligence goes deep.
New York is the runaway national leader in financial technology — NYC-metro startups raised over $3.1 billion in 2025, roughly 48.5% of every US fintech dollar. That density is a gift and a bar: your users expect bank-grade security and your investors have funded a dozen payment apps already. We build payments, compliance, and auth foundations that survive that scrutiny from day one.
Techstars NYC writes $120K checks and runs multiple in-person batches a year with hard Demo Day deadlines, and the Entrepreneurs Roundtable Accelerator (ERA) has launched 375+ startups that raised over $2 billion since 2011. When you're in a batch, everyone around you is shipping on the same compressed clock. We've built for teams racing exactly that timeline.
New York's healthcare ecosystem is one of the fastest-growing anywhere — 113 healthtech companies raised $4 billion in 2024, a 60% jump from the year before, anchored by the city's major hospital systems and life-science labs. Building here often means HIPAA-aware patient and provider apps that have to clear a real compliance review, not just look good in a pitch.
The senior engineers you'd want to hire in New York are also the ones the banks, hedge funds, and big-tech offices are courting — which is why a senior role takes 50–70 days to fill and commands recruiter fees on top. Bringing us in lets you ship your v1 now and hire deliberately later, from a position of traction rather than a bidding war.
New York City by the numbers
Who we build for in New York City
Payments, neobanking, and lending apps that need Stripe, real compliance, and bank-grade security — the category New York dominates, taking nearly half of all US fintech dollars.
HIPAA-aware patient and provider apps for a healthtech scene that raised $4B in a single year, anchored by the city's hospital systems and life-science labs.
High-polish consumer, publishing, and advertising apps for the Madison Avenue and Silicon Alley crowd, with real-time feeds and the performance New York users expect.
LLM-powered products with streaming UIs, vector search, and usage-based billing — AI now accounts for roughly a third of every venture dollar raised in the city.
Leasing, property management, and real-estate marketplace apps built for the densest, most valuable property market in the world.
Two-sided platforms and DTC commerce with payments, matching, and ratings — New York's fashion, food, and logistics operators live on them.
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 New York founders — mobile and web ship from one team on shared infrastructure, built to clear fintech and healthcare security reviews.
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 — and clears a bank or hospital security review.
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 New York costs anywhere from $13,000 with RapidDev to over $500,000 with a large agency, depending on who builds it. Here is the honest math on the four realistic paths — with real 2025 New York numbers, not a vendor's guesswork.
Hire a team in-house in NYC
true first-year cost of a minimal 2-engineer team
Big NYC / 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 NYC | ~$430K – $470K / yr | 3–5 months just to hire, then build |
| Big NYC / US agency | $150K – $500K+ | 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 three months of one New York engineer's loaded salary, RapidDev ships your entire app — mobile, web, and backend — in 6 to 12 weeks.
App development in New York 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 New York 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 or fintech features.
A few of the builds we've shipped for New York founders. Details generalized to protect client confidentiality.
Challenge: A New York founder had a Lovable prototype for a spend-management app but couldn't pass the security review a bank partner required before onboarding their first pilot.
What we shipped: We rebuilt the backend on Supabase with real RLS, moved payments to Stripe, and shipped native iOS + Android — clearing the partner bank's security checklist.
Challenge: A Techstars healthtech team needed a HIPAA-aware patient app for a hospital-system pilot, but their no-code build stored data in a way the hospital's compliance team rejected.
What we shipped: We rebuilt on a proper Postgres schema with role-based access and audit logging, shipped the patient and provider apps, and passed the hospital's review before the pilot window closed.
Challenge: A Series A team had outgrown a Bubble MVP — every new campaign feature broke two others, and their LLM-powered creative tool fell over under real ad-buyer load.
What we shipped: We migrated their data into a proper Postgres schema, rebuilt the product on Next.js with role-based access, and added a streaming AI creative tool with per-account cost controls.
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 and compliance 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 New York founders come to us. No-code prototypes are great for validation but hit a ceiling on security, scale, and hiring — and in fintech or healthtech they often can't clear a partner's security review at all. 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 New York founders remotely and asynchronously, which is how most NYC 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 your timezone.
Yes — it's a big reason fintech and healthtech founders here choose us over offshore or no-code. We build on foundations that hold up to scrutiny: real row-level security, encrypted data handling, audit logging, and payments on Stripe rather than rolled by hand. We can't hand you a formal SOC 2 or HIPAA certification, but we build the architecture your compliance and diligence teams expect to see.
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 here. New York investors have funded a dozen apps in your category already, so a clickable mockup doesn't clear the bar — 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 NYC 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, Manhattan office 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 New York team carries full salaries, benefits, and months of ramp-up before anything ships — and competes with the banks for that talent; 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 New York 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 New York and New York City — 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 New York profile on Google MapsRemote-friendly · Serving the greater New York City 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 New York and New York City · Remote-friendly · You own everything we build
