RapidDev builds custom mobile and web apps in Raleigh, North Carolina, 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 the Research Triangle (roughly $390,000–$420,000 for the first year of two engineers) or commissioning a regional agency ($75,000–$300,000 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 Research Triangle founders go from Figma or a Lovable prototype to a production app your users — and your investors — actually trust.
The Research Triangle is one of the most talent-dense tech regions in the country without behaving like Silicon Valley — and that shapes what a launch has to be. Three tier-one research universities (NC State, Duke, and UNC-Chapel Hill) and Research Triangle Park's 7,000 acres of 300-plus companies produce a steady flow of engineers, life-science PhDs, and data scientists, anchored by decades of IBM, SAS, Red Hat, and Cisco roots. North Carolina startups raised roughly $3.1 billion across 217 Triangle deals in 2024 — nearly double the year before — and the money here is patient and substance-driven: investors want revenue, a working product, and a clear path to a milestone, not a flashy demo. We build for that reality: the reliability that survives a pilot, the architecture that survives technical and regulatory diligence, and the speed that keeps you ahead of a grant or raise deadline.
American Underground in Durham, HQ Raleigh, First Flight Venture Center, and Innovate Raleigh anchor a deep local pipeline, alongside university programs like UNC Eshelman's Therapeutics Accelerator. Founders here move from an incubator cohort to a real product on a defined clock, and we've built for teams racing exactly that timeline.
Unlike coastal metros dominated by consumer apps, the Triangle's center of mass is pharma, biotech, and digital health — spun out of Duke, UNC, and RTP research. That means HIPAA awareness, trial and lab workflows, and diligence that goes deep on data handling. We prioritize the compliance-ready foundations these products actually need.
Local firms like Bull City Venture Partners, IDEA Fund Partners, and Hatteras Venture Partners back founders who show traction, not just a pitch. NC State, Duke, and UNC feed the hiring pool — but a full-time senior hire still takes 45–70 days. Bringing us in lets you ship your v1 now and hire deliberately later, from a position of traction.
Raleigh engineering salaries run well below San Francisco or New York, and so does a Triangle agency build. That lower burn is an advantage — the smart move is to spend it shipping a real product fast, not on months of ramp-up. Weekly deployed builds keep you moving while your runway stays intact.
the Research Triangle by the numbers
Who we build for in the Research Triangle
Patient, trial, and lab-workflow apps for the Triangle's dense pharma and biotech corridor — the region's single deepest industry.
HIPAA-aware provider and patient apps for the health-tech startups spinning out of Duke, UNC, and RTP research.
Multi-tenant dashboards and admin tooling for the Triangle's deep bench of enterprise-software companies rooted in the IBM/SAS/Red Hat lineage.
LLM-powered products and analytics built on the region's data-science talent from NC State and the RTP research base.
Learning and campus apps for a metro anchored by three major research universities and a large student population.
Energy, sustainability, and climate apps for the growing green-tech cluster forming across Raleigh and Durham.
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 Research Triangle 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 Raleigh costs anywhere from $13,000 with RapidDev to $300,000 or more with a large agency, depending on who builds it. Here is the honest math on the four realistic paths — with real 2025 Research Triangle numbers, not a vendor's guesswork.
Hire a team in-house in Raleigh
true first-year cost of a minimal 2-engineer team
Regional / 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 Raleigh | ~$390K – $420K / yr | 2–4 months just to hire, then build |
| Regional / US agency | $75K – $300K+ | 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 two to three months of a Raleigh engineering team's loaded salary, RapidDev ships your entire app — mobile, web, and backend — in 6 to 12 weeks.
App development in Raleigh 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 Raleigh 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 Raleigh founders. Details generalized to protect client confidentiality.
Challenge: A Durham founder spinning out of a university lab had a Lovable prototype for a patient-intake app but couldn't pass a HIPAA review to onboard their first clinic pilot.
What we shipped: We rebuilt the backend on Supabase with real RLS, added audit logging and encrypted PHI handling, and shipped native iOS + Android — clearing the pilot's compliance checklist.
Challenge: A Raleigh team's LLM assistant worked in a demo but fell over under load and had no way to bill customers for usage before their raise.
What we shipped: We shipped a streaming chat UI, added vector search over their docs, and wired per-customer usage metering into Stripe ahead of their seed round.
Challenge: An RTP-based team had outgrown a Bubble MVP — every new feature broke two others and hiring 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 Research Triangle 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 Research Triangle founders remotely and asynchronously, which is how most Triangle teams already operate. 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.
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.
Yes — it's one of the most common needs in the Triangle. We build compliance-ready foundations: encrypted PHI handling, row-level security, audit logging, and access controls that hold up under a clinic pilot or investor diligence. We prioritize the data-handling architecture these products actually need, not a demo that can't survive review.
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 team carries full salaries, benefits, and months of ramp-up 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 Raleigh 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.
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 Raleigh and the Research Triangle · Remote-friendly · You own everything we build
