RapidDev builds custom mobile and web apps in Salt Lake City, 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 along Silicon Slopes (roughly $410,000–$440,000 a year for two engineers) or commissioning a local agency ($90,000–$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 Silicon Slopes founders go from a Figma or Lovable prototype to a production app your users — and your investors — actually trust.
Salt Lake City anchors Silicon Slopes, the Wasatch Front tech corridor that stretches from downtown SLC south through Lehi to Provo. Utah punches far above its size: the state closed roughly 285 venture deals worth about $3.1 billion in 2025, and it consistently ranks among the top states for fast-growing companies per capita. But the culture here is distinctly capital-efficient — this is the ecosystem that produced Qualtrics ($8B Silicon acquisition), Domo, Lucid, Instructure, and Entrata, mostly by building durable, revenue-generating SaaS rather than chasing hype. That shapes what a launch has to be: investors and customers along the Wasatch Front reward a real product with real usage, not a clickable mockup. We build for that reality — the polish that survives a customer demo, the architecture that survives diligence, and a burn rate that fits how Utah founders actually operate.
Silicon Slopes was built on B2B SaaS — Qualtrics, Domo, Lucid, and Instructure all came out of the Wasatch Front. If you're building multi-tenant software with dashboards, roles, and billing, you're building in the exact category this ecosystem knows best, and your investors will benchmark you against it.
The University of Utah's Lassonde Entrepreneur Institute and BYU's Sandbox program push a steady stream of student founders into the market every year. Many of the teams we work with are pre-seed alumni of these programs racing to their first raise on a tight budget — exactly the fixed-price, ship-fast profile we're built for.
Utah founders are known nationally for building lean and reaching profitability early. That means a v1 here has to demonstrate real usage and a sensible burn, not a cash-fueled demo. Weekly deployed builds and a fixed price fit that mindset — you get a fundable product without lighting a runway on fire.
Demand for Silicon Slopes engineers has outpaced supply, and a senior role still takes 40–55 days to fill before anyone writes code. Bringing us in lets you ship your v1 now and hire deliberately later, from a position of traction rather than desperation.
Silicon Slopes by the numbers
Who we build for in Silicon Slopes
Multi-tenant dashboards, admin panels, and role-based access — the category Silicon Slopes was built on, from Qualtrics to Domo to Lucid.
Payments, lending, and financial-services apps that need Stripe, real compliance, and rock-solid security from day one.
HIPAA-aware patient and provider apps for Utah's fast-growing digital-health and med-device corridor.
Learning platforms and school tools for one of the strongest edtech clusters in the country — Instructure territory.
Energy-storage, clean-tech, and monitoring apps for a sector drawing real venture funding across the Wasatch Front.
Two-sided platforms and outdoor/recreation commerce apps with payments, matching, and ratings built in.
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 Salt Lake City 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 — the bread and butter of a SaaS-first market. From 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 Salt Lake City costs anywhere from $13,000 with RapidDev to well over $300,000 with a large agency, depending on who builds it. Here is the honest math on the four realistic paths — with real 2025–2026 Salt Lake City numbers, not a vendor's guesswork.
Hire a team in-house in SLC
true first-year cost of a minimal 2-engineer team
SLC / 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 SLC | ~$410K – $440K / yr | 2–4 months just to hire, then build |
| SLC / US agency | $90K – $300K+ | 4–8 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 SLC engineer's loaded salary, RapidDev ships your entire app — mobile, web, and backend — in 6 to 12 weeks.
App development in Salt Lake City 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 Salt Lake City 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 Silicon Slopes startups shipping a fundable v1 to the App Store and the web.
Growth-stage teams replacing a no-code MVP or adding serious AI features.
A few of the builds we've shipped for Salt Lake City founders. Details generalized to protect client confidentiality.
Challenge: A Silicon Slopes founder had a Lovable prototype for a multi-tenant analytics tool but couldn't add real role-based access or billing without it breaking.
What we shipped: We rebuilt the backend on Supabase with row-level security and tenant isolation, wired Stripe subscriptions and usage metering, and shipped the web dashboard investors could actually log into.
Challenge: A Utah health-tech team needed a HIPAA-aware patient app on iOS and Android but had no way to sync data securely across mobile and web.
What we shipped: We shipped native iOS + Android from one React Native codebase on a shared Postgres backend with proper access controls, clearing their first provider pilot's security review.
Challenge: A Lassonde-alum 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 two-sided marketplace on Next.js with payments and matching, 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 Silicon Slopes 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 Silicon Slopes founders remotely and asynchronously, which is how most Wasatch Front 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 Mountain 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 growth-stage teams along Silicon Slopes. Utah investors reward a real, revenue-capable product over 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 local 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 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 Salt Lake City 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 Salt Lake City and Silicon Slopes · Remote-friendly · You own everything we build
