RapidDev builds custom mobile and web apps in San Francisco, 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 Bay Area (roughly $490,000 a year for two engineers) or commissioning a San Francisco 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 Bay Area founders go from Figma or a Lovable prototype to a production app your users — and your investors — actually trust.
San Francisco isn't just another market with a higher price tag — it's the single densest concentration of venture capital, accelerators, and senior engineers on earth, and that changes what a launch has to be. The Bay Area captured roughly 57% of all US venture funding in 2024 and over half of every AI and B2B dollar invested. That means your investors have seen a thousand demos and your users have App-Store-quality expectations by default. It also means the exact engineers you'd want to hire are the hardest and most expensive in the country to land. We build for that reality: the polish that survives a partner meeting, the architecture that survives technical diligence, and the speed that keeps you on a Demo-Day clock.
Y Combinator now runs four batches a year of roughly 140–170 startups each — the vast majority AI-first. When you're in a batch, everyone around you is shipping on the same compressed clock, and Demo Day is a hard deadline you build backward from. We've shipped for teams racing exactly that timeline.
In a metro that takes over half of every AI venture dollar, a clickable mockup doesn't clear the bar. Bay Area investors expect a real product they can put in front of users, and diligence goes deep on the architecture. We prioritize the flows that demo well and the foundations that hold up under scrutiny.
SF has the highest concentration of senior engineers anywhere — and they're the most expensive and slowest to hire. A senior role takes 50–70 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.
SoMa and Mission Bay run on a prototype-fast, iterate-against-data rhythm, and the cost of a slow launch is measured in missed rounds and lost momentum. Weekly deployed builds keep you moving at the pace the ecosystem already expects.
the Bay Area by the numbers
Who we build for in the Bay Area
Payments, neobanking, and lending apps that need Stripe, real compliance, and rock-solid security from day one.
LLM-powered products with streaming UIs, vector search, and usage-based billing — the SF category that's exploding right now.
Multi-tenant dashboards, admin panels, and role-based access for the Bay Area's deep bench of vertical SaaS startups.
HIPAA-aware patient and provider apps for the city's growing health-tech and biotech corridor.
High-polish iOS and Android apps with real-time feeds, push, and the performance SF users expect.
Two-sided platforms with payments, matching, and ratings — the model half of YC is still building.
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 San Francisco 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 San Francisco 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 San Francisco numbers, not a vendor's guesswork.
Hire a team in-house in SF
true first-year cost of a minimal 2-engineer team
Big SF / 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 SF | ~$490K – $540K / yr | 3–5 months just to hire, then build |
| Big SF / 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 two to three months of one SF engineer's loaded salary, RapidDev ships your entire app — mobile, web, and backend — in 6 to 12 weeks.
App development in San Francisco 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 San Francisco 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 San Francisco founders. Details generalized to protect client confidentiality.
Challenge: A Bay Area founder had a Lovable prototype for a spend-management app but couldn't pass a security review to onboard their first enterprise pilot.
What we shipped: We rebuilt the backend on Supabase with real RLS, moved payments to Stripe, and shipped native iOS + Android — clearing the pilot's security checklist.
Challenge: A YC team's LLM chat product worked in a demo but fell over under load 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 Series A raise.
Challenge: A Series A 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 San Francisco 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 Bay Area founders remotely and asynchronously, which is how most SF 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.
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. 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 Bay Area 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 San Francisco 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 San Francisco and the Bay Area — 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 San Francisco profile on Google MapsRemote-friendly · Serving the greater the Bay Area 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 San Francisco and the Bay Area · Remote-friendly · You own everything we build
