RapidDev builds custom mobile and web apps in Seattle, 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 Seattle (roughly $470,000 a year for two senior engineers) or commissioning a Seattle agency ($150,000–$400,000 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 Seattle founders go from a Figma file or a Lovable prototype to a production app your users — and your investors — actually trust.
Seattle isn't just another tech market — it's the birthplace of the cloud, home to both AWS and Azure, and the second-largest concentration of AI talent in the country. Greater Seattle companies raised roughly $24.5 billion in venture capital between 2021 and 2024, and the metro consistently ranks in the top five US ecosystems for startup funding. That heritage changes what a launch has to be: your investors are ex-Amazon and ex-Microsoft operators who have shipped at planetary scale, and the exact engineers you'd want to hire are being outbid by the two biggest employers in the region. We build for that reality — the cloud-native architecture that survives technical diligence, the reliability Seattle users take for granted, and the speed to ship before your runway or your competitors force the issue.
Seattle is the #2 US metro for AI, anchored by the Allen Institute for AI and its AI2 Incubator, which spins out technical founders in NLP, computer vision, and enterprise AI. In 2025 the city, AI2 Incubator, and local partners opened AI House on the waterfront to connect researchers, founders, and investors. If you're building an AI product here, you're in the deepest talent pool outside the Bay Area — and the most fundable AI category in the region.
The upside of Seattle's talent density is world-class engineers; the downside is that Amazon and Microsoft are bidding for the same people, with total-comp packages north of $270K. A senior startup hire takes 50–70 days to land and commands ~$160K in base alone. Bringing us in lets you ship your v1 now and hire deliberately later, from traction rather than desperation.
This is the city that invented AWS and Azure, so 'cloud-native, DevOps-first' isn't a buzzword here — it's table stakes. Seattle investors and pilot customers expect infrastructure that scales cleanly and a security posture that holds up. We build on the same managed-cloud foundations (Supabase, Vercel, Postgres) so your architecture reads as credible to a room full of ex-cloud engineers.
Madrona Venture Group, Pioneer Square Labs, Voyager, and Flying Fish anchor the local capital, and Founders' Co-op still seeds early teams — but the closure of Techstars Seattle left a real gap in early-stage mentorship and checks. Founders here move fast and lean, which is exactly the tempo a weekly-deployed build is designed for.
the Puget Sound region by the numbers
Who we build for in the Puget Sound region
LLM and cloud-native products built by ex-Amazon and ex-Microsoft founders — the category the AI2 Incubator and AI House are pouring fuel on right now.
Multi-tenant dashboards, admin panels, and developer tooling for Seattle's deep bench of enterprise-software and DevOps startups.
Tracking, routing, and marketplace apps for a metro built on Amazon, the Port of Seattle, and a dense freight and maritime economy.
HIPAA-aware patient and provider apps for the corridor around Fred Hutch, UW Medicine, and the Gates Foundation's global-health orbit.
Payments, lending, and neobanking apps that need Stripe, real compliance, and rock-solid security — Seattle's fastest-growing new vertical.
Two-sided platforms with payments, matching, and ratings, built in the city that wrote the book on online retail.
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 Seattle founders — mobile and web ship from one team on shared cloud 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 cloud 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 a cloud-native town.
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 in front of Seattle's AI-literate investors.
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 cloud-native 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 Seattle costs anywhere from $13,000 with RapidDev to over $400,000 with a large agency, depending on who builds it. Here is the honest math on the four realistic paths — with real 2025 Seattle numbers, not a vendor's guesswork.
Hire a team in-house in Seattle
true first-year cost of a minimal 2-engineer team
Big Seattle / 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 Seattle | ~$460K – $510K / yr | 3–5 months just to hire, then build |
| Big Seattle / US agency | $150K – $400K+ | 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 Seattle engineer's loaded salary, RapidDev ships your entire app — mobile, web, and backend — in 6 to 12 weeks.
App development in Seattle 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 Seattle 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 Seattle founders. Details generalized to protect client confidentiality.
Challenge: A Seattle founder's LLM workflow tool demoed well but fell over under load and had no way to bill customers for usage before their first raise.
What we shipped: We shipped a streaming chat UI, added vector search over their docs, and wired per-customer usage metering into Stripe on a cloud-native stack that cleared investor diligence.
Challenge: A team serving Port of Seattle freight brokers had a Bubble MVP that couldn't handle real-time tracking or scale past its first customers.
What we shipped: We migrated their data into a proper Postgres schema and rebuilt the product as native iOS + Android with live tracking, so they could onboard enterprise accounts.
Challenge: A founder near the UW Medicine / Fred Hutch corridor had a Lovable prototype for a patient-intake app but couldn't pass a security review to onboard their first clinic pilot.
What we shipped: We rebuilt the backend on Supabase with real RLS, added HIPAA-aware auth, and shipped native iOS + Android — clearing the pilot's security checklist.
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 Seattle 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, cloud-native 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 Puget Sound founders remotely and asynchronously, which is how most Seattle 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 Pacific 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 Series A teams here. Seattle investors are often ex-Amazon and ex-Microsoft operators who expect a real product and a credible cloud architecture — so we prioritize the flows that demo well, ship reliable polish, and make sure the foundations hold up to technical diligence. Many of our 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 each time. An in-house team carries full salaries, benefits, and months of ramp-up before anything ships — and in Seattle you're bidding against Amazon and Microsoft to land those hires in the first place. 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 Seattle 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 Seattle and the Puget Sound region — 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 Seattle profile on Google MapsRemote-friendly · Serving the greater the Puget Sound region 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 Seattle and the Puget Sound region · Remote-friendly · You own everything we build
