MVP Cost Calculator & Action Plan

Honest cost breakdown with a pessimism multiplier, scope shaping to fit your budget, and a concrete 6-week plan — including risks, hiring guidance, and what to do this week.

Free, no signup required. Results in 2-5 minutes.

The 2-3x Reality Check

Software projects consistently take 2-3x longer than estimated. A '2-week feature' is really 4-6 weeks. We apply a pessimism multiplier to every estimate because the data says you should. You get the raw estimate AND the realistic range.

Scope Shapes to Budget, Not the Other Way Around

Don't estimate a wish list. Set your budget, then shape what fits. Define an appetite — say 6 weeks — and here's what you can build for that. Core features stay, supporting features get deferred. Cutting scope is a feature, not a compromise.

A Plan, Not Just a Number

A cost estimate without a plan is just a scary number. You get week-by-week actions, risk analysis with mitigations, hiring guidance if you need a developer, and an honest verdict: green light, proceed with caution, or red flags.

How It Works

1

Share Your Product and Budget

What you're building, your features, budget constraints, and timeline. If you've done earlier discovery steps, we pull everything automatically.

2

Get a Realistic Cost Breakdown

Feature-by-feature complexity assessment, pessimism-adjusted totals, hidden costs you'll miss (monitoring, email, backups), and monthly operational costs post-launch.

3

Scope Shaping

Two versions: full scope cost and what fits in your budget. We show exactly what gets cut and why — core features stay, nice-to-haves get deferred.

4

6-Week Action Plan

Week-by-week plan with concrete deliverables, risk analysis, hiring guidance, and an honest verdict on whether to proceed.

FAQ

35% of large software projects are abandoned. Large IT projects run 45% over budget. The multiplier isn't pessimism — it's what the data says happens. You get both the optimistic estimate and the realistic range so you can plan accordingly.
Yes — if you shape scope aggressively. One developer building only core domain features, with everything generic (auth, payments, email) bought off-the-shelf. Most MVPs fail because they try to build too much, not because they don't build enough.
That's what scope shaping is for. The tool shows what fits in your budget. Sometimes the answer is: build a smaller version first, validate with 10 users, then invest more. Sometimes the honest answer is: this idea needs more budget than you have right now.
Domain registration, monitoring, email service, file storage, CI/CD, database backups, analytics, SSL certificates. These add up to real monthly operational costs that most estimates ignore. The tool surfaces them before they surprise you.
Green light (worth building), proceed with caution (address specific issues first), or red flags (recommend against as-is). Not every idea should be built. If the budget doesn't match the scope, the tool says so directly.

8 Free Discovery Tools

Each tool works standalone or as part of a guided journey. Start anywhere — context carries forward automatically.

Business Model CanvasCompetitive AnalysisMarket SizingUser PersonasFeature PrioritizationTech StrategyProject RequirementsBuild Cost & Plan

Built & Maintained by Varstatt

Varstatt is a one-person product studio run by Jurij Tokarski, product engineer since 2011. These tools are free and open — no signup, no catch.