Nobody sells you the downside. Every option for building your product arrives with its best foot forward, and the trade-offs stay quiet until you are already committed to one.
There are 3 real choices: an in-house team, freelancers, or a product studio. Here is the straight version for 2026. If you are still sizing the budget, start with what an MVP actually costs to build.
| Option | Real cost | The hidden tax | Speed to start |
|---|---|---|---|
| In-house team | $210k to $380k per senior hire, per year, fully loaded | Recruiting takes months, you manage everyone, single points of failure | 2 to 4 months to hire |
| Freelancers | $40k to $120k+ at $75 to $150/hr | Sourcing, uneven quality, no design-to-dev handoff, project management lands on you | 1 to 4 weeks |
| Product studio | $15k to $35k per fixed-scope build | You bring the direction, the studio executes; not built for 10 parallel workstreams | Days to scope, weeks to ship |
Fully loaded in-house cost includes base salary plus 30% to 50% for benefits, taxes, and overhead, plus recruiting. A single senior developer in the US runs well over $200k a year before you have a designer or a product manager.
The product is your core engine, you will keep a full team busy for years, and you can afford to wait 3 months before anything starts. Below full utilisation you are paying $200k a head for part-time need.
You have a small, well-scoped task and someone internal who can art-direct, manage, and QA it. The hourly rate looks cheap. The management time is the real price and nobody budgets for it.
You need a whole product rather than a piece of one, with design, engineering, and AI moving as 1 team on a fixed timeline and a fixed price. This is the default fit for founders going from idea to live product without building a department first, and it is the model we have run for 9 years across 315 products.
The most expensive setup is the one founders fall into by accident: a freelance designer, a separate developer, and an AI contractor, all coordinated by you. Every handoff between them leaks time and quality. The designer ships a file the developer reads differently. The AI arrives at the end and gets bolted on. You end up project managing a team that has never worked together.
A studio removes the handoffs because the people are already 1 team. That is the difference between 3 vendors and 1 outcome.
Ask 1 question: do you need a person, a task, or a product? A person you will keep busy for years means hire. A small task you can manage yourself means freelance. A product you need live in weeks means a studio.
Most founders at the idea-to-launch stage need a product, and a good number of them spend months learning that the expensive way. If you already know which one you are, the pricing page has the scope and the number without a call.
For a single product, yes. A fixed-scope build runs $15k to $35k. One senior in-house hire runs over $200k a year fully loaded, and you need several to cover design, engineering, and AI.
Use a freelancer for a small, well-scoped task you can manage yourself. Use a studio when you need a complete product and do not want to coordinate separate vendors.
Management time. The hourly rate is visible, but sourcing, coordinating, QAing, and covering the gaps between a designer and a developer falls on you and rarely gets counted.
A studio can scope in days and ship in weeks. Hiring a senior team in-house typically takes 2 to 4 months before any code is written.
Book a free 15-minute call. We will tell you honestly whether you need a studio at all, and what a realistic scope looks like.
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