Founders usually ask two questions in the first call: "how much?" and "how long?". We've written about cost elsewhere, this post answers the second question properly. Not with a single number, but with the full path from idea to a live app, phase by phase, including the parts where you're the bottleneck and the parts where nobody is in control (looking at you, Apple review).
The short version
A focused MVP: 6–8 weeks from kickoff to the stores. A product with more complex logic: 10–14 weeks. Add 1–2 weeks before kickoff for scoping and proposal, and keep a small buffer at the end for store review. Now the long version, because the phases matter more than the total.
Phase 0: First call to proposal (3–7 days)
You tell us the idea; we ask uncomfortable questions, who is this for, what's the one thing it must do, what happens if we cut feature X. You get a fixed proposal: scope, timeline, price. What we need from you here: openness to cutting scope. The founders who ship in six weeks are the ones who let go of features in Phase 0, not week five.
Phase 1: Discovery & scoping workshop (2–4 days)
Together we turn the idea into a concrete plan: user flows on a whiteboard, the feature list sorted into 'v1' and 'later', open questions answered. Output: a frozen MVP scope both sides sign off on. This is the cheapest phase of the whole project and the one that determines whether every other phase runs on time.
Phase 2: Design (1–2 weeks)
Wireframes first, rough screens to agree on structure while changes cost minutes. Then the real UI: your colors, your brand, real screens in Figma you can tap through like an app. You review twice: once on wireframes, once on final design. What we need from you: feedback within 48 hours per round, and one voice consolidating opinions if there are multiple stakeholders.
Phase 3: Development (3–8 weeks depending on scope)
The longest phase. We build in React Native, one codebase running natively on both iOS and Android, which is roughly 40% cheaper and faster than building twice, with the backend (Nest.js or Firebase, depending on what your product needs) developed in parallel. You're not waiting in the dark: every week you get a build on your own phone via TestFlight. Watching your idea become tappable is consistently founders' favorite part.
Phase 4: Testing & polish (1–2 weeks)
The unglamorous phase that separates apps that feel solid from apps that feel almost done. What happens on bad Wi-Fi? When a user types an emoji into the name field? When they rotate the phone mid-payment? We test on real devices, old and new, both platforms. Founders always want to compress this phase. One-star reviews are written about exactly this phase.
Phase 5: Store submission (2 days to 2 weeks, the part nobody controls)
- Before submission: store listings, name, descriptions, screenshots, privacy declarations. We prepare these; you need an Apple Developer account (€99/year) and Google Play account (€25 one-time), which take a few days to verify, so we set them up early, not in the final week.
- Google Play: review typically takes hours to ~3 days for a new app
- Apple: typically 1–3 days, but first submissions get rejected surprisingly often for small, fixable reasons, a missing demo account for the reviewer, an unclear permission explanation. We've been through this enough times to avoid the classics, but a one-week buffer here is honesty, not pessimism.
Phase 6: Launch, which is actually a beginning
The app is live. Now the real product work starts: analytics show what users actually do (never what anyone predicted), the first feedback arrives, and the v2 list writes itself, this time based on evidence instead of assumptions. The MVP's whole job was to make this learning possible in weeks instead of months.
“The timeline's biggest variable isn't the code. It's decision speed, yours and ours combined.”
The full picture at a glance
- Proposal & scoping: ~1–2 weeks (before the build clock starts)
- Design: 1–2 weeks
- Development: 3–8 weeks
- Testing & polish: 1–2 weeks
- Store review buffer: up to 1 week
- Total for a focused MVP: 6–8 weeks from kickoff; 10–14 for complex products
Want to know where your idea lands on that range? Describe it to us in a few sentences and we'll send back a phase-by-phase timeline for your specific case, free, within one working day.
