How long does app design take?
Last updated: July 2026
For the UX and UI design of a small mobile app or MVP, around 15 core screens, design only: 31 to 60 hours.
In short: designing a 15-screen app MVP takes 31 to 60 hours. Count states, not screens: every screen ships empty, loading, failing and working. Price your version with the free Project Price Calculator.
Founders usually count screens the way they appear in the pitch deck: login, home, profile, settings, done. The estimate goes wrong before it starts, because design work is measured in states, and every screen contains several.
The assumptions: a defined product idea (no product strategy work), around 15 core screens, one platform's conventions as the base, a clickable prototype, two revision rounds, developer handoff included.
The task list
The honest range
A 15-screen MVP takes 31 to 60 hours to design properly, because every screen ships with its states: empty, loading, error, success. The screen count in the pitch deck is off by a factor of three.
Count states, not screens
A "screen" in a founder's head is the happy version: filled with perfect data, everything working. The designed screen is four screens: what it looks like empty on day one, while it loads, when something fails, and when it works.
Skip the states in the quote and you will design them anyway, for free, during development, at the worst possible moment. Ask "what happens when this is empty?" fifteen times before quoting, and the estimate protects itself.
AI interface generators are part of this conversation now: they produce good-looking happy screens in minutes, and founders arrive with them. Treat that as what it is, a brief that shows taste, and say so kindly: the generated screen is the easiest fifth of the table. The flows, the states, the system behind the screens and the handoff a developer can build from are the other four fifths.
What moves the estimate
Up: two platforms designed separately rather than adapted, onboarding flows (deceptively small, notoriously iterative), dashboards and data-heavy screens, accessibility requirements beyond the defaults, motion design, a product idea still moving while you design it.
Down: an existing design system or brand, a single well-understood flow (a calculator, a booking tool), a technical founder who writes real specs, version two of an app you designed.
Price your version
Adjust the lines, total them, and put the number into the calculator. At a mid-range 45 hours and the default $50/h with a 20% buffer, the design quotes around $2,700.
Project price
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Estimated Work
billable hours in this project
Hourly Rate
what your working hour must earn
Scope Buffer
funds revisions and surprises
Drag any blue number to adjust (click it to type). Your inputs carry over to the full tool. Access full tool
The pitch deck has five screens. The app has five screens times four states, and the quote should know it.
From screen map to full quote
Type your hours, add your buffer, and the calculator builds the quote with expenses and fees included.
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The estimation sheets
Every sheet in this series is built the same way on purpose: one estimation method, applied job by job. Same sheet, different job, your numbers.
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