how much does it cost to
launch your startup?

Start by entering your one-time costs — things like domain registration, legal fees for incorporation, and any initial design or branding work. These are expenses you'll pay once before or at launch.

Then add your recurring monthly costs: hosting, SaaS tools and subscriptions, marketing spend, and any other regular expenses. If you're pre-revenue, leave the monthly revenue field at $0. Set your estimated months to MVP — this is how long you think it'll take from today to a working product with paying users.

The calculator outputs your total cost to MVP, monthly burn rate, and a suggested runway (1.5× your time-to-MVP as a safety buffer). Use these numbers to decide how much savings you need before going full-time, or how to trim costs to extend your runway.

For a bootstrapped SaaS or web app, most solo founders spend between $500 and $5,000 to get to their first paying customer. The biggest variable is whether you're building everything yourself or hiring help for design, copywriting, or development.

Common cost categories include: cloud hosting ($10–100/month on platforms like Vercel, Railway, or AWS), a domain name ($10–15/year), analytics and monitoring tools ($0–50/month), email infrastructure ($0–30/month), legal setup ($0–1,000 for LLC/incorporation), and marketing ($0–500/month for content, ads, or SEO tools).

Here's what 'good', 'average', and 'high' looks like for bootstrapped projects launched by a single founder: