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You Vibe Coded Your App. What Will It Actually Cost an Agency to Finish It?

August 15, 20266 min read

Lovable, Replit, Bolt and other AI builders can get you surprisingly far. But getting from “it works” to “real customers can use it” is where the remaining work — and cost — can vary dramatically.

Here's a simple way to understand where your project stands before you ask for a quote.

Your AI-Built App???Ready to Launch
BugsPaymentsSecurityTestingBackendLaunch

Most AI-App Finishing Projects Fall Into One of Four Buckets

These are market-informed ranges, not fixed quotes. Two projects that look similar can require very different amounts of work underneath.

Which One Sounds Like Your App?

Tap the one that sounds closest to where your project is right now.

Your App Can Look 95% Finished and Still Be Far From Launch

What You See

Beautiful screens

Working buttons

Login page

Dashboard

Demo data

Animations

What Real Users Need

Secure accounts

Real data

Reliable payments

Working integrations

Error handling

Security checks

Testing

Deployment

Monitoring

AI builders are excellent at getting an idea onto the screen. Launching a product means making sure everything behind that screen works reliably too.

Before You Pay Anyone to Finish It, Check These 8 Things

Can people actually sign up and log in?

Is their information being stored correctly?

Do payments work, including failed payments?

Do your integrations actually work?

What happens when something goes wrong?

Can one user accidentally see another user's information?

Can the app handle real users, not just your test account?

Can it be deployed, monitored and maintained after launch?

If you answered “not sure” to several of these, don't assume your app is almost finished. It may simply be visually finished.

Four Things Can Change the Cost Dramatically

What's Missing

More unfinished features means more work.

How Much Can Be Kept

Clean existing code can reduce work. Fragile, duplicated or incomplete code can increase it.

What the App Connects To

Payments, CRMs, maps, email, AI APIs, calendars, databases and other integrations add complexity.

How Safe It Needs to Be

An internal prototype is very different from an app handling payments or customer data.

Project Cost

Your Development Budget Isn't Your Whole Launch Budget

Build

Development

Design

Bug fixing

Testing

Launch

Hosting

Database

Domain

App Store / Google Play

Third-party services

Run

AI / API usage

Email / SMS

Monitoring

Maintenance

Marketing

Building the product gets it made. Launching gets it live. Marketing gets people to use it.

We Don't Guess the Price From the AI Builder You Used

Lovable, Replit, Bolt or Cursor doesn't tell us what your project will cost. We need to see what's actually there.

01

Free Assessment

We review what you've built, at no cost.

02

Review What Exists

We go through the codebase, not just the demo.

03

Identify What's Missing

Features, integrations, and production gaps.

04

Decide What Can Stay

Keep what works. Flag what doesn't.

05

Define the Finishing Scope

A clear list of exactly what's left to build.

06

Fixed Project Price

Agreed upfront, before work begins.

07

Build → Test → Launch

Development, QA, and a real launch.

Eligible projects can use FlexPay: 30% upfront, with the remaining balance spread over 3–12 months with no interest. See the pricing page for more on how it works.

FAQ

Typically $3k–$30k+, depending on how much is already built, what's still missing, and how production-ready it needs to be. Most Lovable projects land in the $8k–$15k range — functional, but missing real authentication, payments, or key workflows.

The same ranges apply — cost follows what's actually left to build, not which tool you started with. Replit projects often need more backend and production-hardening work, which can push them toward the $15k–$30k+ range.

Yes, as long as the codebase can be accessed and is technically workable. We review what exists before quoting anything, regardless of who built it or which AI tool was used.

Usually not. Most projects keep the working parts and finish what's missing. A full rebuild is only needed when the underlying architecture can't safely support what the product needs to do.

Yes. Deployment, app store submission, and getting the product to a production-ready state are part of the finishing work, not a separate add-on you have to arrange elsewhere.

Run through the self-diagnosis and 8-point checklist above for a rough idea, then get a free project assessment — that's the only way to get a number based on your actual codebase, not a guess.

This is exactly the process behind Web&Buzz's Finish Your App service. If you're building a mobile app from scratch instead, the same team also handles new mobile app builds. Before you launch, it's also worth running through our AI app security checklist, and if you want to see what a finish project looks like end to end, the Tocify case study walks through a real Lovable project taken from prototype to a live product.

Not Sure How Close Your App Is to Launch?

Send us what you've built. We'll look at what's working, what's missing, and what needs to happen before you can confidently put it in front of real customers.