MVP Development for Founders in the Netherlands

A Dutch founder hiring a local freelancer pays around €94 an hour, and one published Amsterdam agency price grid puts a SaaS MVP at €22,000 to €55,000. Easify, a team based in Budapest, typically builds MVPs for €5,000 to €25,000 over four to twelve weeks, in English, on the same time zone as Amsterdam. We have no office in the Netherlands and no published Dutch client; we work with founders there remotely.

This page is about the Dutch specifics: what local builders charge and what the product costs to run afterwards, what the first release should prove, how RVO's instruments relate to an MVP, the KVK and privacy-statement rules, VAT on an invoice from outside the EU, and the contract points to settle.

At a glance

What Dutch builders charge

• Freelancers. Knab's Zzp Uurtarievenboekje 2026, based on research among more than 20,000 Dutch zzp'ers, puts the average zzp software developer at €94 an hour excluding VAT. It is a survey of self-employed people in general, so read it as an indication.
• Agencies. Dutch agencies rarely publish MVP prices. One published grid comes from Kolonell, an agency based in Dakar that publishes prices for Amsterdam startups. It is one firm's own pricing, not a market survey:

At the freelance average, €25,000 buys about 265 hours. At Easify's €25 to €45 an hour, it buys roughly 550 to 1,000. The reason is structural: the people you talk to are in Budapest and engineering is in India. Whether those hours are worth more or less to you depends on scope, so compare quotes line by line; our guide to what an MVP costs in Europe shows how, and the MVP cost calculator shows the hours behind an estimate.

What it costs to run afterwards

A build price never includes running costs, with us or anyone else. The same Amsterdam article gives a monthly running-cost table for a small SaaS MVP:

Treat these as one firm's planning figures. Our Scoping Sprint writes the hosting plan for your product, with where it runs and what it costs to keep running, so the number in your financial plan is yours rather than an average.

What the first release has to prove

A proof of concept tests whether something can be built. A prototype tests whether people understand it, usually without real data or payments. An MVP is working software people can sign up to and pay for, so it tests whether they want it.

RVO financing: the short version

The Netherlands Enterprise Agency (RVO) runs the instruments Dutch founders ask about most. Most are loans, not grants:

• Vroegefasefinanciering is a loan for technically innovative ideas that are too early for investors, to research technical and commercial feasibility. It is the RVO instrument closest to what an MVP does, but the word that matters is technically innovative.
• Innovatiekrediet is for technical development with substantial technical risk. Most MVPs are too small and too low in technical risk for it.
• WBSO reimburses part of the wage costs of R&D work by your own employees. RVO's conditions page is explicit that the costs of outsourced research are not eligible, and that WBSO cannot be claimed for hired labour. An agency build, ours included, cannot be budgeted against it. If you have your own developers doing qualifying R&D, WBSO is about their hours, not ours.

Our guide to startup funding in the Netherlands for an MVP has the amounts, interest, current application windows and eligibility. We do not write funding applications; the written scope, technical plan and fixed price from a Scoping Sprint are the kind of project description these applications need.

What a Dutch MVP must show

1. KVK number. KVK says you must include your number on letters, price quotations, invoices, your website and business emails, with exemptions for non-commercial associations and foundations and a few others. If your product sends transactional email, that includes the email templates.
2. Who the customer is dealing with. business.gov.nl's guidance for a business website gives your KVK number and visiting address as examples, and says the privacy statement must be easy to find.
3. A GDPR privacy statement that names every service the MVP sends personal data to. A short list of services is one more argument for a small first version.
4. Dutch copy, if your users need it. We build in English; Dutch text comes from you or a translator, and the product is built so a second language is not a rewrite.

These are footer links and a few email templates. They cost little if they are in the scope from the start.

VAT, invoices and currency

Who invoices you. Our invoices are in euros and are issued by Easify's registered entity in India. For VAT that makes us a supplier established outside the EU, even though the people you talk to are in Budapest.

The reverse charge (verlegging). The EU's Your Europe guidance on buying services from outside the EU says a business receiving services from a supplier based outside the EU should usually pay VAT at its own country's rate, as if it had supplied the service itself, and can usually deduct it later. The Belastingdienst's page on services from suppliers outside the EU puts it in Dutch terms: the btw is usually shifted to you, if you are established in the Netherlands or have a fixed establishment there.

What that means in practice:

1. The invoice arrives without Dutch btw. That is the correct treatment.
2. You report it in rubriek 4a of your btw-aangifte, the line for services from outside the EU.
3. You normally deduct it again as voorbelasting. On a €10,000 invoice you would report €2,100 at the Netherlands' 21% standard rate and, if you are entitled to deduct, deduct the same €2,100. Net cost: zero.
4. Exempt turnover changes the sum. The Belastingdienst says that if you have only exempt turnover and buy services where the btw is shifted to you, you must still file a return and cannot deduct that btw. If you are not registered for returns at all, you request a one-off return in writing. Ask your accountant how this applies if you use the KOR.
5. Buying before the company exists is different. The shift applies to businesses. If you would sign as a private person, ask your adviser first, and tell us who the contracting party will be.

Currency. Our quotes and invoices are in euros.

This is orientation, not tax advice. The Your Europe page warns that there are several important exceptions to the general rules, and your accountant should confirm the treatment for your contract.

Contract points to settle before the build

Working with a Budapest team from the Netherlands

• One time zone. Budapest and Amsterdam are both on CET and change clocks on the same dates.
• English throughout. Calls, scope, tickets and documentation.
• Remote. No Dutch office, and no one on site.
• Where the work happens. The people you talk to are in Budapest; engineering is in India.
• Hosted in the EU. We deploy to EU data-centre regions. That is not a promise that data never leaves the EU: engineers in India may need production access, and India has no EU adequacy decision. Agree who needs access during scoping and document it in your privacy statement.

A sensible order of steps

The scope is yours to keep, including for a financing application or another agency's quote. If you have already built something with Lovable, Bolt, v0 or Replit, start with the €99 Prototype Check instead: within 48 hours a person sends you its top security and data risks in writing, and the €99 is credited against the build.

What to put in your first message: the question the MVP must answer, who the first users are, what already exists, the integrations you cannot do without, whether the interface needs Dutch, your deadline and what drives it, and which company will sign.

Common mistakes in Dutch MVP projects

• Planning a build around WBSO. RVO excludes outsourced research and hired labour, so an agency invoice does not qualify.
• Applying for financing before the scope exists. RVO applications need a project description and a budget; a written scope gives you both.
• Forgetting the email templates. The KVK number belongs in business emails, which includes the ones your product sends.
• Leaving running costs out of the financial plan. Hosting, database and email start billing at launch.
• Building the whole product. Admin panels, settings and tiered permissions can almost always wait.

When we are not the right choice

• You need user research or sales conversations run in Dutch.
• Your financing depends on the work being done by your own employees, as WBSO does.
• You want a team in your office.
• Your budget is under €1,000, our minimum.

For a wider view, see how to choose an MVP development agency, or our comparison of agency, freelancer and no-code.