Answer
Should I use no-code or custom code for my MVP?
Short answer
Use no-code if your product fits a standard pattern, you want to build and change it yourself, and per-user pricing works at your scale. Use custom code if the product is unusual, you need to own the asset, per-seat costs break your economics, or you have already hit a wall working around a platform's limits.
No-code platforms are genuinely good and the snobbery about them is misplaced. Real businesses run on Bubble, Webflow, Airtable and Glide, and for a directory, a membership site or an internal database app they are frequently the better engineering decision, not just the cheaper one.
The trade-offs are specific rather than general. Lock-in: you cannot export the app and host it elsewhere. Cost curve: per-user or per-record pricing that is trivial at fifty users can hurt at five thousand. Ceiling: everything works until one requirement does not fit, and the workaround is often worse than code would have been. Hiring: far fewer specialists, at higher hourly rates.
The clearest signal that you have outgrown no-code is when you notice you are spending your time working around the platform rather than building your product. At that point the platform has become the project.
The numbers
- No-code up-front cost
- $0–$1,000
- No-code ongoing cost
- $30–$500+ per month, scaling with usage
- Custom up-front cost
- $3,500 AUD and up
- Custom ongoing cost
- Hosting and services only, often under $20/month at low volume
- No-code wins for
- Standard patterns, self-service iteration, tiny budgets, small internal tools
- Custom wins for
- Unusual products, ownership, scale economics, no platform ceiling
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