Figma Prototype vs Working MVP, Which Do You Need First?
This is one of the most important product decisions an early-stage founder makes, and one of the most frequently made wrong. We see founders spend £8,000 building an MVP when a £700 Figma prototype would have told them what they needed to know. We also see founders spend weeks on Figma mockups when what they actually need is a working app to show investors.
Here is a clear framework for deciding which is right for you.
What is a Figma prototype?
A Figma prototype is an interactive, clickable simulation of your app, screens linked together so a user can navigate through flows as if it were real. It looks like the finished product but has no backend. There is no database, no auth, no real data.
A well-built Figma prototype is indistinguishable from a real app in a user test or an investor demo. But it cannot process a payment, store a user's data, or send a real email.
Cost: from £500. Timeline: 1 to 2 weeks.
What is a working MVP?
An MVP (Minimum Viable Product) is a real, functional app. Users can sign up, interact with real data, and, if you have included payments, pay you real money. It has a backend, a database, and real authentication.
The “minimum” in MVP refers to scope, not quality. A good MVP is production-ready within its scope, it is just scoped tightly to the features that matter most for validation.
Cost: from £2,500. Timeline: 2 to 4 weeks.
The key question: what are you trying to prove?
The right choice depends entirely on what question you are trying to answer. Here is the framework we use with every new founder:
Build a Figma prototype if:
- You are unsure if users will actually want this
- You need to test the user experience before committing to code
- You are pitching to investors, accelerators, or co-founders
- You want to validate without spending £5,000+
- You need to move fast and iterate on the concept
Build a working MVP if:
- You have validated demand and need real users
- You need actual signups, data, or revenue to prove traction
- Investors have asked to see a working product
- You are ready to start acquiring your first paying customers
- You have already done the prototype and gathered feedback
The prototype → MVP path
For most founders, the ideal path looks like this:
- Figma prototype, test your core user flows with 5 to 10 real users. Identify what confuses them, what excites them, what they would actually use.
- Iterate the prototype, adjust based on feedback. This costs almost nothing compared to changing a live app.
- Build the MVP, now you are building with validated knowledge of what users want. You waste almost no development budget on features that do not work.
This path typically costs less and gets you to a better product than jumping straight to an MVP. We have seen founders save £3,000 to £5,000 by prototyping first.
When to skip the prototype
There are legitimate reasons to skip straight to an MVP:
- You have already done extensive customer discovery and know exactly what to build.
- Your idea is fundamentally about real data or real transactions, a prototype cannot validate it.
- You are rebuilding something that already exists (a competitor's product), so the UX is known.
- You have investor funding and a short timeline to show a live product.
What we recommend for most founders
If you are pre-revenue and pre-investment, start with a Figma prototype. It is the fastest, cheapest way to answer the question “should I build this?” before you spend five figures finding out the hard way.
If you are post-validation or already have a budget commitment from investors, build your MVP. You will get to real users and real learning faster with a working product than with another round of Figma testing.
Not sure which applies to you? Get in touch, we offer free 30-minute discovery calls for exactly this kind of decision.
Not sure which is right for you?
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