Spawned vs Hiring a Developer

Time Comparison

Traditional development (hire a developer/agency):

• Simple landing page: 1-2 weeks
• MVP app: 4-12 weeks
• Full product: 3-6+ months

Spawned:

• Simple landing page: 10 minutes
• MVP app: 1-2 hours
• Full product: 1-2 days + iterations

Cost Comparison

Traditional development:

• Freelancer: $50-200/hour
• Agency: $10K-100K+ per project
• Full-time hire: $80K-200K+/year

Spawned:

• Free tier for testing
• Paid plans from $39-249/month
• No per-project costs

Quality Comparison

Traditional development:

• Can be excellent if you hire well
• Completely custom
• Human judgment and creativity

Spawned:

• Production-ready for most use cases
• Follows established patterns
• May need developer polish for complex features

When Traditional Makes Sense

• Very large, complex systems
• Unusual technical requirements
• Team already has developers
• Specific technology mandates
• Regulatory requirements needing audit trail

When Spawned Makes Sense

• Validating ideas quickly
• Budget constraints
• Standard app patterns
• Speed to market priority
• Non-technical founder

The Hybrid Approach

Many teams use both:

1. Prototype with Spawned
2. Validate with real users
3. If it works, hire developers to scale and polish
4. Or keep iterating with AI

Hidden Costs

Traditional: Management overhead, communication, delays, scope creep

Spawned: Learning curve, limitations for edge cases, potential need to rebuild later

Making the Decision

Ask:

• How unique are my requirements?
• How fast do I need to move?
• What's my budget?
• Do I have technical resources?
• What's the cost of being wrong?

Often the answer is: start with Spawned, prove the concept, then decide if custom development is worth the investment.