There is no single best way to build an MVP. The right choice comes down to two questions almost nobody asks first: do you have money to spend or equity to give away, and can you tell good code from bad. Answer those honestly and the decision between an agency or studio, a freelancer, and a technical cofounder mostly makes itself.
Rough numbers, because they matter. A freelancer usually charges somewhere between fifty and a hundred and fifty dollars an hour, and a simple MVP lands around three to fifteen thousand depending on scope and who you hire. A studio costs more on the sticker, often fifteen thousand at the low end and comfortably past fifty for anything a real product needs, and it arrives as one accountable team. A technical cofounder costs no cash at all, which is exactly why founders reach for it, and a slice of the company forever, which is why they later wish they had thought harder.
Start with the cofounder, because it is the option people pick for the wrong reason. A cofounder is not a cheaper developer. It is a partner you cannot easily part with, holding a slice of the company that is hard to claw back. If the person is genuinely great, shares the risk, and will still be building in two years, that equity is the best money you never spent. If you are giving away a quarter of the company because you did not want to pay for a build, you have made the most expensive decision in the project to save on the cheapest one. Give equity for commitment, not for code.
A freelancer is the right call when you can judge the work. If you can read a pull request, or you have someone you trust who can, a good freelancer is the best value on this list. The trap is the non-technical founder who hires cheap, cannot tell whether the code is sound, and finds out at launch that it will not scale or cannot be handed to anyone else. That is the ten-thousand-dollar build that becomes a twenty-five-thousand-dollar rebuild. Cheap is only cheap if you can check it.
A studio wins on total cost more often than the sticker suggests, and it is usually the honest answer for a founder who is not technical. You are paying to remove the coordination that quietly eats a freelancer budget: the founder hours spent managing, the scope that drifts, the testing nobody owned, the rebuild when the first version cannot carry the second. One team that designs and builds together, and that you can call when something breaks after launch, is calmer and often cheaper by the time the product actually ships. The trade is capacity and control. A good studio takes fewer projects and will push back on scope you do not need.
So the test is not which option is cheapest today. It is which one gets you a working, shippable product you still own and can build on. If you have cash and cannot evaluate code, take the studio. If you can evaluate code, or you have thin cash and a real technical hire willing to commit, a freelancer or a cofounder can be the better buy. What you should not do is give away equity, or chase the cheapest hours, to dodge a bill you could actually afford.
Before you talk to anyone, write down two things: what the MVP has to do for you to know the idea works, and how you will tell whether the build is any good. The first keeps the scope small enough to afford. The second decides who you can safely hire. Get both on paper and the quotes stop looking like a gamble.