I'm curious, what prices are we talking about? Around here I'm seeing prices of PCBs in 2 working days for under 70€/PCB - it doesn't seem that expensive if you only need a few boards for development.
I'm betting that's a 2 sided board? PCB process technology seems to have a fundamental time limit that's a multiple of the number of layers.
We're building prototypes of a complex bit of consumer electronics for consumer testing. We can do full industrial design, mechanical design, electronic design get the components made, assembled and delivered in 6 weeks. The fundamental limiting factor on how fast we can do it is the time it takes for the PCB to be made. From an electronics point of view, schematic capture and layout can be done in a week, and board assembly can be done in a day (if you're in a hurry) but there's nothing we can do about the 3 week lead time on the PCB because it's 8 layers with blind laser drilled vias.
Those are likely pretty trivial boards which you place parts yourself. I do that at home with crap equipment. It's not quite as easy if you have to have someone to place parts for you, which is required without significant investment if you are placing BGA / 0201 / 0402 packages reliably etc.
We're building prototypes of a complex bit of consumer electronics for consumer testing. We can do full industrial design, mechanical design, electronic design get the components made, assembled and delivered in 6 weeks. The fundamental limiting factor on how fast we can do it is the time it takes for the PCB to be made. From an electronics point of view, schematic capture and layout can be done in a week, and board assembly can be done in a day (if you're in a hurry) but there's nothing we can do about the 3 week lead time on the PCB because it's 8 layers with blind laser drilled vias.