How much does it cost to build an app?
An indicative range for an iOS and Android app, before you brief anyone.
What are you building?
What does it need to do?
How much design?
$30,000 – $100,000
- Effort
- 101–206 days
- Elapsed time
- 2–6 months
- Day rate assumed
- $320–$480
An indicative range, not a quote. Real scope moves these numbers, usually once we understand the parts you have not described yet.
Where the effort goes
- Build74–150 d
- Discovery & scoping9–18 d
- QA & testing11–23 d
- Project management7–15 d
Get a real number
Send this over and we'll come back with a scoped estimate — including the questions that would change it. Two business days, no sales script.
Mobile is the most commonly underestimated kind of project, because the build is only part of it. Two app stores have to be satisfied, devices vary far more than browsers do, and anything that works offline doubles the thinking required. The calculator above assumes one codebase serving both platforms, which is what makes the figure achievable at all.
What a project like this usually includes
- One codebase, two platforms
- React Native or Flutter producing genuine iOS and Android builds. Writing each natively roughly doubles the cost and rarely earns it back.
- Store submission
- App Store and Play Store listings, review compliance, signing and release. First submissions are routinely rejected for reasons that have nothing to do with code.
- Accounts and secure storage
- Sign-in, session handling, and keeping tokens somewhere a stolen phone cannot give them up.
- Push notifications
- Certificates, permissions and the backend to target them — three separate pieces of work.
- Device testing
- A spread of real screen sizes and OS versions, not just the newest handset on the team's desk.
What actually moves the number
- Offline behaviour
- An app that must work without signal needs local storage, conflict resolution and sync. This is the single biggest multiplier in mobile and it is usually discovered late.
- Device hardware
- Camera, GPS, Bluetooth and biometrics each carry permission flows and platform differences.
- Backend maturity
- If a solid API already exists, the app is a front end. If it does not, you are buying a backend too, and that is often the larger half.
- Design fidelity
- Custom animation and per-platform polish are where mobile budgets quietly go.
Is it cheaper to build for one platform first?
Rarely, if you know you want both. With a cross-platform codebase the second platform costs a fraction of the first, so launching iOS-only saves less than people expect and means a second round of store setup, testing and release later. Launching on one platform makes sense to validate demand, not to save money.
Why do app store submissions get rejected?
Most often for account deletion, privacy disclosures, payment rules or sign-in requirements — policy rather than technical faults. A first submission being bounced is normal and worth budgeting a week for, not a sign something has gone wrong.
What does an app cost to run after launch?
Store fees, backend hosting, push infrastructure and certificate renewals, plus mandatory maintenance: Apple and Google ship breaking OS changes annually, and an app left untouched for two years usually needs real work to keep functioning. Budget meaningfully for year two.
How long does a mobile app take?
The estimate above gives a range in months. The part that is hard to compress is store review, which adds days to weeks at the end regardless of how fast the build went.
A brief makes quotes comparable. Build one in a few minutes and send it wherever you like — including nowhere near us.