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Pricing
App budgets have a wide, honest range: a focused MVP from a professional team costs $15,000–40,000, a mid-complexity product runs $40,000–100,000, and anything with payments, real-time features or heavy integrations starts above $100,000. What separates a quote from a guess is knowing where the money actually goes.
This guide breaks down 2026 app costs: platform choice, design, the hidden backend work, store fees, and the maintenance budget that first-time app owners consistently underestimate.
The ranges below assume a professional team — designer, one or two developers, QA, project management — building a production-quality app, not a prototype. Region matters as much as scope: identical specifications can vary two to three times between markets. And for most business apps, cross-platform is the rational starting point; going native on both platforms only pays when the product depends on device-level hardware or graphics performance.
| Scope | Typical range (USD) | What that buys | Timeline |
|---|---|---|---|
| Focused MVP | $15,000–40,000 | 3–5 core screens, one platform, basic backend, standard components | 2–4 months |
| Mid-complexity app | $40,000–100,000 | Both platforms, payments, user accounts, admin panel, integrations | 4–7 months |
| Complex product | $100,000–250,000+ | Real-time features, offline sync, custom UI, enterprise integrations | 6–12+ months |
| Approach | Cost impact | When it fits |
|---|---|---|
| iOS only | Baseline | Audience concentrated on iPhones; testing a consumer idea in markets where iOS leads |
| Android only | Baseline | Markets where Android dominates; internal staff apps on company devices |
| Cross-platform (Flutter, React Native) | Roughly 60–80% of building both natively | Most business apps — one codebase, both stores, faster updates |
| Native both (Swift + Kotlin) | Roughly 2× one platform | Heavy camera, Bluetooth or graphics use; performance-critical products |
| Component | Typical share | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Discovery and requirements | 5–10% | The cheapest stage with the biggest influence on everything after it |
| UI/UX design | 15–25% | Wireframes, visual design, clickable prototype, edge-case screens |
| Mobile development | 30–40% | The screens users touch |
| Backend, APIs and admin panel | 20–30% | Accounts, data, notifications, and the web panel your team manages it from |
| Testing and release | 10–15% | Device testing, store review fixes, crash monitoring setup |
The surprise for most first-time app owners is the backend line: the app on the phone is the visible tenth of the system. Publishing has its own smaller costs, too — the Apple Developer Program at $99 per year, the Google Play account at $25 one-time, one to seven days of store review per submission (budget for at least one rejection-and-fix cycle on iOS), and store assets like screenshots and a privacy policy that always land at the last minute. Selling digital goods also means store commission of 15–30%; physical products and services usually run through your own payment provider instead.
Plan on 15–20% of the original build cost per year. Phones ship new OS versions every autumn, both stores tighten policies several times a year, and something always needs updating. A $50,000 app needs roughly $8,000–10,000 annually to stay healthy — before you spend anything on new features.
Want a rough number for your feature list? Sketch the screens, then get a ballpark with the project time estimator and sanity-check the budget against team rates with the hourly rate calculator.
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Have an app idea and a budget range? NG Studios builds mobile apps for iOS and Android — a fixed-scope MVP first, then iteration on real usage data. Tell us what the app needs to do and we will scope it honestly.
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