App development cost in 2026: the ranges, the fees, and one example app cost breakdown
App development cost in 2026 runs about $15,000 to $40,000 for a basic app, $40,000 to $120,000 for a mid-level one and $100,000 to $250,000 or more for an advanced app, according to GoodFirms' survey of 267 app companies (September 2026). Web apps start lower, from about $7,500 on vendor price lists. Two quotes for the same idea can still sit ten times apart. The hourly rate behind them runs from $25 to $250, and every seller pictures a different app when you say "simple". To turn your own feature list into hours and dollars, try the app development cost calculator.
Below, one class-booking app is priced feature by feature and set beside what owners paid and what the first year costs, so you can check any quote you hold. At Deepsel's prices a typical first version is $15,000 to $30,000 (arithmetic here).
How much does it cost to build an app in 2026? Six price lists side by side
The pages ranking for this question come from companies that build apps or sell a no-code alternative. Each range starts at that seller's minimum, and few name their hourly rate.
| Vendor page | Simple | Mid-size | Complex | Rate behind it | Date |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Appinventiv | $40,000 to $100,000 | $100,000 to $200,000 | $200,000 to $400,000+ | Example bills 2,500 hours at $40 | Oct 2026 |
| Topflight | $40,000 to $50,000 | $50,000 to $70,000; large $80,000 to $140,000 | $160,000 to $210,000; enterprise $250,000+ | Cites bands from about $24 (Asia) to $250+ (North America) | Oct 2026 |
| Bubble (no-code) | $5,000 to $50,000 | $50,000 to $120,000 | $120,000 to $300,000+ | Not stated | Oct 2026 |
| DashDevs | $15,000 to $60,000 | $60,000 to $180,000 | $180,000 to $500,000+ | $80 to $150 US and Western Europe; $25 to $55 Asia | Jun 2026 |
| SaM Solutions (web) | $20,000 to $70,000 | $80,000 to $180,000 | $200,000 to $500,000+ | Not stated | Oct 2026 |
| OS-System (web) | $7,500 to $24,000 | $25,000 to $83,000 | $84,000 to $530,000+ | Not stated | Apr 2026 |
Two sources sit outside the price-list business. Clutch's pricing page for app developers (September 21, 2026) works from client reviews: the average app project cost $90,780 over about 11 months, but the typical one cost $10,000 to $49,999, since a few huge projects pull the mean up. GoodFirms asked the companies themselves, so its tiers are what sellers say they charge.
Read down the simple column and the floor moves from $5,000 to $40,000 under one label. Most of that gap is the rate: Appinventiv's example bills 2,500 hours at $40, or $100,000, and at $150 an hour the same hours cost $375,000. Before you hold any range against your budget, run your own numbers on the features you need.
What people paid for an app, and what they were quoted
First-hand numbers on the cost to develop an app, all from 2025 and 2026, are rarer than price lists and more useful.
What they paid
- $3,000 to a freelancer for a browser extension built in three weeks. It "held up fine for the first 50 users", but "the billing part broke on day one" (r/SaaS comment, August 2026).
- $14,000, twice, in reviews on one US agency's Clutch profile: a fencing contractor's app design (December 2025) and the Melody Lane app (October 2025).
- $25,000 to a dev shop over three years for a healthcare product, which "got a handful of paid customers" (r/vibecoding, June 2026).
- $55,000 for a driving school's app on the same Clutch profile (August 2026), and "just under $400,000" from a talent agency's founder (September 2026). All four Clutch figures are one agency's reviews.
What they were quoted
- "A developer quoted me $7.5k to build the app for iOS and Android using Flutter." (r/SideProject, January 2025)
- "one shop said twenty five thousand and three months. a freelancer said four thousand but could not guarantee a timeline." (r/SaaS, August 2026)
- "an app that was quoted £50k-£250k+ to build" (r/SaaS, June 2026), so the founder built it alone.
Developers pricing their own time sit lower: two iOS developers put a walking-map app with no login or servers at $3,500 and "a nice round $10k" (r/iOSProgramming, December 2025). So a small app from one freelancer lands at $3,000 to $10,000, shop quotes start near $25,000, and agency quotes reach six figures. Our MVP development cost guide prices first versions of every kind by scope, builder and product type.
App development cost breakdown: features, hours and platforms
Every estimate that holds up is one sum: hours per feature, adjusted for the platforms, plus design, testing, management and release, times an hourly rate. You can check each part without reading code.
Hours per feature
About ten agency and tool sites publish hours per feature, none from tracked projects, and login alone runs from 8 to 16 hours at BuildMVPFast to 80 to 120 at SoftKraft. Below are the ranges we work with, set across seven of those tables: Kultrix (October 2026), SoftKraft (July 2026), Techsy (June 2026), Space-O (June 2026), and BuildMVPFast, Estimate My App and Vivasoft, all three read October 18, 2026. Each covers one platform, server work included, before design, QA, management and release.
| Feature | Hours, one platform |
|---|---|
| Base app (screens, navigation, build pipeline) | 80 to 220; web 100 to 200 |
| Backend set-up | 80 to 120 on Supabase or Firebase; 200 to 400 custom |
| Sign-up and login | 20 to 50 |
| User profiles | 15 to 30 |
| Push notifications | 12 to 32 |
| Card payments, one-off | 30 to 80 |
| Subscriptions or in-app purchase | 40 to 72 |
| Live one-to-one chat | 60 to 180 |
| Maps and location | 20 to 60 |
| Search and filters | 16 to 40 |
| Booking and calendar | 40 to 64 |
| Admin panel (web back office for staff) | 40 to 160 |
| Analytics | 8 to 40 |
| AI feature (assistant, document search, generated content) | 40 to 180 |
Compliance sits on top of the table: Kultrix puts GDPR, PCI or HIPAA work at 40 to 100 hours and accessibility at 30 to 70.
Mobile or web app development cost: what the platform multiplies
The platform multiplies the hours that live in the app. Techsy's calculator puts one cross-platform codebase (React Native or Flutter) for both stores at about 1.2 times the hours of a single native app, and two separate native apps at about 1.8 times. DashDevs' prices imply about 1.3 for cross-platform ($90,000 to $140,000 against $70,000 to $110,000 for one native app). We use 1.2 to 1.25 for one shared codebase and 1.8 for two native apps. A web app takes no multiplier and swaps in the web base of 100 to 200 hours, so it costs about what one native platform does. We'd pick one cross-platform codebase for most business apps, and two native apps when the app leans on camera pipelines, Bluetooth or heavy graphics.
A worked example: a class-booking app for a fitness studio
A studio with two locations wants members to sign up, pay a monthly membership by card, book classes and get a reminder before each one, on iOS and Android. Staff run the timetable and refunds from a web back office. No chat, no AI; the lean end assumes a template design, the full end a custom one.
| Feature | Hours, one platform | Built |
|---|---|---|
| Base app | 80 to 220 | Per platform |
| Sign-up and login | 20 to 50 | Per platform |
| Member profiles | 15 to 30 | Per platform |
| Class timetable and booking | 40 to 64 | Per platform |
| Monthly membership billed by card | 40 to 72 | Per platform |
| Class reminders by push | 12 to 32 | Per platform |
| Analytics | 8 to 40 | Per platform |
| Backend on Supabase or Firebase | 80 to 120 | Once |
| Staff back office | 40 to 160 | Once |
| Total | 335 to 788 |
One rule drives the sum: the platform multiplier applies only to the hours that live in the app, and the backend and the staff back office are built once.
- Split the total. 215 to 508 hours live in the app, and 120 to 280 are built once.
- Multiply the app hours for both stores. With one cross-platform codebase, 215 x 1.2 is 258 and 508 x 1.25 is 635; add back the 120 to 280 and you're at 378 to 915.
- Add design at 10% to 20% of build hours, QA at 15% to 20% and project management at 10% to 12%, so 35% to 52% in all (Techsy prints 15% to 20% for QA, Fora Soft uses 12% for management and DashDevs 10% to 20% for design). 378 x 1.35 is about 510 and 915 x 1.52 about 1,391.
- Add the release. Techsy puts the build pipeline, store listings and review submission at 20 to 40 hours, which brings the total to 530 to 1,430 hours.
- Multiply by a rate. The middle case is 980 hours at the middle of each rate band.
That overlaps Techsy's 400 to 1,000 hours for a moderate app, a group it says includes booking apps.
| Who builds it | Hourly rate | 530 to 1,430 hours | Middle case |
|---|---|---|---|
| Agency in Southeast Asia, Vietnam included | $25 to $50 | $13,250 to $71,500 | About $37,000 |
| Latin American or Eastern European agency | $40 to $75 | $21,200 to $107,250 | About $56,000 |
| US software firm in Clutch's directory | $50 to $99 | $26,500 to $141,570 | About $73,000 |
| US agency, its own rate card | $150 to $250 | $79,500 to $357,500 | $196,000 |
| Deepsel senior engineer, full-time | $50 an hour equivalent, billed at $8,000 a month | $32,000 to $72,000 (4 to 9 months) | $56,000 (7 months) |
Most app companies on Clutch bill $25 to $49 an hour; Accelerance's 2026 survey has Latin American developers at $33 to $75 and European seniors at $64 to $76; Clutch's software directory lists US firms at $50 to $99; and Sthenos, a US shop, publishes $150 to $250. Deepsel's row counts whole months of one engineer, since we bill by the month. Regional rates with every source, and a seven-step estimating method, are in our custom software development cost guide.
The costs around the build: store fees, commissions and services
Publishing is cheap. Apple's developer program is $99 a year and a Google Play account costs $25 once (checked October 18, 2026). Commissions cost more, on digital goods and subscriptions sold inside the app.
- Apple's standard cut is 30% (MacRumors, August 2026). Its Small Business Program charges 15% to newcomers and to developers who earned up to $1 million the year before, and a subscription drops to 15% after a subscriber's first paid year.
- Google Play changed its fees for US, UK and EEA users on June 30, 2026. Its new table charges subscriptions 10% plus a 5% billing fee, and other purchases from new installs 20% plus 5%. Other countries keep the old rate for now, 15% of a developer's first $1 million.
Physical goods and services skip the commission. Apple's App Review Guidelines (3.1.3(e)) require other payment methods for goods or services used outside the app, and Google Play's payments policy lists gym memberships among purchases that must not use its billing. So the studio pays only card fees: at Stripe's 2.9% plus 30 cents, a $120 membership costs $3.78 to collect, against $18 for a 15% store cut. If you sell software subscriptions instead, our SaaS development cost guide compares the billing options.
Most services an early app runs on have a free tier (list prices, October 18, 2026):
| Service | Free tier | First paid step |
|---|---|---|
| Supabase (database, sign-in, storage) | Free plan | Pro, $25 a month with 100,000 monthly active users |
| Firebase (Google's alternative) | Sign-in free to 50,000 monthly users; push messages free | Pay as you go |
| Expo (app builds and store submission) | 15 iOS and 15 Android builds | Starter, $19 a month plus usage |
| Sentry (crash reports) | One user | Team, $26 a month billed annually |
Founders agree. One React, Supabase and Google Maps stack reports "Total cost: $0/month (free tiers)" (r/Entrepreneur, January 2026), and a product with 4,200 monthly users puts its "Server cost: ~$45/month" (r/microsaas, March 2026). Vendor guides print $50 to $500 a month. Plan on $0 to $50 at launch.
How long it takes to build an app
Published timelines stretch under the same labels as prices. GoodFirms puts a basic app at 3 to 6 months and an advanced one at 9 to 12; DashDevs says 1 to 4 months for a simple app. Kultrix gives 7 to 14 weeks for a one-platform first version with accounts, payments and a back office. Clutch's reviewed projects skew larger and average about 11 months.
In hours, the class-booking app's 530 to 1,430 is 8 to 23 weeks for two people. That rests on our own planning figure of 32 productive hours per person a week. Kultrix gives no figure, only that a person's real week on your project is "nowhere near 40" once code review, handover, releases and meetings take their share. Store review adds days: Google says it can take up to seven days or longer for some accounts. Our guide lists the ten steps from idea to launch.
Year one: maintenance, store updates and the overrun
Ranking guides put yearly upkeep at a share of the build: SCAND says 15% to 25%, Appinventiv 15% to 20% and Topflight about 25%. None cites a measured source, so treat it as a rule of thumb and ask what each vendor's number covers.
The stores set the part you can't skip. Since April 28, 2026, Apple requires uploads built with Xcode 26. From August 31, 2026, Google Play wants every new app and update to target Android 16, and existing apps below Android 15 stop reaching new users on newer phones. So an app with no new features still gets rebuilt and resubmitted about once a year per store.
Then there's the overrun. A small shop that publishes its prices wrote about one client, "I quoted him $18k initially and it ended up closer to $30k", after a database migration went worse than expected (a seller's post on r/SaaS, June 2026). Topflight advises a 10% to 20% reserve and Vivasoft's calculator adds 15%; keep it outside the quote.
Add it up on the worked example's middle case at a US directory rate, a $73,000 build. Upkeep at 15% to 25% is $10,950 to $18,250; store accounts are $124; Supabase Pro, Expo Starter and Sentry Team come to $840 a year; and a 10% to 20% reserve adds $7,300 to $14,600. Year one lands at about $92,000 to $107,000, or 26% to 46% over the build quote, with card fees taken from revenue on top. Cynoteck, a vendor, puts testing, store fees, hosting and first-year upkeep at "30 to 40% on top of the development quote", close to this sum.
Why two quotes for the same app differ, and how to compare them
The worked example shows four causes of a spread like that. First, the rate: 980 hours is $37,000 or $196,000 depending on who bills them. Then what "app" means. A web app, an iPhone app and an app on both stores with a back office come to roughly 480 to 1,170, 470 to 1,240 and 530 to 1,430 hours. Third, what's included: design, testing, store submission and launch fixes are lines one quote has and another skips. Last, a vendor's range shows where it starts, while a bid prices your scope (if the bidder asked about it). One founder wrote, "I have shrinked my idea to bare minimum, yet I get quoted 20k", and the freelancer stopped replying once asked what could come out (r/SaaS, July 2026).
Everything that matters in a quote is a number or a line item, so you can check it without reading code. Send every shop the same written brief and ask for the same answers:
- The platforms (web, iOS, Android, cross-platform or native) and whether the back office is in scope.
- Your features, one line per thing a user does.
- Hours per feature, the rate, and what's left out.
- Who writes the code, by name, and whether the repository and store accounts are yours from day one.
- A small fixed-price first milestone, paid on acceptance.
Our guide to picking a software development company adds vetting questions, and our shortlist of small development companies for startups gives shops to send the brief to, with rates and minimums.
What an app costs at Deepsel
We publish three prices, so an app here is arithmetic on them. The engineer who takes the first call writes the scope and estimate and leads the build. Deepsel Inc. is a Delaware company, and the engineers work from Hanoi, Vietnam, with a daily overlap on US business hours.
Technical Leadership: $15,000 / month
For an owner with no technical lead. A fractional CTO owns the technical decisions and senior engineers write the code, with a working demo every two weeks. On this plan a typical startup MVP is a 1 to 2 month build, so $15,000 to $30,000. Afterwards you can step down to $0 a month. The full studio app is bigger: at the market's hours and the two-person pace from the timeline section, it runs 2 to 6 months, or $30,000 to $90,000.
Senior Product Engineer: $4,000 / month half-day, or $8,000 / month full-time
A senior engineer of your own, for a team that already makes its technical calls. One to two months full-time is $8,000 to $16,000. At 160 hours a month that's about $50 an hour, and the studio app's 530 to 1,430 hours is 4 to 9 months for one person: $32,000 to $72,000, the Deepsel row in the rate table.
Rescue Sprint: $3,000 fixed, one week
For an app that already exists, built with AI tools or no-code or left behind by a previous developer. In one week we audit the product, the code and the architecture, fix and ship the critical bugs and security holes, and hand over a plain-English scorecard and roadmap, yours to use with us or anyone.
Two of our apps map onto the hour table. FitFoodies shows healthy dishes from restaurants near you on a live map, with filters for diet, protein and calories: the maps and search rows. Clubloungery lets nightclub guests reserve a lounge from the floorplan, with deposits and no-show rules, while owners draw the bookable areas themselves.
The terms we publish:
- Month-to-month, 30 days' notice, no termination fees.
- First 30 days: full money-back guarantee.
- IP yours from the first commit under a US-jurisdiction agreement; repos and servers in your own accounts.
- Any engineer replaced within 7 days if not a fit.
- Happiness Index: you score us every month on delivery, accepted work and incidents. A month under 50 is refunded.
With under $3,000, start with a prototype from an AI app builder and test it on real users. How we scope and ship a first version is on our MVP development service page.
App development cost: frequently asked questions
How much does it cost to build an app in 2026?
GoodFirms' 2026 survey of 267 app companies puts a basic app at $15,000 to $40,000, a mid-level one at $40,000 to $120,000 and an advanced one at $100,000 to $250,000 or more. Clutch's reviewed app projects average $90,780, though most cost $10,000 to $49,999. Priced from hour tables, a class-booking app for both stores with a staff back office is 530 to 1,430 hours. That's $13,250 at the lowest offshore rate and $357,500 at a US agency's own rate card.
Is it cheaper to build a web app or a mobile app?
Usually the web app. It costs about what one native platform does, runs on every phone and computer, and skips store review. Our worked example comes to about 480 to 1,170 hours as a web app, 530 to 1,430 for iOS and Android from one cross-platform codebase, and 700 to 1,860 as two native apps. Go mobile first when the app lives on push reminders, the camera or location.
How much does it cost to put an app on the App Store and Google Play?
Apple's developer program is $99 a year and Google Play charges $25 once. Commissions on digital sales cost more. Apple takes 30%, or 15% in its Small Business Program, and since June 30, 2026 Google Play charges subscriptions from US, UK and EEA users 10% plus a 5% billing fee. Physical goods and real-world services stay off store billing (Google names gym memberships) and pay card fees instead, 2.9% plus 30 cents at Stripe.
How much does it cost to maintain an app after launch?
Vendor guides put upkeep at 15% to 25% of the build cost each year, with no measured source behind it. On a $73,000 build that's $10,950 to $18,250. Part of it is forced on you: Apple has required Xcode 26 for uploads since April 28, 2026, and Google Play wants Android 16 targets from August 31, 2026, so plan on a rebuild about once a year per store. Hosting at launch runs $0 to about $50 a month.
How long does it take to build an app?
GoodFirms' 2026 survey puts a basic app at 3 to 6 months. Kultrix gives 7 to 14 weeks for a one-platform first version with accounts, payments and an admin panel, and Clutch's reviewed projects average about 11 months. Our class-booking example, at 530 to 1,430 hours, takes 8 to 23 weeks for two people at our own planning figure of 32 productive hours each a week. Store review adds up to seven days or longer for some Google Play accounts.
How much does it cost to add AI features to an app?
Published hour tables put one AI feature (an assistant, search over your own documents, or generated content) at 40 to 180 hours before design and testing. That's $2,000 to $9,000 at $50 an hour and $6,000 to $45,000 at a US agency's $150 to $250. A model bill comes on top, and it grows with use. Our page on building an AI MVP explains how we scope the AI part and estimate its monthly cost.
If you're planning an app or stuck between quotes that disagree, the step we'd recommend first is a free 30-minute call, with your feature list or the quotes in hand. You'll get an honest technical read and a price at our published rates, yours to keep whether we build the app or not. To try versions of your feature list first, use the calculator.