Pricing an app without a scope is guesswork. Two quotes for “a booking app” can be several times apart, because one assumes a single user type and payment by bank transfer, while the other assumes three roles, online payments, apps in the stores and an accounting integration. Below we break the price into its parts.
What you pay for
- Research and prototype. Interviews with future users and a clickable prototype of the main path. A change at this stage costs a fraction of a change in code.
- UX, interface design and a design system. The screens, error and empty states, and the set of components the whole product is built from.
- Frontend and backend. The interface, logic, database, login and permissions.
- Integrations. Payments, CRM, email, the client’s systems. Each one is separate work and separate testing.
- Testing and deployment. Environments, automated tests of the key paths, error monitoring and publishing, including in the App Store and Google Play for mobile apps.
What changes the price most
- The number of user paths. Each path, what a user wants to achieve from start to finish, means its own screens, logic and tests.
- The number of roles. Customer, staff and administrator are three different products in one.
- Integrations with other systems, especially older or poorly documented ones.
- Native apps. An app for iOS and Android costs more than a web app that runs in a phone’s browser.
- Real-time and offline features. Syncing data between devices is one of the harder things in software.
- Security and compliance requirements, for example with medical or financial data.
- Data migration from an existing system.
Costs after launch
- Infrastructure: servers, the database and file storage. They grow with the number of users.
- Third-party services: email delivery, maps, payments with a per-transaction fee, AI models billed by usage.
- App stores: an Apple developer account costs $99 a year, and a Google Play account is a one-time $25 fee.
- Maintenance: updates to libraries and operating systems, monitoring, bug fixes.
- Further development: the new features that come up once users start using the product.
How to keep the cost down
- Scope the first version well. We described how in the article on MVP scope.
- Start with a prototype before you pay for code.
- Consider a web app before a native one. If the main path works in a browser, a store app can wait.
- Do rare things by hand. Not every process has to be automated from day one.
Questions to ask a provider
- Who owns the code, and from when do I have access to the repository?
- Will I get documentation, and could another team develop the product further?
- Where will the product be hosted, and in whose accounts?
- How is it billed: a fixed price per stage or hourly?
- What happens after launch?
How we price apps
Product projects start at $28,800 / €26,500 net. An MVP usually takes 6–8 weeks: one user path, one integration and deployment to production. We bill in stages, and you can pause between them. Once payment is received, the copyright to the code passes to you, and you get the repository and documentation in full.
After a free 30-minute call, you get a proposal in three options: scope, schedule and price. Read more on our apps and SaaS service.
Let’s talk about your project
The first call takes 30 minutes and is free. After it, you know whether we can help and what it will cost.
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