How Much Does It Cost to Build an App? 2026 Breakdown

App development costs are always among the top priorities of product managers. Whether you’re trying to roll a new app out in-house with your own crew, or you’re shopping around for the perfect outsourcing partner, the question is always the same: “How much does it cost to build an app?” 

In this guide, we’re going to help you visualize the whole process of estimating the development cost. We’ll look at what affects your total budget (like the specific features you absolutely need, the complexity of the underlying tech, etc.). Then, we help you optimize your spending when you finally decide to build. Keep reading!

App Development Cost Breakdown

Generally speaking, mobile app development costs can easily swing from an estimated $40,000 for a simple app (basic features) to a hefty $400,000 for a true, advanced application. For those heavy-duty, enterprise-level applications, that number can absolutely sail right past the $400,000 mark. 

All these costs vary depending on a few crucial factors:

• Feature Complexity

The complexity of features you need is the biggest lever we pull on the cost. A super simple app, maybe just a basic digital to-do list, requires less development time. So the cost ranges from $10,000 to $40,000. 

Other more advanced apps (like e-commerce platforms or social media apps) charge significantly higher, often scaling from $40,000 quickly up to $500,000. If you start adding really smart features – like an AI-powered customer chatbot or a sophisticated recommendation system – the cost could certainly be much higher. 

And for highly regulated industries (banking, healthcare) requiring incredibly complex, enterprise-level features just to comply, the cost may be more than $500,000$ or even millions.

• Platforms

Which platforms will your app run on? If you decide to build a native app (specifically for either iOS or Android), you’re building two separate apps. Each can cost from $8,000 to $14,000. But, needing a native presence on both operating systems essentially doubles your development cost, time, and resources. 

That’s why many companies are switching to a cross-platform solution first. It’s a significantly cheaper option, running from $13,000 to $16,000 for one codebase that handles both. A standard web app requires a similar range. 

• Ongoing Maintenance

The real cost of your app also covers the crucial ongoing maintenance, bug fixes, software updates, and the new features you’ll inevitably want to add down the road. It’s not a one-time thing.

Recommended reading: Mobile Web App Development: 2 Things You Must Consider First

How to Calculate App Development Cost

If you want to calculate app development cost in a simple way, use a fundamental formula as follows:  

Total Cost = (Total Development Hours) x (Hourly Development Rate)

Let’s break down the two variables in this formula: 

• Total development hours are the total time that your team will collectively spend on a project. This figure is often broken down by feature complexity.
  • For example, a simple login feature may take 10 hours to develop, while that of a bespoke payment gateway can be up to 60-70 hours. So, the total development hours for these two features are 70-80 hours.

• The hourly development rate is the average cost that your development resources charge. This figure relies significantly on the team’s location and technical expertise.
  • For example, a mid-level JavaScript developer in the US requires $55-$65/hour, while that of a Vietnamese developer is $30-$45. 

Let’s quickly run a simple, hypothetical scenario so you can actually see this formula in action. 

Many websites, like Estimate My App or LITSLINK, often ask you a series of quick questions about your features, which platforms you need (iOS, Android, etc.), and then spit out a wide price range. 

But for a truly reliable, investment-grade cost estimation, we still advise you to have a seasoned technical team that carefully reviews your actual project requirements and offers detailed consultations.

Here at Designveloper, we use proven estimation techniques (e.g., analogous estimation or Planning Poker) built on successfully implementing over 100 projects. We’ll provide a precise technical consultation to break down every single hour needed for the design phase, the core development, and the crucial testing phase. We aim to take the uncertainty out of the cost equation.

Ready to get a precise, hour-by-hour breakdown tailored to your project? Contact us today!

Factors That Affect App Development Cost

In reality, your app development cost is significantly impacted by various factors. Considering all these factors helps you control where your investment goes and make better decisions on prioritizing which features, platforms, or tech stacks.

Complexity Level of App

This factor is one of the biggest components impacting the cost. How? The complexity level dictates the actual volume of development hours needed to build your app. 

A basic app might – let’s say a simple catalogue, a single data display, maybe a contact form – is of course cheaper, as it requires less development time and fewer resources to build. A moderately complex app is where you start involving databases, crucial user authentication, and one or two third-party integrations. These features take more time and effort to develop, so this app is more expensive. 

When we talk about an advanced or enterprise-grade app, the cost starts to skyrocket. It’s due to proprietary backend development, tricky real-time data syncs, complex security layers, and integrating multiple high-end services. This means more senior developers involved to build and test these features effectively, and naturally, a higher cost.

App Features 

We just covered complexity, but features are the specific components that, you know, define that complexity. The more features you want, the longer the build time is going to be.

Every single feature, from a simple password reset function to an advanced AI recommendation engine, represents a huge block of coded time. Adding things like in-app messaging, push notifications, or integrating a third-party payment gateway (like Stripe or PayPal) instantly pushes you into a higher price bracket. 

Why? Because those modules require robust security, tricky API communication, and extensive testing to ensure they communicate correctly with outside services. Features like AR/VR integration or real-time data streaming require specialized, niche coding knowledge, which demands premium hourly rates for those highly skilled developers.

Here’s a pro tip from our experience: Just focus on truly core features and build a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) instead of a complete app (as there’s no “perfect app,” honestly!). 

Experienced software development companies, like Designveloper, have built a huge library of essential features for different apps, based on our previous work. This helps us identify exactly which features to prioritize. Based on user feedback and market shifts, you can iteratively improve your app to meet evolving demands.

App Categories and Industry Type

This factor is intrinsically linked to the app’s purpose, but it brings regulatory hurdles into the discussion. The industry niche you’re targeting completely changes the compliance checklist, and compliance, let’s be honest, costs money and adds development hours.

Think about the difference between a simple food blog app and a healthcare app. That healthcare app, for instance, must comply with regulations like HIPAA in the US, demanding unparalleled data security, audit logging, and privacy compliance. That means more specialized security engineers and more time spent implementing compliance features. 

Similarly, a social networking app must support massive scalability for millions of concurrent users. It also often requires complex, deep integration with device hardware like cameras and microphones.

iOS vs Android vs Cross-platform

The platform selection is one of the initial strategic decisions that can either save you a bunch of money or, conversely, essentially double your costs right out of the gate. You have to choose wisely.

If you opt for native development (meaning, totally separate codebases for iOS and Android, using Swift and Kotlin respectively), you are running two parallel development projects. This is usually the most expensive approach, but it results in the absolute best performance and user experience.

Choosing cross-platform development with tools like React Native or Flutter might save you a solid 30-40% on the overall development time compared to pure native, as a single codebase can be deployed to both platforms. That said, cross-platform or hybrid apps can sometimes add complexity (and thus, cost) when trying to access niche hardware features or apply platform-specific design elements. 

Technology Stack (Programming Languages, Frameworks)

You need the right tech stack – including programming languages, frameworks, libraries, databases, and other tools – to build an app. Some are open-source, and others require licensing fees. 

But when we say the tech stack may affect your cost, it doesn’t mean how much you have to pay for each technology. Rather, it’s more about how much you pay to get the talent in such tech. For example, a Python developer in the US has an hourly pay of $59.23, while a Ruby developer costs $53.45 per hour. 

If the technology is tricky and on demand, and its talent pool is smaller, the hourly rate will be much higher. Further, the complexity of a project (e.g., server-side & APIs development and third-party integrations) and development speed also affect the total cost.

In-House vs Freelancers vs Outsourcing

Who builds your app? The answer affects your cash flow and long-term security.

Particularly, an in-house team may charge the highest long-term cost, as you pay salaries, benefits, office space, and retention bonuses. However, you maintain maximum control and deep institutional knowledge.

Freelancers offer varying costs. They often charge higher hourly rates than outsourcing firms but are perfect choices if you just want to hire skilled freelancers to cover some parts of development temporarily. 

And outsourcing companies? The cost varies wildly based on location, but generally provides a predictable, project-based cost and bundled expertise. It’s often the most financially streamlined path for a long-term project.

Recommended reading: How Can Outsourcing Developers Help Your Business?

Development Team Size

The development team doesn’t just include developers, honestly. If you outsource your project, you should know who will play which role in the development team. And of course, the cost varies depending on each member’s role and responsibility. The more roles you need filled, the higher the cost your app charges. 

Normally, a basic app may need a project manager, a developer, and a UI/UX designer. Meanwhile, a large-scale, enterprise-grade solution may require more roles to cover frontend development, backend development, QA testing, DevOps engineering, security, and even specialists in AI or IoT. 

Development Team Location

The geographic location of your development team is what fundamentally determines the crucial hourly rate component of your cost equation. Hourly rates for experienced developers differ dramatically across continents and even cities.

The Cost per Stage of Mobile App Development

The app development process includes various important phases (i.e., Planning, Design, Development, Testing). Each contributes a different portion to the total cost of your app development. Let’s discover: 

• Planning and Research Phase (10-15% of total cost)

In this phase, you’ll do market & competitor research, define clear goals, identify an MVP concept, and define a project roadmap. If you have already done research and have clear project requirements, your chosen development company may ask you some questions to better understand your goals. This helps them create a comprehensive set of essential features for the app. This phase costs around 10-15% of the total cost in mobile app development. 

• UI/UX Design Phase (15-20% of total cost)

This phase involves building an app’s wireframe, clickable prototype, and visual architecture. It’s important because it’ll decide how attractive your app design may be to end-user retention and usage rates. 15-20% of your cost falls into this phase. 

• Development Phase (50-60% of total cost)

Major drivers behind the app development cost are often the number of developers engaging in coding tasks and functionality in terms of its complexity, type, and quantity. Apart from fundamental features (e.g., user login or user engagement), advanced functionalities – like payment systems or data analytics tools – add up to the development cost. So, it takes up to 50-60% of the total cost.

• Testing & Quality Assurance (QA) Phase (10-15% of total cost)

After the development phase, quality analyses will be manually or automatically conducted to detect and correct faults. The duration of testing mostly hinges on the app’s complexity and the amount of functionality. Accordingly, highly secured apps or interactive games require more time, hence accompanying higher costs. The remaining 10-15% of your budget belongs to this phase.

Hidden Costs in App Development

We’ve discovered all the key possible factors that impact your app development. But be careful! That’s not all you may be charged. In reality, there are some hidden costs you may bear:

• App Store Fees

When you publish a mobile app to Apple’s App Store and Google’s Play Store. You have to pay Apple $99 per year for the Apple Developer Program and a $25 one-time lifetime fee for Google Play. 

Further, each platform slices off every single dollar your app makes through in-app purchases or subscriptions. It’s the fee on your revenue stream. For example, 15% service fee for the first $1M of earnings your Android or iOS apps make yearly. 

• Server, Hosting, Cloud Infrastructure, & APIs

Your app needs a powerful backend, which lives somewhere, like the cloud, and that somewhere costs money. This backend cost can be broken down into:

Hosting and Server: For a basic MVP with low traffic, you might pay $70-$320 per month using shared or simple dedicated cloud services (think Heroku or basic AWS tiers). But if your app handles real-time data (like a real-time market tracker), or suddenly hits high traffic, those costs balloon. Meanwhile, enterprise-level infrastructure (Fintech, high-volume e-commerce) can cost $500 to over $5,000 per month if you need 24/7 monitoring, specialized scaling tools, etc.

APIs and Third-Party Services: Your app needs to talk to other services to function, and each service charges based on different factors. For example, Google Maps or other geolocation services cost money based on the number of loads or calls. 

• Maintenance, Bug Fixing, and OS Compatibility

Frequent updates and maintenance essentially keep your users engaged in your app, but increase the cost. Most industry experts agree that you should budget 15-20% of your original development cost every single year for maintenance. For example, you should expect to spend $22,500-$30,000 annually for maintenance if your app costs $150,000 to build.

• Marketing

Marketing is necessary to let your target users know about the app. Cost-Per-Install (CPI) is among the crucial metrics to advertise the app. Accordingly, developers will put an advert on different media channels at certain prices to drive new installations. For example, placing an ad on iOS games costs $4.3 per install while this figure is only $1.15 on Android games.

How to Reduce App Development Cost

Building an app is not cheap. But by adopting the following tactics, you can save a little money while ensuring the high quality of your app. 

• Build an MVP first

This saves you money by preventing you from building things that not many people possibly want. Instead, you just launch a functional, reliable app with the absolute minimum set of features needed to solve your users’ core problem. 

By focusing on a lean MVP, you reduce your initial development timeline from, say, a huge 10–12 months down to a more manageable 4–6 months. This effectively cuts your upfront labor cost by a stunning 40% to 60%.

• Choose cross-platform frameworks

Unless you are building an AR/VR gaming blockbuster or a highly specialized medical device app that needs deep, custom hardware access—where native performance is non-negotiable—you should seriously consider cross-platform tools.

Unlike native development, cross-platform tools, like Flutter or React Native, let you use one shared codebase for both platforms. This single codebase often translates to a solid 30% to 40% cost savings on initial development.

• Reuse components and templates

Why would you pay a developer to spend hours building a custom login screen when a perfect, pre-tested component already exists and can be reused?

Many developers rely heavily on robust, pre-built libraries for standard features like user authentication, calendar views, or map integrations. This shaves off significant development hours.

• Limit early feature scope

When building the first MVP, you should prioritize the most critical features for your app. One common method for feature prioritization is adopting the MoSCoW method. Get your team to categorize every single desired feature:

Must Have (For the MVP)

Should Have (Phase 2)

Could Have (Phase 3)

Won’t Have (Definitely not now)

• Outsource to offshore teams

You must launch the app only with the ‘Must Have’ items. This helps you save significant money on unnecessary features and avoid feature creep. 

• Outsource to Offshore Teams Strategically

Outsourcing your project to teams from emerging markets like Vietnam or India. These places have a talent pool but charge much lower app development costs, mostly due to lower costs of living there.

FAQs about App Development Cost

How Much Does It Cost to Develop an AI App?

The answer depends on how complex your app is – in other words, which AI capabilities you want your app to have. 

For a truly basic AI integration – let’s say a simple customer service chatbot using a pre-trained API, like OpenAI — you’re likely looking at an additional cost of $20,000 to $50,000 on top of your core app build. 

If your business requires a truly unique competitive advantage – let’s say a highly specialized computer vision system for niche inventory or a predictive analytics engine trained on proprietary data – the price absolutely skyrockets. 

Developing a custom, high-accuracy AI model from scratch, including data acquisition, meticulous cleaning, and the intensive training process, can cost you up to $80,000 to $250,000 or more.

Besides, hiring specialized talent in AI and machine learning costs more than a general developer. An experienced ML Engineer in a mid-tier market might cost an average $76 per hour compared to a general developer’s $56 per hour. 

How Much Does It Cost to Run an App Per Month?

This depends on what essential recurring costs you pay each month. And remember that these costs may scale right alongside your user count. More users mean more money out the door.