Why app prices vary so much
Two apps that look similar in a pitch deck can differ by a factor of three in cost. The reason is almost always scope, not the agency's appetite. An app is a bundle of features, and every feature has a simple version and a rich one. Login with email is a day of work. Login with email, social accounts, single sign on for companies and two factor authentication is a week. When someone quotes a price without asking which version you mean, they are guessing.
The second reason is platform. One web app, one mobile app on a shared codebase, or two native mobile apps are three very different budgets. The third is everything around the code: design, testing and coordination, which often add close to half again on top of pure development.
The building blocks of an app estimate
A reliable estimate has four parts, and you should see all four in any offer you get.
- Base hours: the skeleton every project needs, such as project setup, configuration, an automated test pipeline and deployment. In our model that is 40 hours for a website, 80 for an MVP, 120 for a web app and 140 for a mobile app on one platform.
- Feature hours: a minimum and a maximum for each feature. User accounts and login take 24 to 40 hours, an admin panel 40 to 80, payments and subscriptions 32 to 64, real-time chat 40 to 80.
- Overheads: design at about 20 percent, QA at 15 percent and project management at 10 percent.
- Rate: the price of an hour of team time. Ours is $89.
Multiply the hour range by the rate and you have a price range. The full table of features is on our cost to develop an app page.
A simple cross-platform mobile app worked through
Imagine a mobile app where users sign up, upload photos, get push and email notifications, and your team manages everything in an admin panel. It runs on iPhone and Android from one React Native or Flutter codebase.
- Base hours for a mobile app: 360
- Cross-platform for both stores, plus 25 percent on the base package: 450 hours
- User accounts and login 24 to 40, file uploads 12 to 24, push notifications 16 to 32, email notifications 12 to 24, admin panel 40 to 80
- Subtotal: 554 to 650 hours
- Design, QA and project management, plus 45 percent: 803 to 943 hours
- At $89 per hour, rounded: $71,500 to $84,000
If you chose two native apps instead, the platform step would be plus 60 percent rather than 25, and the total would rise by a little over a fifth.
A marketplace web app worked through
Now a web marketplace: buyers and sellers with accounts and roles, listings with search and filters, file uploads, payments, email notifications, real-time chat between the two sides and an admin panel.
- Base hours for a web app: 320
- Accounts 24 to 40, roles 16 to 32, payments and subscriptions 32 to 64, search and filters 16 to 40, file uploads 12 to 24, email notifications 12 to 24, real-time chat 40 to 80, admin panel 40 to 80
- Subtotal: 512 to 704 hours
- Design, QA and project management, plus 45 percent: 742 to 1,021 hours
- At $89 per hour, rounded: $66,000 to $91,000
Notice that real-time chat alone is up to 80 hours. Launching with messages by email first and adding live chat later is a common way to bring the first release down.
What is not in the build price
The build price covers people's time. Running costs are separate and paid in your own accounts: hosting, app store developer accounts, email delivery, maps or AI usage, and any paid third-party services. For most early apps these run from tens to a few hundred dollars a month, but AI features and heavy media can cost more, which is why we estimate them in Discovery and cap them in code.
How to bring the cost down without breaking the product
- Cut features, not quality. Removing one large feature saves more than any rate discount.
- Start cross-platform unless your app depends on heavy device features.
- Bring your own designs if you have them, which removes the design overhead.
- Keep integrations for version two unless the product cannot work without them.
- Choose a realistic deadline, because compressing time means a larger team and more coordination.
For a first release, our guide on MVP development cost and timeline goes deeper into what to leave out.
How to read any agency quote
Ask for the hour range per feature, the overheads as separate lines and the rate. If a quote is one number with no breakdown, you cannot tell whether a change request is fair or whether you are paying for padding. If you also want to know how to pay for the work safely, read fixed price vs time and materials.
Get your own number
The two examples above were calculated with the same model that powers our estimate form. Pick your project type and features, and you get the price range, the hours, the stage plan and the team in about a minute, without giving us an email.