How much does it cost to build an app or application

The question always comes the same way, blunt, often over the phone: how much does it cost to build an app. The honest answer is that it starts at €3,000 + VAT and can reach five figures, and the range is wide because the word app covers very different things. An app that shows your catalogue and one that handles orders, payments and accounts are not the same product.

Below we explain what the estimate depends on, what the actual ranges are, how much it costs to maintain it each year and how to understand if a price makes sense. At the end there is the question that in our opinion should be asked before all the others.

What does the price depend on?

Not by the number of screens, which is the thing almost everyone tries to count. Five factors move the estimate, in order of weight:

• If you need a user account. Registration, login, password recovery and personal data management are a block of work in themselves, and involve a server.
• If there is a server behind it. An app that runs on its own costs a fraction of an app that has to talk to a database, sync, and stay consistent across multiple devices.
• If there are payments. Managing money means security, edge cases, refunds, and store rules on in-app purchases, which are non-negotiable.
• If it needs to integrate with what you already use. Management, warehouse, reservations, invoicing. Integrations are the item that is most often underestimated in the estimate phase.
• How many platforms. iOS and Android together don't cost double if you choose cross-platform, but something more does.

One thing that raises the bill and that no one budgets for at the beginning: the administration panel. Almost every app needs one, to load content or see what's happening, and it's effectively a second piece of software to build.

The three bands, basically

They are the same ones we use when we talk about it in person with a client.

Showcase or informational app. Content, push notifications, little or no server. This is the low end, where prices start at €3,000 + VAT. It is also the tier where it most often makes sense to stop and ask whether a website would be enough.

App with accounts and features. Login, profile, data that synchronizes, maybe reservations. Here we enter the mid-range, you need a backend and a management panel, and the times go from weeks to months.

Apps with payments, integrations or complex logic. E-commerce, field management, marketplace. High end, where the price really depends on the perimeter and where a serious quote comes only after a real analysis.

The choice between native and cross-platform weighs less on the final estimate than you might think. Today with Flutter or React Native you get an app that most users cannot distinguish from a native one, at a significantly lower cost because there is only one code. Native remains the right choice when you need high graphics performance or deep access to the hardware.

Web app, on the other hand, means an application that opens from the browser. It can be added to the phone's home screen as any icon, without going through the App Store or Google Play, and every change reaches everyone at the same time. For reservations, customer areas and internal tools, this is often enough, and it costs a fraction.

How much does an app cost per year

This is the part that's missing from almost every quote we see, and then it comes as a surprise twelve months later.

• Apple Developer Program: $99 per year. It is not optional, and if it expires the app disappears from the App Store.
• Google Play Console: $25, one-time fee upon registration.
• Server and database: it depends on traffic, but for an app from a local business we are talking about a few tens of euros per month.
• Maintenance. iOS and Android release a new version every year and periodically change the rules. An app left idle sooner or later stops working well, and Google Play stops showing it to new users when it no longer meets the requirements of recent versions of Android.
• Commissions on in-app purchases. If you sell subscriptions or digital content within the app, Apple and Google take a percentage of each sale: typically 15% for small businesses and up to 30% otherwise. They do not apply to physical goods and real services, such as a restaurant order or a reservation. In the European Union these rules are changing as a result of the Digital Markets Act, so they must be checked when designing.

It's why an app is never a one-time purchase. If you haven't set an annual budget to keep it alive, the right question is not how much it costs to do it but whether it makes sense to do it.

Because two quotes can differ by ten times

It happens that you receive a quote for 3,000 euros and one for 30,000 for what seems like the same app. Almost always neither is inflating the price. They answer two different questions.

The low quote usually includes an adapted template, no backend, no panel, and an implicit agreement that you upload the content only once and then the app stays put. The high one includes analytics, backend, management panel, tests on dozens of devices and one year of support. If the project is really simple, the first is the right choice, and whoever sells you the second is oversizing you.

The way to understand this is to ask just one thing: what happens when I have to change content. If the answer is that you need to call the agency back and post an update on the stores, you know what type of quote it is.

The question to ask yourself first: do you really need an app?

Few people ask us this, and it should be the first thing. An app must be downloaded, and downloading is a huge barrier: a person only installs something if he plans to use it many times.

So the app makes sense when there is recurring use by the same user. A gym where members book courses every week, a subscription service, a team of technicians who compile field reports every day. There the app pays for itself.

It makes no sense when it is used to be found, to introduce yourself or to show a catalog that you look at once. In those cases the app is not downloaded by anyone, and the money would have been better spent on a site.

If your goal is to be found by new customers, the right comparison is another: how much does a website cost. It costs less, Google finds it and doesn't ask anyone to install anything.

If, however, the problem is organizing internal work, often the answer is not an app but a customized management software, which runs in the browser and does not go through the stores. That's what we did for the Donna Sofia dairy, where customer orders automatically become the production plan.

How we make a quote

First, a free meeting in which we listen to what the app should do and who will use it. If at that time we understand that you need something else we'll tell you, even when the opposite would be convenient for us: an app that no one downloads is as much our problem as it is yours.

Then we define the perimeter together, function by function, distinguishing what is needed for the launch from what can arrive later. Only at that point does a number arrive, and it is written: costs, times and what is included, without items popping up halfway through the work.

If you are evaluating a project, see how we work on apps or write to us on WhatsApp and we'll talk about it for half an hour, without obligation.