Every page that answers this question is written by an agency, and every one of them says the same thing: thirty thousand to a hundred and fifty thousand dollars, contact us for a quote. That range is not wrong, it is just answering a different question from the one you asked.
Here is the version from someone who builds and publishes apps alone, with the numbers I actually charge.
The short answer
| What you are buying | Price | Time |
|---|---|---|
| You build it yourself with no-code or AI tools | $0–500 | weeks of your own time |
| Finishing a half-built app and publishing it | from $4,500 | 3–4 weeks |
| A first version built from scratch and published | from $6,000 | 4–6 weeks |
| Ongoing work after launch | from $90/hour | as needed |
| An agency doing the same first version | $30,000+ | 3–6 months |
The gap between the middle rows and the last one is not quality. It is headcount. An agency number pays a project manager, a designer, two developers, a tester, and the margin on all five. For a first version most of that is structure you are paying for and not using.
What the stores charge, separately
These are not developer fees and they should always be in your name, not your developer's.
- Apple: $99 per year, for as many apps as you like.
- Google: $25 once, ever.
- If you sell digital goods in the app, both stores take a commission, commonly 15% for small developers and 30% above certain thresholds.
What actually moves the price
Not the number of screens. People assume screens, and screens are the cheap part. These are the four things that genuinely change the number.
How many kinds of user there are
One kind of user is one app. A customer plus a staff member plus an administrator is three sets of screens, three sets of permissions, and a web dashboard you had not budgeted for. This is the single most common reason a quote doubles.
Whether money changes hands inside it
Subscriptions and in-app purchases add real work: restoring purchases on a new phone, handling refunds, keeping access in step with payment. Selling a physical product or a real-world service is easier and avoids the store commission.
Whether it has to work without signal
An app that needs the internet is straightforward. An app that has to keep working in a basement, on a building site or on a plane, then reconcile everything later, is a different discipline. I built one of those for industrial inspections and the hard part was never the screens.
Whether anything happens live
Chat, live tracking, anything where two people see the same thing change at the same moment. It is doable and it is never cheap.
A useful sanity check: if a quote for a first version comes in under about $2,000, someone is either misunderstanding the scope or planning to hand you something that cannot go through store review. If it comes in over $30,000, ask precisely how many people are being paid out of it.
Costs people forget
- Design, if you do not already have it. Sometimes included, sometimes not. Ask.
- Running costs after launch. For a small app this is often under $25 a month, and sometimes nothing. It is not zero.
- The second version. Nobody launches and stops. Budget something for the three months after, even if it is small.
- Your own time. The projects that go fastest have one person who answers questions within a day.
How I price it
Fixed, agreed in writing before anything starts, half at the beginning and half when the app goes to the stores. If it takes longer than I estimated, that is my problem rather than your invoice. If you change what you want halfway, we agree a new number first.
The reason I can quote a fixed price at all is that the thirty-minute call is spent on exactly the four questions above. Ranges exist because of those. Once they are answered, the number stops being a range.
Want the version that applies to your idea?
A free thirty-minute call, and you leave with a written plan: what to build first, what it costs, how long it takes. Yours to keep whether you hire me or not.
Book a free 30-minute call