App development cost has two parts. The build is the big one: published ranges run from about $10,000 to $500,000, depending on what the app has to do. The store fees are small and fixed: Apple charges $99 a year for its developer program, and Google Play charges $25 once. Some costs come back every year after launch.
We do mobile app development for businesses, and we don’t publish a price here, because ours depends on the job. So every published figure below comes from someone else, with the name next to it, and you can check it yourself. Figures are in US dollars.
Key takeaways
- Putting an app in both stores costs $99 a year for Apple and $25 once for Google. Almost all of the money goes on building it.
- The build ranges we found were published by firms that sell apps or list app firms. Clutch says most app projects reviewed on its site cost $10,000 to $49,999.
- The stores take a cut of digital sales inside the app. Apple takes 15% from small developers enrolled in its program. For sales to US users, Google takes a 10% service fee plus a 5% billing fee on the first $1 million of a developer’s earnings each year. Physical goods, and services used outside the app, are paid for outside the store’s billing.
- Some bills come back every year: Apple’s fee (Apple takes your apps off the store if it lapses), servers, upkeep, and the updates Google’s Android version rule requires.
- Open both developer accounts in your business’s name, and get the code and signing keys in writing.
What the published numbers say
The store fees
Each store has its own developer account. The Apple Developer Program is Apple’s paid membership for people and businesses that publish apps, and when a business enrolls, its name is shown as the seller of its apps on the App Store. Play Console is Google’s tool for publishing and managing Android apps on Google Play.
| Fee | Published figure | Who says so |
|---|---|---|
| Apple Developer Program | $99 per membership year (Apple says prices may vary by region) | Apple’s enrollment page |
| Google Play developer account | $25, one time | Google’s Play Console sign-up guide |
| Apple’s cut of paid apps and in-app purchases, for small developers | 15%, for developers new to the App Store or with up to $1 million in proceeds the year before, once enrolled | Apple’s Small Business Program page |
| Google’s cut of sales to US users, on the first $1 million of earnings a year | A 10% service fee plus a 5% billing fee | Google’s service fees page |
| Physical goods, and services used outside the app | Not paid through the store’s billing, so the cuts above don’t apply | Apple’s guideline 3.1.3(e) and Google’s Payments policy |
The build
| What’s priced | Published figure | Who says so, and how |
|---|---|---|
| Most app projects reviewed on Clutch | $10,000 to $49,999 | Clutch, from reviews on its site |
| The average app project on Clutch | $90,780.11 | Clutch |
| What app firms charge an hour | $25 to $49 | Clutch |
| A simple app | About $10,000 to $50,000 | Saigon Technology, from its own $22 to $46 hourly rate |
| A mid-size app | About $50,000 to $100,000 | Saigon Technology |
| A complex app | About $100,000 to $500,000 | Saigon Technology |
| A mobile app | $10,000 to $18,000 | Intelivita, no method shown |
Treat the build figures as a rough map, for three reasons:
- Sellers wrote them. Saigon Technology and Intelivita sell app development. Clutch publishes reviews of app firms. We sell apps too. Any of us has a reason to frame the costs in our favor.
- The methods are thin. Clutch says its figures come from verified reviews, but not how many projects or which years they cover. Saigon Technology calls its ranges a planning estimate built on its own rates, and its head office is in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, so its rates may not match a US firm’s. Intelivita shows no method, and its whole range sits below Clutch’s average. We didn’t find a national survey with a published method in the pages we read.
- They price different apps. One firm’s “simple app” can be another’s “mid-size” one. Before you compare two figures, find out what each one includes.
A sum you can do with any quote
The US Bureau of Labor Statistics puts the median pay for software developers at $135,980 a year (May 2025). Its hourly figure covers software developers, quality assurance analysts and testers together: $64.44 an hour. That is an employee’s pay, and a firm also has to cover its other costs, so its hourly price won’t match it. Pay also varies a lot by person and country. Still, it gives you a yardstick:
- $10,000 buys about 155 hours at that wage.
- $50,000 buys about 776 hours, roughly 19 weeks of one person working 40 hours a week.
- Clutch’s average of $90,780 buys about 1,409 hours, roughly 35 of those weeks.
This is our arithmetic, not a published price. If a quote sits far below the others, ask what it reuses and what it leaves out.
What moves the price
Where a point below names no source, it’s our judgment.
- What the app has to do. Saigon Technology’s tiers show the spread: about $10,000 to $50,000 for a simple app and $100,000 to $500,000 for a complex one. Every screen, and everything each screen does, adds hours.
- One app for both phones, or two. An app can be written once, in one shared set of code that runs on iPhone and Android, or built twice, once with Apple’s tools and once with Google’s. With two apps, every later change is made twice, so the gap keeps growing for as long as the app lives.
- Accounts and logins. If people sign in and the app remembers their orders or bookings, it needs a server and a database behind it, and someone has to look after them.
- A place for you to manage it. Changing prices, menus or opening hours without calling a developer takes an admin screen, which is a second piece of software.
- How it takes money. Digital extras sold inside the app, such as a subscription or premium content, have to use the store’s billing: Apple’s App Review Guidelines say so in 3.1.1. Physical goods and services go the other way. Apple’s guideline 3.1.3(e) says those must use “purchase methods other than in-app purchase”, and Google’s Payments policy says its billing must not be used for physical goods or physical services. Card payments still take work to build, and your card processor charges its own fees.
- What it connects to. Bookings, stock, a till or customer records. Once the app has to talk to the systems your business already runs, the job overlaps with software built around your own process, and each connection adds hours.
- The design. Apple’s and Google’s standard buttons and screens cost less than a look drawn from scratch.
The bills that come back every year
The store fees are the small, fixed part. The rest depends on the app, so ask for each one as its own line on the quote.
- Apple, every year. $99 per membership year. If the membership expires, Apple says your apps and in-app purchases “become unavailable in all storefronts” until the Account Holder renews it, although apps already on customers’ phones stay installed (Apple’s account access help).
- Google, once. $25 when you open the account.
- The store’s cut. Only on digital sales through the store’s billing. Apple takes 15% from developers enrolled in its Small Business Program. For sales to US users, Google lists a 10% service fee plus a 5% billing fee on the first $1 million of a developer’s earnings each year. Google’s fee page links that row to its 15% service fee tier, which developers have to enroll in. Above that, subscriptions stay at 10% plus 5%, and other sales pay 20% or 25% plus 5%, depending on when the user first installed or updated the app from Google Play. If the app sells $10,000 of digital extras in a year, a 15% cut is $1,500. That’s our arithmetic.
- Updates the stores require. Google sets the Android version that apps must be built for. Its target API level rules say that from August 31, 2026, new apps and updates must target Android 16, and existing apps must target Android 15 or higher to stay available to new users. So we’d plan on at least one update a year, even when nothing in your business changes.
- Servers and outside services. The database, sign-in, notifications, maps. None of the sources we read gives a typical figure we would trust, so ask for each plan and what it costs as more people use the app.
- Upkeep. Intelivita, an app firm, says upkeep costs about 25% of the build a year, without showing how it got there. Treat that as a seller’s rule of thumb, and ask for a real figure in the quote.
Add up your own first-year bill
This app cost calculator adds up your first year, and each year after, from your own quotes and the fees Apple and Google publish. Type in what you were quoted, choose which stores the app goes in, and it shows both totals. It also turns your build quote into hours, using the pay figure from the sum above.
Your sum
First year
$124
Each year after
$99
| What it’s for | First year | Each year after |
|---|---|---|
| Build quote | Left out | |
| Apple Developer Program, $99 a year | $99 | $99 |
| Google Play registration, $25 once | $25 | $0 |
| Upkeep or support | Left out | |
| Server and service bills, 12 months | Left out | |
| Store commission, 15% of in-app sales | Left out | |
Add a build quote to see it as hours at the median pay for software developers, QA analysts and testers.
15% is each store’s rate for small developers, and it applies only after you enroll. On Apple, that’s the App Store Small Business Program, for developers new to the App Store or with up to $1 million in proceeds the year before. On Google Play, it’s the rate on the first $1 million of earnings a year, and sales to US users pay it as a 10% service fee plus a 5% billing fee. Above $1 million, Apple’s standard rate applies, and Google Play charges more on sales other than subscriptions.
The figures you typed are yours. The fees are the stores’ published fees, read on November 4, 2026. An empty box counts as $0. This is not a quote.
To add up the first year by hand, start with your build quote. Add $99 for Apple’s yearly fee, $25 for Google’s one-time fee, 12 times your monthly bills, your yearly upkeep and 15% of your yearly in-app digital sales. Leave out Apple’s fee for an Android-only app, and Google’s for an iPhone-only one. Each year after drops the build quote and Google’s fee.
Without the calculator, start with the build price. Add $99 if the app is on iPhone, $25 if it’s on Android, a year of servers and upkeep from your quote, and the store’s cut of any digital sales. Take the bottom of Clutch’s most common band: a $10,000 build in both stores comes to $10,124 before servers, upkeep and any store cut.
App, website or web app?
Apple draws the line in guideline 4.2 of its App Review Guidelines: an app should offer more than a repackaged website. In Apple’s words, “If your app is not particularly useful, unique, or ‘app-like,’ it doesn’t belong on the App Store.” Guideline 4.2.2 adds that apps shouldn’t mainly be marketing materials, advertisements, web clippings or a collection of links. So an app that only shows what your website already says is likely to be turned down, in our reading, and it would cost more than the website anyway.
Which one fits is our judgment, so weigh it accordingly:
- A website fits when people visit once, read about you and get in touch. Our guide to what a small business website costs has the figures for that.
- A web app, a site people sign in to and use like a program, fits when they need accounts, bookings or records but not the phone itself. It runs in the browser, so there’s no store fee, no store cut and no store review before each update. Building one is web application development work.
- An app fits when people come back often, to book, reorder or check in, or when the job needs the phone itself: the camera, location, notifications, or working without a signal.
Who owns it afterwards
The cost guides we read from Saigon Technology and Intelivita don’t cover this, yet it decides what you’re left holding if you part ways with whoever built the app. We aren’t lawyers, so take the contract part to one.
- The developer accounts. Open both in your business’s name, with you as the account holder. Apple asks an organization for a D-U-N-S Number to check its identity and address, unless it’s a government body. If a developer publishes your app under their own account, moving it later is an app transfer: their Account Holder starts it, and yours accepts it.
- The code. A transfer moves the store listing. For the code, Apple says “The transferor is responsible for exchanging the actual code set and building assets directly with the recipient.” So make the handover of the source code part of the contract.
- The signing keys. Every update has to be signed with a key. With Google’s Play App Signing, Google keeps the app signing key and you keep an upload key, which you can ask Google to reset if you lose it. A signing key you manage yourself is different: Google warns it “cannot be reset if you manage it yourself and lose it.” Make sure every key, certificate and password ends up with you.
- The copyright. The US Copyright Office publishes the law’s definition of a “work made for hire.” Work ordered from an outside creator counts as one only if it fits one of nine listed uses and both sides sign a written agreement saying so. An app isn’t named on that list. So don’t assume that paying for an app makes you the copyright owner. Get the ownership terms in writing.
How to compare quotes
- Write one page. Who will use the app, what they’ll do in it, on which phones, what it has to connect to, and whether it takes money for digital extras or for physical goods and services.
- Send the same page to everyone. Otherwise you’re comparing different apps.
- Ask for three numbers: the build, the yearly running cost (servers, outside services and upkeep), and the store fees.
- Ask whether it’s one app for both phones or two. It changes what every later update costs.
- Ask whether it’s built from a template. Apple’s guideline 4.2.6 says apps made from a commercial template or an app generation service will be rejected unless the business whose content it shows submits them itself.
- Get ownership in writing: both developer accounts, the source code, the signing keys, and the logins for every service the app runs on.
- Do the hours sum. Divide each build price by the hourly wage above, and ask whether that many hours covers everything on your page.
What we don’t know
- Your price. Nobody can give you a real one from an article, us included. Tell us what the app should do, and ask us for the same three numbers you’d ask anyone else for.
- How typical any of the build ranges is. Clutch doesn’t say how many projects or which years its figures cover, and the firms’ ranges come from their own rates.
- Whether the store rules still hold when you read this. Google’s current fee table took effect for US users on June 30, 2026, and its newest Android version rule took effect on August 31, 2026. We last read every source on November 4, 2026, so check the stores’ pages before you plan around a fee.
Short answers
How much does it cost to put an app on the App Store?
Apple charges $99 per membership year for its Developer Program, and Google Play charges $25 once. Those fees only let you publish. Building the app is a separate and much larger cost.
How much does it cost to maintain an app?
None of the sources we read gives a measured figure. Intelivita, an app firm, says about 25% of the build cost a year, without showing how it got there. The parts you can count on are Apple's $99 a year and whatever the servers and outside services cost. Updates are needed too, to keep up with Google's rule on which Android version apps must target, so we'd plan on at least one a year.
Can I make an app for free?
Publishing it isn't free for most businesses: Google charges $25 once and Apple $99 a year, although Apple lets some nonprofits, accredited schools and government bodies ask for a fee waiver. Building it yourself costs your own time instead of a developer's.
Is an app cheaper than a website?
Usually not, in our judgment. An app adds Apple's yearly fee, a store review for every update, and updates to keep up with new phone systems. If customers would visit once and get in touch, a website does that job for less, and Apple's guideline 4.2 says an app should offer more than a repackaged website.
What does Wico charge?
We don't publish prices, because a simple booking app and an app that runs a whole delivery service are different jobs. Describe the app on our contact page and ask us for the three numbers this guide suggests getting from everyone: the build, the yearly running cost and the store fees.
Sources
- Enrollment, Apple Developer Program, Apple. Read .
- App Store Small Business Program, Apple. Read .
- App Review Guidelines, Apple. Read .
- Resolving access issues, Apple Developer Account Help, Apple. Read .
- Overview of app transfer, App Store Connect Help, Apple. Read .
- Get started with Play Console, Google. Read .
- Service fees, Play Console Help, Google. Read .
- Changes to Google Play's service fee in 2021, Google. Read .
- Understanding Google Play's Payments policy, Google. Read .
- Target API level requirements for Google Play apps, Google. Read .
- Use Play App Signing, Google. Read .
- Software Developers, Quality Assurance Analysts, and Testers, Occupational Outlook Handbook, US Bureau of Labor Statistics. Read .
- Copyright Law of the United States, Chapter 1 (section 101: work made for hire), US Copyright Office. Read .
- Mobile App Pricing Guide 2026, Clutch, updated September 21, 2026. Read .
- How Much Does It Cost To Make An App in 2026? An Ultimate Guide, Saigon Technology, updated October 26, 2026. Read .
- App Development Cost: Types, Platforms, Location, Hiring Models, Factors, and Hidden Costs, Intelivita, updated September 18, 2025. Read .