Describe your mobile or web app in plain English. We’ll ask two or three questions that actually change the price, then show you a cost range, a timeline, and a breakdown of the work.
What it estimates
Two apps with the same number of screens can cost wildly different amounts. Six things set the price, and they’re why two quotes for the same idea can differ by 3x.
01 / How it works
A language model reads your description. Ordinary code does the pricing. The model is good at working out what you meant and bad at arithmetic, so it never does any.
What the app does, who uses it, what it has to connect to. A language model turns that into a structured specification the pricing engine can work from.
We price your project under every possible answer, then ask only about the handful where the answer moves the total. Usually three to five.
A cost range and a timeline, the work broken down by workstream, what’s driving the price, and what nobody can know yet.
The model never sees a rate, an hour figure, or a multiplier, so it can’t produce a price even if you ask it to. How the estimate is calculated.
02 / More than a number
A price with no explanation is a guess. The estimate breaks down the work, shows the assumptions behind it, and points out the decisions that could save you money.
Customer app with an office side
$38K – $54K
Estimated development cost
14–20
WEEKS
03 / What really changes the price
Every figure on these cards comes out of the same pricing config the estimator uses.
$6K – $11K
what "add chat" actually costs
"Add chat" is one line on a whiteboard and six weeks of engineering. Read receipts, attachments, delivery, notifications, moderation, and the offline case are all part of chat once real people use it, and none of them are optional. The biggest lever on a budget is how many things get built before launch instead of after it.
$3K – $6K
per additional user type
An app with one user type is one app. An app with a customer, a technician, and an administrator is closer to three, because each role needs its own screens, its own permission rules, and its own test pass. Roles multiply design and QA faster than they multiply engineering.
1 week or 1 month
same feature, different system
What it costs to connect your app to something else is decided by the something else. Hooking up to a modern cloud product is about a week. Hooking up to a twenty-year-old system running in your back office, with no safe way to test against it and one person left who remembers how it was set up, is a month. Your app is the same either way.
$10K – $19K
offline plus the sync it implies
Offline is the most underestimated line item in mobile software. Storing data locally is easy. Deciding what happens when two people edit the same record on different devices, and one of them was in a basement for six hours, is a genuine engineering problem with a business decision inside it.
$5K – $9K
Bluetooth, before the surprises
Bluetooth devices, printers, scanners, and sensors add connection lifecycle management, pairing and permission flows, protocol handling, and failure recovery. The cost is set by the device, not the app: a documented protocol is quick, and undocumented firmware is a research project with a deadline attached.
+5% – 35%
across the whole project
HIPAA, SOC 2, and formal accessibility conformance change how software is built, not just what gets documented at the end. Encryption, audit trails, access review, and accessible components are far cheaper designed in than retrofitted, and the review cycle itself consumes calendar time nobody on the project controls.
04 / Planning your budget
Most published app costs imply every project is six figures. Most aren’t. Almost everything we see falls into one of these three.
A focused first release
$15K – $30K
One workflow, done properly, for one kind of user. The right size when you need to prove a market, replace a paper process, or put something real in front of users before committing further.
A production application
$30K – $60K
Where most business applications land. Several connected workflows, more than one kind of user, an administrative side, and integration with something you already run.
A complex build
$60K – $120K
Hardware integration, genuine offline operation, compliance obligations, or a heavy integration surface. Often better delivered in phases than as one release.
These assume a US-based team building software a business will depend on. They exclude the cost of keeping it running after launch, which is usually 15 to 20 percent of the build per year.
05 / Where the number comes from
Every hour range lives in one config file with the reasoning written beside it. Nothing is buried in application code where it can quietly drift.
See how it’s calculatedEvery estimate names what nobody can know yet and says which way each one swings. A vague description gets a loose range, because that’s the honest answer.
Multipliers hit the line items, never the total afterward, so the rows always sum to the headline figure.
Change the platforms, the backend, the number of user types, any feature. The estimate updates as you go, because the pricing engine runs in your browser.
06 / FAQ
What people want to know before they trust a number on a website.
For a professionally built, store-ready application in the United States, most projects land between $15,000 and $60,000. A focused first release that does one thing completely typically runs $15,000 to $30,000. A production business application with several user types, an administrative portal, and real integrations is usually $30,000 to $60,000. Builds involving hardware, genuine offline operation, or compliance obligations run higher. The range is wide because cost is driven by feature count and integration complexity, not by the word "app".
Three reasons. Scope: two teams reading the same brief will assume different feature sets, and the cheaper quote is usually the one that assumed less. Staffing model: an offshore team and a senior in-house team aren’t selling the same thing, and the difference shows up later, in rework. And what’s included: some quotes exclude design, QA, store submission, or post-launch fixes and bill them separately later. Compare the feature lists and what happens after launch, not the totals.
No, and it shouldn’t be treated as one. It’s built from the same kind of hour ranges a studio uses internally, which is close enough to tell you whether a project is financially feasible and to plan a budget conversation. A real proposal requires a conversation about your specific workflow, your existing systems, and what has to be true for the project to be worth doing.
We ask for a name and an email once, right before the estimate appears, and we store them along with the project you described. The estimate itself is free and complete: no paywall, no partial result, and nothing held back until you take a call. See the privacy page for exactly what’s kept and for how long.
They cost roughly the same to build. iOS has less device fragmentation to test against, which saves QA time, but App Store review is stricter and can add calendar time near launch. Android has more devices and OS versions in real-world use, which adds testing. The meaningful decision isn’t iOS versus Android. It’s one platform versus two, and whether those two share a codebase.
Budget 15 to 20 percent of the original build cost per year. That covers developer accounts, hosting, third-party services, and the engineering time to keep up with annual iOS and Android releases and dependency changes. An app that receives no maintenance typically starts breaking within twelve to eighteen months, usually right after a major OS release.
A focused first release is typically 10 to 16 weeks from kickoff to store submission. A production business application is usually 16 to 28 weeks. Complex builds run longer and are often phased so something real ships before the whole thing is done. Add one to two weeks at the end for App Store and Play Store review, which is outside anyone’s control.
Cost guides
The plain answer, the real numbers, and the reasoning behind them.
What actually drives the price of a mobile application, line by line.
Which line items cross-platform shrinks, and which it doesn’t touch.
App Store review, Apple’s release cadence, and when iOS-only is right.
Device fragmentation as a real QA cost, and why field work starts here.
How browser applications differ, and when you need neither an app nor one.
Your idea, with a price on it
About two minutes, and the whole estimate is free.
Estimate my app