Mobile App Development Cost Calculator

If you build fully native, you write and maintain two separate codebases in two different languages, which roughly doubles the platform engineering effort and the ongoing maintenance. Cross platform frameworks like React Native and Flutter let you share most of the code across both platforms from a single codebase, which is why this calculator treats cross platform as the cheapest way to ship to both stores. The trade off is that a small amount of platform specific work and tuning is still required, so cross platform is cheaper than two native apps but not literally half the cost of one.

The screens you see are rarely the expensive part. Cost balloons in the parts users never notice: a real backend with authentication and data syncing, payment processing and subscription billing, push notifications, offline support, third party integrations, admin dashboards, and the security and compliance work that comes with handling user data. AI features add another layer of cost because they require model selection, prompt design, evaluation, and ongoing usage costs. Build the calculator estimate around the full system, not just the screens, and the number stops surprising you.

A simple single platform app can ship in 6 to 10 weeks. A moderate app with a custom backend and payments usually takes 3 to 5 months. A complex marketplace or AI app on both platforms can take 6 to 12 months for a first version. The honest accelerator is scope discipline: shipping a focused first version, learning from real users, then expanding. A studio that works in fixed two week sprints will get you to a usable app far faster than an open ended hourly build, because the timeline is the constraint, not an afterthought.

Almost always, yes. A single React Native or Flutter codebase shipped to both stores typically costs 30 to 50 percent less than building and maintaining two separate native apps, and it costs less to maintain forever because every fix ships to both platforms at once. Native is worth the premium only when you need bleeding edge platform features, the absolute best performance for graphics heavy apps, or deep integration with platform specific hardware. For the overwhelming majority of startups and businesses, cross platform is the right call.

Plan for roughly 15 to 25 percent of the original build cost per year. That covers bug fixes, hosting and infrastructure, third party service fees, the two annual OS updates from Apple and Google that can break your app if you ignore them, security patches, and small improvements. A $80,000 app costs roughly $12,000 to $20,000 a year to keep healthy. Mobile maintenance tends to run at the higher end of that band because the OS update treadmill is relentless. Use the app maintenance cost calculator to break that down by category.

A freelancer is cheapest per hour but you take on the project management, design, and integration risk yourself, which works only if you are technical. A large agency gives you a full team but at premium blended rates and slower timelines. A small product studio sits in between: a fixed scope, a fixed price, design and deployment included, and a single point of contact. For a non technical founder who needs a complete app shipped without managing a cast of contractors, the studio model is usually the best balance of cost, speed, and quality.