How much does it cost to build an app?
The honest answer, the real ranges, and the part of the budget most founders underestimate before they ever speak to a developer.
Most apps cost between £30,000 and £300,000. The complex ones go well beyond that.
That range is wide for a reason. An app is not a single product. It is a stack of decisions about platform, features, design quality, team, and what happens after launch. Each of those decisions moves the number, sometimes by tens of thousands.
So the cost question is the wrong place to start. The more useful question is what drives the cost, and which of those drivers you actually control. Some you do. Some you only think you do. The biggest factor in your final bill is rarely how many developers you hire or which framework they choose.
It is the quality of thinking that goes in before any code is written. Most budgets account for development. Very few account for the cost of building the wrong thing.
This page gives you real numbers throughout. It covers the cost ranges, the cost drivers, the UK market specifically, what an MVP actually costs, and the hidden costs that most quotes leave out. By the end you should be able to walk into a conversation with a developer knowing roughly what you should be paying, and why.
App development cost ranges, without the hedging.
These are realistic ranges for the build itself. Strategy, design, testing, and launch sit on top of these numbers, not inside them.
| App type | Typical development cost |
|---|---|
| Simple or single-function app | £30,000 to £60,000 |
| Mid-complexity app | £60,000 to £150,000 |
| Complex or multi-platform | £150,000 to £400,000 |
| Enterprise or regulated industry | £300,000 to £1,000,000+ |
Development costs only. Strategy, design, testing, and ongoing maintenance are not included in these figures.
Five variables that account for most of the variance.
Understanding these before you talk to a developer gives you a more grounded conversation and a significantly better chance of getting an accurate quote.
Platform choice
iOS only, Android only, or both. Cross-platform frameworks like React Native or Flutter can reduce build cost, but they carry trade-offs in performance, native feel, and long-term maintenance. The right answer depends on your audience and your product, not on cost alone.
Feature complexity
A simple app that stores and displays information costs far less than one with real-time updates, payments, third-party integrations, or AI. Each of those adds engineering time, infrastructure cost, and ongoing maintenance. Features compound.
Design quality
Generic, templated UI is cheaper. Considered UX and UI design takes time, and it is the difference between a user staying or leaving after the first session. Design is also where most build cost gets locked in, because every screen has to be engineered as well as drawn.
Team type
Freelancers, offshore agencies, UK agencies, and in-house teams all sit at different points on the cost and risk curve. The cheapest day rate often turns out to be the most expensive total bill once coordination, rework, and quality issues are added in.
Post-launch requirements
Hosting, maintenance, OS updates, bug fixes, and support are ongoing costs that most budgets underestimate. A reasonable rule of thumb is 15 to 20% of build cost per year. If your budget runs out at launch, your app does too.
15 to 25% of the budget determines 80% of the cost.
Most cost conversations start with development. That is the wrong starting point. Strategy and design typically represent 15 to 25% of total project budget, but the decisions made there determine roughly 80% of total cost.
Poor feature prioritisation does not disappear in development. It compounds. A scope that was not tested at the strategy stage becomes a screen that has to be redesigned during build, then a flow that has to be re-engineered after testing, then a release that has to be patched after launch. Each of those steps costs more than the original decision would have done if it had been made properly the first time.
Undefined user flows are the same story. If a developer is asked to build a journey that nobody has thought through, they will make decisions for you. Those decisions will be technically reasonable and product-blind, and you will spend money fixing them later.
Untested assumptions are the most expensive of the three. Every assumption in a brief that turns out to be wrong is paid for twice: once to build it, and once to rebuild it. The first round of payment is invisible because it looks like normal development. The second round is what shows up as overrun, scope creep, or a launch that does not perform.
The reframe is simple. Money spent on strategy and design is the cheapest money in the whole project, because it is the money that prevents the most expensive mistakes. Skipping that phase does not save budget. It moves the budget into a worse part of the project.
Not sure what your app should cost?
We can help you work that out before you talk to a developer.
What a complete app budget looks like from start to launch.
These are typical ranges. Treat them as a planning tool, not a quote. The exact split depends on the product, but the shape is usually similar.
Design and strategy together often account for 25 to 40% of pre-launch spend. That is the part of the budget that decides whether everything after it is well-aimed or wasted. It is also where We Are Affective operates.
App development costs in the UK.
UK rates are higher than offshore alternatives, but the comparison is rarely as simple as the day rate suggests. UK teams carry lower coordination risk, work in your time zone, share legal and contractual frameworks, and remove a long list of small frictions that quietly add cost to offshore engagements.
Indicative day rates in the UK look roughly like this. Independent freelancers sit around £400 to £700 per day depending on seniority. Specialist boutique studios run from £900 to £1,400 per day. Mid-sized agencies typically charge £1,200 to £1,800 per day. Larger agencies and consultancies push beyond £2,000.
Offshore teams can quote materially lower, sometimes £150 to £350 per day. On paper that looks like a saving of 60 to 80%. In practice, the gap closes quickly once you account for project management overhead, communication delays, scope clarification, and the cost of rework when something is built to the wrong spec.
The cheapest option often turns out to cost more once the full picture is in. The right question is not who has the lowest day rate. It is who can deliver the product you actually need without you paying for it twice.
We work with UK founders and product teams to define exactly what to build before development begins.
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How much does an MVP cost?
An MVP is not a cheap app. It is a focused one. The point of an MVP is to learn whether the product idea works by building the smallest possible version that still tests the real question.
A realistic MVP budget for a digital product in the UK sits between £40,000 and £120,000. Anything under £40,000 typically means cutting either design quality or core functionality to a point where the result no longer tests the idea fairly.
There are two reasons a well-scoped MVP ends up in this range. The first is design. A genuine MVP needs enough UX and UI quality to tell you whether the idea works, not just whether you can build something. If the design is poor, you are testing the design, not the product. The second is engineering. Cutting corners in MVP infrastructure to save money at the start tends to cost two or three times as much to unpick later.
The scope questions matter more than the budget. An MVP should do one thing well, for one type of user, in a way that tells you whether they will come back. Every feature added beyond that is testing more than one thing at a time and blurring what you actually learn from launch.
Costs vary significantly by industry and feature set.
These are the most common app types we are asked about. Each one has its own cost shape, regulatory environment, and set of expectations. The guides below cover them in detail.
The costs most budgets miss.
Build cost is the part of the budget most quotes focus on. These are the parts they often leave out. Each one is predictable, and each one is regularly forgotten until it arrives as a surprise.
App store fees
Apple charges a 99 USD per year developer account fee. Google charges a one-off 25 USD. Both stores take a percentage of in-app revenue. None of this is large in isolation; all of it adds up over the lifetime of the product.
Ongoing maintenance
OS updates from Apple and Google break things on a regular cadence. Plan for 15 to 20% of build cost per year in maintenance just to keep the app running, before any new features are added.
Third-party API costs
Maps, payments, messaging, analytics, authentication. Many of these have free tiers that quietly become expensive at scale. Model what your bill looks like at 1,000, 10,000, and 100,000 users before you commit.
Compliance and security
GDPR, accessibility, age verification, financial regulation, health data. Depending on your sector, these are not optional, and they have a real cost in legal review, technical implementation, and ongoing audit.
Redesign after launch
If the first version goes out without proper strategy and design behind it, the version 2 redesign is usually larger than the original build. This is the most expensive hidden cost and the easiest one to avoid.
The questions we get asked most often.
Can I get an app built for under £15,000?
Yes, though scope is everything. At that budget you are looking at a single platform, five to eight core features, and an MVP approach that solves one problem well rather than many problems adequately. Smart use of platform components and proven third-party services keeps quality high without inflating costs. Build in an extra 20 to 30 percent for post-launch essentials like device testing, app store fees, and early bug fixes. You can read more in Can I Get An App Built For Under £15,000?
Is it cheaper to build for iOS or Android first?
The cost difference between platforms is small. The real question is which platform your users are actually on, and which one will give you the cleanest signal about whether the product works. Choosing the wrong one first costs more in lost learning than either platform costs to build. There is more detail in iPhone vs Android App Development: Which Platform Should You Choose First?
What’s the difference between no-code and custom development cost?
No-code tools can deliver a working product for a fraction of custom development cost, sometimes 70 to 90% less. The trade-off is in flexibility, performance, and long-term ownership. No-code is excellent for testing an idea. It is rarely the right answer for a product you intend to scale. The full comparison is in How Much Can You Save Using No-Code vs. Traditional Development?
Should my small business invest in an app?
Sometimes. An app makes sense when it solves a problem your customers already have on their phone, in a way a website cannot. It rarely makes sense as a marketing channel for a small business that does not already have a strong reason to be installed. The full thinking is in Should My Small Business Really Invest In An App?
Three ways to take this further.
Whether you want to send us the details, talk it through first, or simply understand what an engagement looks like, there is a sensible next step.
Send us your project.
If you already know what you’re trying to build and want a considered response, share the details and we’ll come back with what we think the right next step is.
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Thirty minutes to talk through the idea, the budget, and whether We Are Affective is the right team to help. If we’re not, we’ll tell you who is.
Book a call →See pricing.
Indicative pricing for the work we do, so you can map an engagement against the budget you have before we ever speak.
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