How much does it cost to build a mobile app in 2026?

In six price guides published in 2026, a simple app with one main job costs from under €10,000 to €50,000. An app with user accounts and a backend costs €34,000–€120,000, more where the backend is quoted separately. A marketplace, a real-time app or anything with several kinds of user starts at €86,000–€120,000 and runs well past €250,000.

Both German guides price their bottom tier for one platform, iPhone or Android, so an app for both phones starts in their middle column, and their simple tiers assume a thin backend and no complex integrations. The UK agency marked “backend extra” warns that British quotes often cover the app and not the server it talks to; it adds £5,000–£25,000 for a custom API, or £15,000–£50,000 and up for a full backend with an admin panel. And a booking, ordering or loyalty app, where people sign in, pay, get a reminder and your staff manage the lot from a panel, belongs in the middle column however small it looks on paper.

For an app on both platforms, compare quotes against the same scope. Check whether each includes the backend, Android and iOS versions, testing and publication.

Two native apps, one in Swift for the iPhone and one in Kotlin for Android, cost the most because every screen is built twice. A cross-platform app in Flutter or React Native serves both phones from one codebase for 20–40% less, going by a 2026 survey of 267 app companies. A progressive web app costs least and skips the stores.

The UK studio's April guide lands in the same place, at 60–75% of the dual-native price. Cross-platform gives up little. The exceptions are business apps whose main job is the hardware, such as heavy camera processing, Bluetooth devices or augmented reality, which is where the Munich studio draws the line too.

A progressive web app is a website that installs to the home screen and works offline, and that UK guide prices one at 40–60% of a single native app. No store approves it or takes a cut, and an update reaches everyone at once. On the iPhone it gets no App Store listing, and its notifications only work once the user has added it to the home screen, possible since iOS 16.4.

For a booking, ordering, loyalty or members' app I would pick cross-platform. React Native when your developers already write React for the website, because they can read the app's code from day one; Flutter otherwise, since it draws every screen itself and the two phones need less separate fixing. Native for the hardware cases above. A web app when the users are your staff or customers who already know you and will follow a link, and nobody's day depends on a notification arriving. If the people using it sit at a desk all day, look at a Windows desktop app instead.

For a web app, test the installation and notification steps with the intended users before choosing that route. Extra setup can affect whether people use those features.

The hidden costs of an app sit behind its screens: the backend, the admin panel, push notifications, account deletion and the privacy declarations both stores demand. The backend alone takes 25–35% of an app budget in this year's 267-company survey, the same share as the screens people tap.

The backend is everything the phone talks to: the accounts, the database, the photos people upload, the rules about who may see what, the code that decides when a notification goes out, and the link to your payment provider if the app takes money. A brochure-style app with no accounts can manage without one. Most apps can't.

The admin panel is where your staff run the business side of the app, whether that means approving a new listing, refunding an order, changing the text of this week's offer or finding out why a customer cannot sign in. The panel belongs in the first estimate as a line of its own, because a panel added after launch has to be fitted around data nobody designed to be managed.

Push notifications are cheap to send and slow to get right. Google lists Firebase Cloud Messaging as no-cost on both of its Firebase plans; the hours go into deciding who gets which message and when, the settings screen where people switch them off, and testing on phones that handle a closed app differently.

Two store rules add screens to any app with accounts. Apple's guideline 5.1.1(v) requires a way to delete the account inside the app, and Google Play asks for the same plus a web page where deletion can be requested. Then come the declarations. Apple's App Privacy details and Google Play's Data safety form must declare the data the app collects, including whatever a third-party SDK inside it collects, and Google wants the form and a privacy policy even from an app that collects nothing. Each analytics or crash-reporting library you add becomes an answer on both forms, one you have to keep accurate for as long as the app is listed.

Apple charges developers $99 a year, priced in local currency, and Google Play $25 (about €21) once. On in-app digital sales Apple takes 30%, 26% in the EU from 1 October 2026, or 15% in its Small Business Program. Google Play takes 10% of a developer's first $1 million a year in the US, UK and EEA, plus a 5% billing fee.

Apple's 15% is not automatic. You enrol in the App Store Small Business Program, open to developers new to the App Store and to those whose proceeds stayed at or below $1 million in the previous calendar year. Outside it, auto-renewing subscriptions still drop to 15% once a subscriber has paid for more than a year, under section 3.4 of Apple's Schedule 2. The EU change, announced on 18 August 2026, moves every developer who distributes apps there to one set of terms: 26% on sales through In-App Purchase, 15% for Small Business Program members and for subscriptions after their first year. In the UK and the US the 30% and 15% rates stand.

Google's new rates have applied to users in the US, UK and EEA since 30 June 2026. Past the first $1 million, one-off purchases pay more, but auto-renewing subscriptions stay at 10% plus the billing fee at any revenue level, according to Play Console Help. The billing fee applies only when payment runs through Google Play's own billing.

Neither store takes a cut of physical goods or services. A table booking, a food order, a haircut or a gym membership is paid by card or Apple Pay through your own payment provider: Apple's guideline 3.1.3(e) requires exactly that, and Google Play's payments policy keeps the same kinds of purchase out of its own billing. For a restaurant, a clinic or a shop, the only fee left on each sale is the card processor's.

For an app with accounts and a backend, I would put three to six months in writing, from the first conversation to both stores. The April UK guide allows 8–12 weeks for a simple app and 12–24 weeks for a standard one with user accounts; the June app-industry report says 2–4 and 4–6 months.

1. Scope and a clickable design of every screen: three to five weeks.
2. The app, the backend and the admin panel: eight to fourteen weeks.
3. Testing on real iPhones and Android phones, plus store listings and privacy declarations: two to four weeks.
4. Review, the short part. Apple reviews nine in ten submissions in under 24 hours, by its own count.

Google Play adds the wait that catches people out. A personal developer account created after 13 November 2023 has to run a closed test with at least 12 testers who stay opted in for 14 days in a row, and only then can it apply for production access, which Google says usually takes seven days or less to review, occasionally longer. The rule covers personal accounts. An organisation account avoids it but needs a D-U-N-S number, as a company's Apple enrolment does. The number is free, yet Google warns that getting one can take up to 30 days, and Apple tells you to allow up to seven business days before it can see a new one.

Open both developer accounts in your company's name in the first week, because they stay yours whoever builds the app and the paperwork is the one part of the schedule that no amount of work can speed up.

Budget 15–25% of the build cost every year for updates and fixes; three of this year's price guides, two international and one British, give exactly that range. On a €60,000 app that means €9,000–€15,000 a year, before servers and the Apple renewal. Both stores raise their technical minimums every year.

Since 28 April 2026, every upload to App Store Connect has to be built with Xcode 26 or later and an iOS 26 SDK, and Apple has already named the next step: the iOS 27 SDK from April 2027. From 31 August 2026, new apps and updates on Google Play must target Android 16, API level 36, and an existing app that targets anything below Android 15 stops being offered to new users on newer phones.

These requirements can create maintenance work even when the app has no new features.

Server bills start small. For a young app, Supabase's Pro plan is $25 (about €21) a month with 100,000 monthly active users included, and Firebase lists sign-in as no-cost up to 50,000 monthly active users; past those numbers, the bill rises with every user.

Plan regular maintenance releases so framework and library updates do not accumulate. The maintenance quote should explain what updates and testing are included.

The biggest saving in an app budget is a feature left out of the first version. Every sign-up field, chat screen and location prompt adds design, backend work, answers on two privacy declarations and a support question, and any of them can arrive in version two if the people using version one ask for it.

When we built Versetio, an activity app a child of 6 to 14 works through with a parent, onboarding came down to two questions: a first name or nickname, and an age range. Only the family uses it. With no messaging, there is nothing between strangers to moderate; with no location tracking, there is no location permission to request and no location data to declare.

One question comes before all of this: your own app, or a subscription to an existing booking or loyalty product. Custom software or an off-the-shelf tool sets five years of each side by side. What we build around an app, from the backend to the store builds, is on our software development page.