How much does an app cost in the UK and Ireland? Our cost model, published

Short answer. In our model, a focused first release on one platform is about 480 engineering hours. At our calculator's blended planning rate of £45 an hour, that is £18,500–£25,000. A typical business app on iPhone and Android from one codebase is about 1,500 hours, or £58,500–£79,000. UK agencies typically charge £80–£150 an hour, and at those rates the same hours cost about £122,000–£228,500. Three choices move the price most: the type of app, building two separate native apps (about 70% more hours), and the first feature that needs a real server behind it. After launch, budget about 17.5% of the build price a year for maintenance, plus hosting. The £45 is a planning average, not one price for every engineer: our rates are per engineer, about $30–90 an hour, depending on the engineer's level and experience.

To price your own feature list, use our app cost calculator. It takes about 2 minutes and needs no email.

How we count

Every estimate starts in hours, not pounds. Our calculator runs the same five steps:

1. A base for the type of app. 450 hours for a simple app, 1,100 for a business app, 1,800 for e-commerce, 2,800 for enterprise.
2. Hours for each feature. From 20 hours for social login to 250 for an AI feature.
3. A backend, if the app needs one. None for a simple app, 200 hours for a standard backend, 350 for a custom one.
4. Multipliers. One platform ×0.9. Both platforms from one shared codebase ×1.0. Two separate native apps ×1.7. Custom design ×1.1, premium design ×1.25. A regulated sector (legal, finance, health) ×1.2.
5. Hours × a blended planning rate of £45, shown as a range. 15% either side, rounded to £500. Before anyone has walked through your flows, one number would be a guess.

The £45 is a blended planning rate: an average across the engineers a project needs, used to size a budget. It is not a single price. Our actual rates are per engineer, about $30–90 an hour, depending on the engineer's level and experience (roughly £22–£67 at the calculator's exchange rate), and we work time and material, fixed price or outstaff.

The model's price list: hours and pounds per part

These are the model's own numbers, before the multipliers. The last column is the same hours at the £80–£150 an hour UK agencies typically charge.

Two growth modules are flat and are not multiplied: a loyalty programme (275 hours, £12,375) and a referral programme (115 hours, £5,175). The full rules are in the method section of our app cost calculator.

A feature's own hours are not what it adds to a real app. The multipliers and the backend change that. The lever table further down shows the real effect.

Six apps, priced through the model

How to read it:

• Design to release is the calculator's timeline band: hours divided by 400 hours a month (about 2.5 people working in parallel), shown as about 6–12 weeks up to 3 months, 3–6 months up to 6, and 6–12+ months beyond.
• Running cost a year is not part of the build. It is explained below.
• Euro figures use the calculator's fixed rate of £1 ≈ €1.166 (ECB reference rate, 22 September 2026), rounded to €500. [TEAM SUPPLIES: re-check at publish; the rate may have been refreshed.]

These figures come from our public calculator model on 23 September 2026. Your app will give different numbers, so run yours.

What moves the price: every lever, ranked

Start from the typical business app above: 1,524 hours, £68,580 at the midpoint. Change one thing at a time.

Eleven of these single changes push the midpoint past £79,000, the top of the typical app's range. Payments falls £25 short. So one decision can move the price further than the whole ±15% range, which is why we confirm a fixed price only after a short discovery call.

Three more things stand out.

1. The first server-heavy feature is the expensive one

Payments is 60 hours on the price list, yet adding it costs 231. The reason is the backend. Payments, subscriptions, chat, an admin panel, AI, live tracking and CRM integration all need a custom backend. The first one you pick upgrades the backend from 200 to 350 hours. With the custom-design multiplier, payments comes to (60 + 150) × 1.1 = 231 hours, and 165 of those are the backend upgrade. The second server-heavy feature does not pay for that upgrade again:

• payments alone: +231 hours;
• an admin panel alone: +297 hours;
• both together: +363 hours, not 528.

So if you need one of these features, the next one costs less than it looks. And if you can move all of them to a later release, your first release shrinks by more than the feature hours suggest.

2. Two native apps is the biggest platform decision

It adds about 70% to the hours of one shared codebase. Sometimes native is the right call, for example when the app talks to hardware or needs platform features a shared codebase handles badly. Our post on when native still beats cross-platform goes through the cases where we chose it.

3. A regulated sector costs about as much as adding chat

The ×1.2 adds 304 hours to the typical app. Whoever quotes you, ask what their regulated-sector allowance buys in practice.

The cheap items are cheap: maps and social login add under 30 hours each.

Where these levers showed up in our own work

• Offline mode. On Travel Security Kit, trip tracking had to be connection-aware, because travellers use the app at airports. On the Enterprise POS platform, where our Android engineers worked inside the client's core product team, checkout had to keep working on the store's local network without internet.
• Server-heavy features. Merezha Prava's apps run on a modular Laravel backend with a web admin and CRM integrations: two of the model's server-heavy features in one product.
• Two native apps. Merezha Prava has a native iPhone app and a native Android app. We would build it native again.
• An AI feature. In Shkaf, a wardrobe app, an AI model removes the background from each clothing photo a user adds, so every item looks the same in the closet.
• Subscriptions. On Motiday, a UK motivation app, our 6 months of Android work included the Premium subscription screens. The client has since closed the app.
• Loyalty. A Next Era Solutions developer worked inside Red Robin's mobile team on its ordering app and Royalty loyalty programme. That was team augmentation: our developer was part of the client's team, so the chain's loyalty results are its own, not ours.

Want to know which open question could push your price past the top of its range? Our post on what a discovery phase delivers runs six of them through the same model.

What the model can't price

The calculator prices a new app from a feature list. Two kinds of work fall outside it:

• Hardware. On the Enterprise POS platform, much of the Android work was integration with scales, receipt printers and barcode scanners. The model has no line for that. If your app talks to devices, ask for a scoped estimate, not a calculator range.
• An app you already have. The model can't see the state of code someone else wrote. If you are weighing a fix against a rebuild, start with our free high-level audit: the complaints in your store reviews, the store rules your next update has to meet and, with read access, your crash rates, then a 20-minute walkthrough and a plan you keep. It is a first view, not a code review, so it can't price the fix; that comes once a team looks at the code.

After launch: running costs and store fees

The build range covers the hours in the model. An app also has yearly costs. Our model puts them at:

• Maintenance: 17.5% of the build price a year. For the typical business app, about £12,000. With us, you choose how support is billed after launch: a monthly retainer, or hourly as needed.
• Hosting: £1,200 a year for a simple app, £3,600 for a business app, £8,000 for e-commerce, £24,000 for enterprise.
• Store fees: £75 a year in the model. Apple's developer programme costs US$99 a year (Apple), about £74 at the calculator's exchange rate. Google Play charges a one-off US$25 (Google).

For the typical business app, that comes to about £15,700 a year. The six-app table shows the figure for each app.

Why maintenance isn't optional. Both stores keep raising their technical minimums. Since 28 April 2026, Apple accepts only builds made with Xcode 26 (Apple). From 31 August 2026, Google Play requires new apps and updates to target Android 16, API level 36 (Google Play Console Help). If nobody keeps the app current, the next urgent fix waits for that upgrade first. Our store and platform rules post keeps the dated list. [TEAM SUPPLIES: re-check both requirements at publish.]

If you sell inside the app, the stores take a cut. It is not in the calculator, because it depends on your revenue:

• Apple: 15% if your business made under US$1 million in App Store proceeds the year before and joins the Small Business Program; 30% otherwise (Apple).
• Google Play, for UK users since 30 June 2026: auto-renewing subscriptions pay 10% plus a 5% billing fee on the first US$1 million a year. Other purchases depend on when the user installed the app (Google). [TEAM SUPPLIES: re-check at publish.]

Whoever builds the app, ask what their estimate leaves out, for example third-party service fees (SMS, maps, payment provider), content and marketing.

How long it takes

The calculator turns hours into time at about 400 hours a month, roughly 2.5 people working in parallel. Up to 3 months shows as "about 6–12 weeks", up to 6 months as "about 3–6 months", and anything longer as "about 6–12+ months", from design to release. The typical business app comes to 3.8 months.

Two real reference points: Merezha Prava's first MVP, on iPhone and Android, shipped in 3–4 months. We built Travel Security Kit's native Android app in 6 months.

How to compare our range with a quote you already have

Two quotes in pounds are hard to compare. Two quotes in hours are easy.

1. Turn the quote into hours. Ask for the hours or person-days behind the price, and the rate used. If the vendor won't say, divide: price ÷ day rate = person-days, then × 8 for hours.
2. Put the same feature list into our calculator and compare hours, not pounds.
3. If the hours differ by more than about 15%, ask why. Which features, roles or risks explain the gap?
4. Check what is included: design, the backend, testing, project management and publishing to the stores. These are the usual gaps.
5. Check the first-year total, not just the build: maintenance, hosting and store fees.
6. Check who owns what: the code, the repository and the store accounts. To publish under your company's name on the App Store, you need your own Apple developer account (Apple).
7. Ask what happens after discovery. Is the price then fixed, or does it stay time and materials?

A worked example (hypothetical). A UK agency quotes £140,000 for the typical business app, at £1,000 a day. That is 140 person-days, or 1,120 hours. Our model puts the same scope at 1,524 hours, so the quote plans about 27% fewer hours. That is not a reason to reject it. It is a reason to ask what the agency left out, or what it plans to reuse. Then ask the same question of every quote, including ours.

UK and Irish agency rates, for context

UK. App agencies typically charge about £80–£150 an hour. Two public sources back that range:

• Pocketworks, a UK app agency, puts agency day rates at £650–£1,200 in its guide UK app development costs in a nutshell (Tobin Harris, updated 9 July 2026). Over an 8-hour day, that is about £81–£150 an hour.
• The same guide cites The Wow Company's BenchPress 2026 survey: an average UK agency rate of £122 an hour. We have not read the survey itself: it sits behind a download form, so this figure is second-hand.

Other ways to buy the same hours:

• Freelancers and contractors cost £400–£600 a day in the UK, per the same Pocketworks guide. You then manage them yourself.
• Hiring in-house. The median advertised salary for a UK iOS developer was £85,000 in the six months to 23 September 2026, against £65,000 a year earlier (ITJobsWatch). That is one person's salary before employer costs. Our model assumes about 2.5 people working in parallel. Our team augmentation cost comparison prices one engineer-month each way.

Our rates are per engineer: about $30–90 an hour, depending on the engineer's level and experience. There is no single price. We work time and material, fixed price, or as outstaff (engineers joining your team). Our engineers work remotely across Europe, and you contract with an EU company registered in Estonia. At the calculator's exchange rate, $30–90 is about £22–£67 an hour, so even our top per-engineer rate is below the bottom of the £80–£150 UK agency range.

To size a budget before anyone has seen your flows, our calculator uses one blended planning rate of £45 an hour, an average across the engineers a project needs. At £80–£150 an hour, the same hours cost 1.8 to 3.3 times as much as at that planning rate. It is a planning figure next to our per-engineer rates of about $30–90 an hour, not a price.

Our calculator compares against a lower band, £75–£110 an hour, on purpose: we would rather understate the gap than overstate it. At that band, the typical business app's 1,524 hours would cost £114,500–£167,500. At our £45 planning rate they come to £58,500–£79,000. The calculator's UK rates section lists the sources.

Compare hours, not only rates. A low rate only saves money if the hours are similar. A quote at half the hourly rate for twice the hours is not cheaper.

When the higher UK rate is worth paying. Sometimes it is. For example:

• You want the team in your office every week.
• Your customer or regulator requires a UK-based supplier.
• You want one firm to run your brand, marketing and app together.

Ireland. Our rates are the same for Irish clients; switch the calculator to euro.

Reptile Haus, a Dublin agency, puts Irish agency day rates at €600–€1,000 and hourly billing at €80–€200, depending on seniority, in What Software Actually Costs in Ireland in 2026 (2 August 2026).

Ways to spend less

• Build once for both platforms, unless a feature needs native code. In the UK, iPhone and Android are close to an even split: iOS had 51.5% of mobile use in August 2026 (StatCounter). See iOS app development and Android app development for when native is worth it.
• Or start on one platform (−153 hours on the typical app) and add the second later.
• Launch without server-heavy features if the first release can work without them. That avoids the backend upgrade.
• Start with template design (−139 hours) and invest in design once people use the app.
• Phase it. The calculator's breakdown splits the scope into design (12%), a first release (55%) and expansion (33%). For the typical business app: £8,000, £37,500 and £22,500.

What our real projects took

For a sense of scale, here is what three of our real projects involved:

• Travel Security Kit. We designed and built the native Android app in a 6-month delivery.
• Merezha Prava. The real version of the "client portal" row: native iPhone and Android apps for a Ukrainian law firm's clients, with a backend and a web admin. Case stages, documents, payment status and push updates. The first MVP shipped in 3–4 months, and we built and ran the product for about two years. After launch, the firm got 15% fewer inbound calls. [TEAM SUPPLIES: client OK and owner OK before publishing the sentence "The budget band is $50,000–$199,999." If the client declines, leave it out.]
• Motiday. A UK motivation app. Our part was 6 months of native Android work. The client has since closed the app.

Questions UK and Irish buyers ask us

Next step

• Run your own scope in the calculator: a range and a timeline in about 2 minutes, no email needed.
• Holding a quote? Book a 30-minute cost review call and bring it, or your calculator result. We will compare the hours with you.
• Already have an app? Start with a mobile app audit before you pay for a rebuild.
• See how we run new app and MVP projects, and how to choose a mobile app agency in the UK or Ireland.