Ask five agencies what an app costs and you'll get five evasions. Here's the actual answer, based on what we quote in the Charlotte market in 2026 and what it cost to build our own apps, ChinCheck and Mara.
The short answer: 2026 ranges
| Project type | Typical cost | Timeline | What it looks like |
|---|---|---|---|
| Focused MVP | $10k – $25k | 6–10 weeks | One core feature done well, accounts, a clean UI, live on both stores. Enough to put in front of real customers or investors. |
| Standard business app | $25k – $50k | 10–14 weeks | Booking, ordering, loyalty, or field-service tools — with payments, push notifications, an admin view, and a custom backend. |
| Complex / AI-powered product | $50k – $100k+ | 3–6 months | Computer vision, voice AI, realtime features, heavy integrations, or anything that has to scale to thousands of users on day one. |
Every project we take gets a fixed quote after a free scoping call, so these ranges become one number with milestones before you commit a dollar.
What drives the cost up
- Custom backend logic. If your app needs its own database, user accounts, and business rules server-side (most do), that's real engineering. Apps that only display content are far cheaper.
- AI features. Computer vision, voice interfaces, and LLM-powered features add design and engineering time — plus ongoing per-use costs you should understand before you build. We build these routinely, and we'll tell you honestly whether your idea needs them.
- Integrations. Every system your app must talk to — your POS, CRM, scheduling software, payment processor — adds scope. Some have great APIs; some fight you.
- Realtime anything. Live chat, live tracking, live video. Doable (we've shipped peer-to-peer live video), but it's the deep end of the pool.
- Two separate native codebases. Building Swift for iOS and Kotlin for Android separately nearly doubles cost. There's usually a better way — see below.
What keeps the cost down
- One codebase for both platforms. We build with React Native and Expo: one codebase, native performance, both stores. This is the single biggest cost lever in mobile development — it's how our own apps ship to iPhone and Android simultaneously.
- A ruthless MVP scope. The most expensive words in app development are "while we're at it." Launch the one feature your customers actually need; add the rest once real usage tells you what matters.
- Proven infrastructure over custom. Authentication, file storage, push notifications, and payments all have battle-tested services. We assemble them instead of rebuilding them — and pass the savings on.
The ongoing costs nobody mentions up front
- Apple Developer Program: $99/year. Google Play: $25 one-time.
- Hosting and services: typically $25–$300/month depending on usage — database, file storage, push delivery, and any AI usage costs.
- Maintenance: budget roughly 15–20% of the build cost per year. iOS and Android update annually, store policies change, and users find edge cases. An unmaintained app slowly breaks.
Why we quote fixed prices
Hourly billing puts all the risk on you: every misestimate, every rewrite, every "that took longer than expected" lands on your invoice. We scope carefully, quote a fixed price broken into milestones, and eat our own misestimates. It forces us to scope honestly — which is exactly what you want from your developer.
Get your actual number
Ranges are useful; a quote is better. Tell us what you want to build and we'll give you a fixed price and timeline — free, and useful even if you don't hire us. If a website or off-the-shelf tool would serve you better than a custom app, we'll say so on the first call.