The gap between "apps from €5,000" and a six-figure quote for the same brief isn't dishonesty — it's a different scope. Here are the numbers we actually use when we price a brief, and the line items that explain the difference.
The four brackets in 2026
| Bracket | Price | Duration | Right for |
|---|---|---|---|
| No-code | €0–5K | 1–3 weeks | Validation, content apps |
| MVP | €25K–60K | 4–8 weeks | First market-ready version |
| Production-ready | €60K–150K | 8–16 weeks | Most B2C apps |
| Platform-grade | €150K–400K | 16–28 weeks | The app is the product |
These assume senior engineers and designers throughout. Junior teams cost less per hour but typically take 1.5–2x longer and leave more technical debt — total cost of ownership is rarely lower.
We broke the matching timelines down in how long mobile app development actually takes. The brackets are ranges on purpose — any supplier who collapses one into a single number is making a commitment, not an estimate, and software project estimation covers how to tell the two apart.
No-code (€0–5K)
App builders and generators. You pay a licence instead of engineering.
What you give up: custom data models, offline capability, push segmentation, native system features — and store compliance sits with the vendor, not with you. Apple routinely rejects apps that don't offer standalone functionality.
For validating demand before committing budget, this is the correct choice.
MVP (€25K–60K)
Tight scope, one platform first, no third-party integrations beyond analytics and crash reporting.
What you give up: animation polish, an admin panel, segmented push. You get a usable v1 — and you'll rewrite roughly half of it next quarter. That isn't a failure; it's the price of speed. It just needs to be in the plan.
Production-ready (€60K–150K)
Auth via email, Apple and Google; one or two integrations (payments, analytics, push); a real design system; CI/CD from day one. Most B2C apps live here.
Typical scope: full sign-up and onboarding, 5–10 main screens with motion, real-time data sync, in-app purchases or subscriptions (StoreKit, Google Play Billing), analytics and crash reporting.
Platform-grade (€150K–400K)
Multi-tenant data, offline-first architecture, complex permissions, native modules, large content libraries. When the app is the product rather than a companion to it.
The five real cost drivers
Screen count doesn't set the price. These do:
- The backend. The single most underestimated line item. An app without a server is a user interface. Add accounts, sync, roles or payments and a second project appears behind the app — often comparable in size. When a quote omits it, the price looks lower without being lower.
- Integrations. Payment providers, identity, shipping, ERP. Each one carries its own error handling, its own sandbox that behaves differently from production, and its own maintenance — see API integration.
- Store readiness. App Store Connect, Play Console, privacy manifests, App Tracking Transparency, IAP rules. Predictable, but not free — and each rejection round costs days.
- Polish. Transitions, loading states, empty states, error paths, accessibility. The distance between "works" and "feels finished" is typically 20–30% of engineering time.
- Platform strategy. See below — this decision moves the budget by 20–40%.
Native or cross-platform?
Native (Swift + Kotlin) is right when you're shipping immersive UX (AR, custom camera, complex animation), when platform-specific features matter (Live Activities, Widgets, Wear OS), or when the app is the product itself.
Cross-platform (Flutter, React Native) is right when you need both platforms at once, when your team can support one stack better than two, and when 95% of the experience is identical across platforms.
For most B2C apps in 2026 the performance gap is invisible to end users. The full trade-off is on our cross-platform development page, with platform-specific detail under iOS.
The arithmetic: two separate native apps approach 2x a single platform. Cross-platform costs 15–30% more than one native app and covers both.
What it costs after launch
15–20% of build cost per year. For an €80K app that's €12K–16K annually:
- iOS and Android OS updates, SDK migrations
- store compliance when policies change
- servers, monitoring, crash analysis
- small improvements
Unlike a website, this isn't optional. Apple and Google force annual changes; an unmaintained app stops working within two OS generations.
Why quotes differ by 5x
These line items explain almost all of the gap. Ask for each one separately:
- Backend — included, or "client provides"?
- Design — a design system, or a template?
- QA and devices — how many real devices are tested?
- Store submission — who files it, who absorbs rejection rounds?
- Maintenance — response time, availability, who is liable?
A supplier who can't price these five separately hasn't costed them.
Where nearshore changes the number
A senior team in Istanbul runs 30–45% below Western European agency rates at comparable seniority, within one to two hours of time difference and inside GDPR when the processing agreement is in place. The comparison with real figures is on nearshore costs, and the decision framework in nearshore vs offshore.
What it does not change: an unclear scope doesn't get cheaper because the hourly rate drops. The five drivers above apply unchanged. Nearshore lowers the price per hour, not the number of hours.
How we estimate
Before quoting, we need four answers:
- What must the app do that nothing else can?
- Which systems must it connect to — and do those interfaces already exist?
- One platform or both, and why?
- Who operates it after launch?
That produces a range with the assumptions it rests on — never a number without them. How we run projects from there is on our mobile app development page, and what shipping at scale looks like in our programmatic directory case study.
To apply the brackets above to your own scope, the app development cost calculator runs the same arithmetic with its coefficient table published — which also makes it usable for checking someone else's proposal.
If you already have a quote and want to know whether the scope is complete, send it over — you'll get a second-opinion breakdown within 48 hours listing what's missing from it.