What app development costs—and what changes the number

A bespoke app or business system in the UK typically costs between £15,000 and £100,000, and an MVP or first version usually lands between £15,000 and £40,000. A written estimate should follow discovery and scope. All the figures on this page exclude VAT. Where your project sits inside those ranges comes down to a short list of things, and they are all below.

Most agencies will not put numbers on a page like this, which is why you have probably read four cost guides today that all said “it depends” and then asked you to book a call. It does depend, and here is what it depends on.

The ranges

What you’re building
Typical UK range
Typical timeline
What you’re building
MVP or first version
Typical UK range
£15,000 to £40,000
Typical timeline
8 to 12 weeks
What you’re building
Mobile app, one platform
Typical UK range
£25,000 to £60,000
Typical timeline
8 to 12 weeks
What you’re building
Mobile app, iOS and Android
Typical UK range
£40,000 to £100,000
Typical timeline
3 to 5 months
What you’re building
Business system or internal platform
Typical UK range
£15,000 to £60,000
Typical timeline
8 to 12 weeks for a first phase, 3 to 5 months for a full system
What you’re building
Web portal or platform
Typical UK range
£20,000 to £60,000
Typical timeline
8 to 12 weeks for a first phase, 3 to 5 months for a full build
What you’re building
Connected device (BLE or IoT)
Typical UK range
£40,000 to £100,000
Typical timeline
3 to 5 months

What you’re building

Typical UK range

Typical timeline

MVP or first version

£15,000 to £40,000

8 to 12 weeks

Mobile app, one platform

£25,000 to £60,000

8 to 12 weeks

Mobile app, iOS and Android

£40,000 to £100,000

3 to 5 months

Business system or internal platform

£15,000 to £60,000

8 to 12 weeks for a first phase, 3 to 5 months for a full system

Web portal or platform

£20,000 to £60,000

8 to 12 weeks for a first phase, 3 to 5 months for a full system

Connected device (BLE or IoT)

£40,000 to £100,000

3 to 5 months

These figures are broad planning examples, not a quote or a promise of market pricing. If your budget is below £10,000 we will say so early rather than take the project and disappoint you, and we will usually be able to point you at an off-the-shelf tool that does most of the job for a fraction of it.

What moves the number up

Silhouetted group in business meeting with two men shaking hands against yellow background.
01
Integrations with systems you already run are the most common reason a build costs more than a client expected. Connecting to a modern accounting package with a documented API is a small piece of work. Connecting to a sixteen-year-old on-premise system with no API is a project in its own right, and the cost sits in working out what it will accept rather than in writing the code.
Silhouette of a woman sitting at a table, writing on a notepad next to an open laptop in a minimalist room.
02
Hardware changes the shape of everything. Bluetooth and connected-device work brings firmware protocols, physical test rigs, a device matrix you cannot emulate, and certification cycles that run on somebody else’s timetable. It is some of the most interesting work we do and it is not priced like an app.
Silhouettes of a man and woman facing each other, both looking at their smartphones.
03
Offline working sounds like a small feature and is not. If your field teams work in basements, plant rooms and rural sites, the system has to hold data locally, resolve conflicts when two people edited the same job, and sync cleanly when signal comes back. That is a design decision taken at the start, not a switch flicked at the end.
Silhouettes of three people working at a desk with three computer screens against a green background.
04
Regulated sectors carry their own weight. Healthcare, clinical research, pharmacy and financial services all bring audit trails, data residency, consent handling and validation evidence. We build in these sectors regularly, so it is familiar ground, but it is real work and it shows up in the price.
Silhouettes of two construction workers wearing helmets shaking hands against a pink background.
05
Multiple user types multiply the build. A system used by field staff, office staff, customers and contractors is four sets of screens, four sets of permissions and four sets of things that can go wrong. One of the fastest ways to bring a number down is to work out which of those audiences genuinely needs their own view on day one.
Silhouetted group of six diverse business people standing in a circle, engaged in discussion against an orange background.
06
Ambition in version one is the last and the biggest. Almost every brief we receive contains two or three products. Building all of them at once is what turns a £30,000 project into a £90,000 one, and it usually delays the thing that would have proved the idea.

What brings it down

0
1
MVP
Scoping hard is worth more than any technical decision. Cutting version one to the features that test the riskiest assumption is the single largest lever on cost, and it is the point of building an MVP at all.
0
2
Discovery
A proper discovery before the build pays for itself. Scoping against what actually happens in a business, rather than what the brief assumed, is what stops the expensive mid-build discovery that the process nobody documented is the process everything depends on. The depth, timing and fee are agreed before work begins.
0
3
Reuse
Reusing proven patterns rather than inventing new ones matters more than clients expect. Authentication, file handling, notifications, audit logs and permissions are solved problems. Money should go into the part of the system that is specific to your business.
0
4
Phasing
Phasing works when it is planned rather than improvised. A good phased plan gives each release a clear purpose, cost and decision point, so the next phase is based on evidence rather than momentum.

The costs nobody quotes you

Budget 15 to 20% of the build cost per year for support and maintenance. That covers fixing things, keeping up with operating system and browser releases, dependency and security updates, and small changes as the business moves. Software that gets no maintenance degrades, because everything around it keeps moving.

On top of that sit the running costs of the thing itself: hosting and database, which for most business systems is tens of pounds a month rather than hundreds, the Apple Developer Program at $99 a year and Google Play at a one-off $25 if you are publishing apps, email delivery, and any metered service like SMS where you pay per message. We will give you these as real numbers for your build rather than a percentage.

Then there is the version after this one. The best outcome of a first release is that it works and people want more of it, so it is worth knowing now that a successful project has a second phase in it. Budget for the fact that you will want one.

Man in yellow shirt writing on a whiteboard with notes about CMS, SMP, and API consumers.

Why the £5,000 quote usually costs more

You can get an app built for £5,000. The apparent saving can disappear when a product must be rebuilt.

What tends to arrive is something that demonstrates well and falls over under real use: no tests, no documentation, credentials hard-coded into the app, a database design that cannot take a second feature, and a codebase nobody else can pick up. The rebuild costs more than the original build would have, and you have lost the months in between.

A low-cost approach does work when the scope is genuinely simple and you are buying something small. It stops working the moment the software has to run part of your business.

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Man in glasses writing on a whiteboard with numbers 3, 4, and 5 and a simple diagram.

Common questions

Most bespoke apps and business systems in the UK cost between £15,000 and £100,000 excluding VAT. A single-platform mobile app typically runs £25,000 to £60,000, and an app for both iOS and Android £40,000 to £100,000. The range is wide because integrations, hardware, offline working and regulated-sector requirements move the number more than the number of screens does.

Between £15,000 and £40,000 for a first version built properly enough that real users and real investors take it seriously, typically 8 to 12 weeks. You will see lower numbers quoted elsewhere, and they usually describe a demo rather than a product you can build a business on. Learn about MVP Development

Because two projects that sound identical in a brief can be very different builds. The things that move the price are integrations with existing systems, hardware, offline working, compliance requirements, and how many different types of user need their own view of the system.
Budget 15 to 20% of the build cost per year for support and maintenance, plus the running costs of hosting and any metered services. For most business systems that second figure is smaller than clients expect.

No. Discovery is scoped around the decisions the project needs to make, ending in a plain-English recommendation of what is worth building, what is not, and what it should cost. If the answer is that you should buy an off-the-shelf tool instead, we will tell you that. Learn about our discovery process

You do. Full IP assignment on completion, no lock-in, and a documented handover.

If you want a number for your project rather than a range, that is what discovery is for. Book a call.

Contact us