Ask five studios what an app costs and you will get five ranges, all of them wide. That is not evasion. It is that "an app" describes a photo-sharing prototype and a regulated banking platform equally well.
Here is what actually drives the number.
The three questions that move the price most
Does it need accounts? The moment users log in, you have added registration, password reset, sessions, roles, a database of people, and a legal duty to look after their data. That is rarely less than two weeks of work and it changes your obligations under UK GDPR.
Does money change hands? Payments bring a provider integration, receipts, refunds, failed-payment handling, reconciliation and a support burden. Subscriptions are harder than one-off payments, because you inherit renewals, cancellations and dunning.
Does it work offline? This one surprises people. An app that must function on the Underground needs local storage, conflict resolution and sync. It is one line in a brief and often weeks of engineering.
Realistic ranges
- £3,000 – £8,000 — a marketing site, properly built: fast, accessible, editable by you, good technical SEO
- £8,000 – £20,000 — a web application: accounts, a dashboard, a database, an admin view
- £20,000 – £45,000 — a native mobile app worth putting your name on, submitted to the stores
- £45,000+ — multi-platform products with integrations, payments and real scale
If a quote comes in far below these, ask what has been left out. It is usually testing, accessibility, or the fortnight after launch when real users arrive.
Where budgets get wasted
The expensive mistake is not choosing the wrong framework. It is building the wrong thing carefully.
The cheapest feature is the one you decide not to build. The second cheapest is the one you cut after a prototype rather than after launch.
We have never regretted spending a week on wireframes. We have regretted skipping them.
What to ask any studio
- What happens if we go over scope — who pays?
- Who owns the code, the repository and the store listing?
- What is included after launch, and for how long?
- Can we see something working before the end?
If the answers are vague, the quote is vague too.