What makes one app cost €3,000 and another €30,000
The biggest factor is the number of screens and what happens behind each one. A screen that shows a list is quick. One that takes a booking, charges a card and emails the customer takes a lot more work, even if it looks just as simple.
These are the pieces that move the price most:
| Piece | Why it adds up |
|---|---|
| Each screen | It has to be designed, built and tested on phone, tablet and desktop |
| User accounts | Sign-up, login, password reset, and making sure everyone only sees their own data |
| Admin panel | Where you or your team manage customers, orders or bookings |
| Bookings or appointments | Calendar, availability, cancellations, and nobody booking the same slot twice |
| Stripe payments | Charges, deposits, refunds, and making sure the money adds up |
| Publishing to the app stores | The App Store and Google Play have their own rules, reviews and timelines |
| Connecting to what you already use | Your invoicing software, Google Calendar, WhatsApp… each connection is a job of its own |
Two more things multiply everything above: design (a functional app is not the same as one with animations and lots of detail) and complexity. An app that handles sensitive data, like health or money, needs extra care on every screen.
Example prices by type of app
Ranges exclude VAT and are worked out with the same rules as our calculator. We give a range because every project is different; we confirm the final price in writing.
| Type of app | What it has | Build |
|---|---|---|
| Simple internal tool | Around 5 screens for your team: job sheets, records or stock | from €2,500 |
| Simple app with accounts | Around 8 screens, user accounts, admin panel and emails | €4,550–6,700 |
| Booking app for your customers | Around 12 screens, bookings, payments, admin panel, published to the stores | €7,500–11,000 |
| Large app or one with sensitive data | 20 screens or more, several connections to other software | over €10,000 |
For context: a large agency usually starts above €20,000. If someone quotes you well below these ranges, ask what's been left out.
iOS, Android or browser: how much difference does it make?
Less than you'd think. Usually we build a single app that works on iPhone, Android and in the browser, so you don't pay three times for the same thing. Publishing to the stores is an extra, because it means preparing listings and screenshots and getting through their reviews.
We only go native (Swift for iPhone, Kotlin for Android) when you need something very phone-specific. If you don't need it, we'll tell you. And if your team will use it on a tablet at the counter, you often don't need the app stores at all.
Start with a first phase
You don't have to pay for the whole app before you start using it. What works best is splitting it into phases and starting with whatever takes up most of your time today:
- Phase one. The minimum needed to get rid of paper or spreadsheets for the task that hurts most. You're using it in weeks, not months.
- Phase two. Whatever your team asks for after using it for a while, which is almost never what you had in mind at the start.
- The rest. Payments, a customer-facing app, connections to other software… when it makes sense.
You pay for each phase once you've seen it finished. If you're a startup, it's the same idea: a first version (MVP) built properly, to test whether the idea works without having to rebuild it when it grows. A full app usually takes 2–6 months, but phase one is ready much sooner.
What it costs to run
An app isn't finished the day it launches. It needs hosting, data backups, updates when iOS or Android change, and someone checking it stays up. With us, app maintenance starts at €60 a month and goes up with the number of users and the hours of changes you want each month. A simple app with a few hundred users and a couple of hours of changes comes to around €150/month.
New features are quoted separately. Anything you pay to third parties, like Stripe, you pay to them directly. And there's no minimum contract: the code and the data are yours, and if you leave one day, you take them with you.
Is an app worth it?
It depends on what not having one costs you. If you pay a platform a commission on every booking, work it out over a year: an app of your own often pays for itself in one or two seasons. We run the numbers in when your own booking system pays off. If your team loses an hour a day copying paper notes into a spreadsheet, that has a price too.
And sometimes it isn't worth it. If there's software that does 90% of what you need for €30 a month, use it. We'll tell you on the first call, even if it means we don't end up working together.