How much it costs to develop an app in 2025 (explained straight)

How much it costs to develop an app is the question we get most often, and the serious answer is another question: what does your app need to do? Two projects that look similar on screen can be an order of magnitude apart in cost, because the bulk of the work is in what you don't see. In this article we explain what the quote depends on and how to keep it under control.

What the cost of an app depends on

Development cost is, in essence, the time of competent people. The variables that determine it are few and clear:

• Number and complexity of features. An app that displays content costs a fraction of one that handles payments, bookings or real-time messaging.
• The backend. Almost every app has a server behind it with a database, APIs and business logic. It's the invisible part of the quote, and often the largest.
• The platforms. iOS, Android or both. Cross-platform frameworks let you share most of the code, but testing and publishing remain double.
• The design. Using standard components costs less than an interface designed from scratch with polished animations and states.
• The integrations. Every external system to connect (payments, business software, CRM, notifications) adds development and testing work.
• Users and permissions. An app with different roles, admin panels and approval flows is a much larger project than a single-user one.

When you compare quotes that are far apart, they're almost always estimating different scopes, not the same work at different prices.

The choices that push the quote up

Some requests look like details but shift the cost significantly. The most common ones we come across:

• real-time features (chat, live tracking, instant notifications), which require more sophisticated infrastructure;
• offline operation with synchronization, one of the trickiest problems in mobile development;
• multilingual content, which multiplies the work on copy, layout and management;
• high security and compliance requirements, for example when handling health data or payments;
• the old business software to integrate, which has no API and needs to be interfaced with ad hoc solutions.

None of these is a wrong request. What matters is recognizing them in the quote and deciding consciously whether they're needed at launch or can wait.

Start from an essential first version

The most effective way to control cost is to reduce the scope of the first version: identify the core flow, the one users will open the app for, and build that extremely well. Everything else goes into later versions, guided by real usage instead of assumptions.

Two examples from our projects. For Osmosi Digitale, a company in Rome, we developed a mobile app for employee training with text and audio content, alongside a CRM panel to manage it: the heart of the project was content consumption, and the rest was built around that. For Tabaccheria Carosia we built an eCommerce and a delivery app: the essential flow was ordering and receiving, and the platform grew around that path.

Starting lean doesn't mean starting badly: it means spending the budget where it produces measurable value, and deciding on later developments with data in hand.

The costs you don't see in the development quote

An app isn't paid for once, and an honest quote tells you so upfront. Factor in from the start:

• the developer accounts for the App Store and Google Play and the publishing and review work;
• the server and services the backend runs on, with costs that grow with users;
• maintenance: mobile operating systems change every year and an abandoned app stops working well within a short time;
• support and small evolutions, because after launch come the feedback and the requests;
• monitoring: crashes, errors, usage statistics. Without it, you're flying blind.

When you evaluate a provider, ask explicitly how they handle post-launch. The biggest risk isn't paying for the development: it's finding yourself a year from now with an app nobody can touch anymore.

How to compare quotes

A few practical criteria for reading the offers you receive: check that the scope is written down (list of features, platforms, included integrations), ask what happens with out-of-scope requests, check that the code and the accounts remain your property, and be wary of figures thrown out without any analysis. A serious provider, before giving you a number, asks questions about your process: it's the sign they're estimating your project and not just any project.

If you want to see how we set up this process, take a look at our mobile and web apps service: from studying the core flow to publishing on the stores.

Want a number for your project?

We develop mobile and web apps always starting from an analysis of the core flow, so the quote reflects what's needed at launch and not a wish list. Book a free call: tell us the idea and we'll give you scope, timelines and costs transparently.