What an app costs to build in the UK

Published UK ranges run from £10,000 to well over £150,000. The useful question is not the range — it is which third of it your idea sits in, and that is decided by a handful of features you can check yourself.

The three bands most UK guides agree on

Band	Typical UK cost	What it usually means
Simple / MVP	£10,000 – £50,000	One core job, one type of user, few or no integrations, often a single platform
Mid-range	£50,000 – £150,000	Several user roles, payments, integrations with other systems, custom design
Complex	£150,000 +	Real-time features, heavy data, regulated sectors such as health or finance, multiple platforms

Collated from UK agency pricing guides, 2026. Most business apps are quoted in the £20,000 – £80,000 region.

Which band are you really in?

Most people underestimate their band by one step, for a simple reason: they picture the screens and forget the parts nobody sees. An app is not the buttons. It is the accounts behind them, the admin panel someone uses to manage it, the emails it sends, and the data it keeps safe.

A quick self-test. You are probably not in the simple band if your idea needs any two of these: people paying inside the app, more than one kind of user, a connection to software you already use, or data that is personal, medical or financial.

Web app, or two native apps?

Building separately for iPhone and Android can come close to doubling the build. A web app that works well on a phone, or a single cross-platform app, is frequently the right first step — and it is the decision with the biggest effect on cost that people make least deliberately.

The honest trade-off: native apps can use more of the phone (notifications, offline use, the camera) and live in the app stores. If your users need those things, pay for them. If they do not, you may be buying reach you will not use.

Before you ask anyone for a price, write down

Six answers that move a quote more than anything else. Suppliers who receive them quote closer together.

Who uses it — every type of person, not just the customer
The one job it must do on day one, and what can wait
Whether money changes hands inside it, and how
Every existing system it has to talk to
What data it stores, and whose
Phones, computers, or both

Questions people ask next

What is the cheapest way to build an app?

Build less. The cheapest app is the smallest version that proves people want it — usually one user type, one core job, and a web app rather than two native ones. Everything else can come after it has earned its place.

How long does an app take to build?

Divide the cost by a day rate and you have the effort: at around £500 a day, a £40,000 app is roughly eighty developer-days. With a small team working in parallel that is typically two to four months including design and testing.

What does an app cost to run after launch?

Budget roughly 15–20% of the build cost a year for maintenance, plus hosting and any paid services it uses. See what software costs for the full list.

Find out which band you are in

A Moksy Blueprint asks about your idea in plain English and returns a costed plan — scope, requirements, budget and risks — reviewed by someone who has built this kind of thing before. Then you are quoting against a description, not a guess.