There is no honest published range, and I am not going to give you one. Every number you find online is pricing somebody else's app. The way to get a real figure is to write down exactly what you want built, then get two or three people to quote against that same document.

Without the document you are not getting a quote. You are getting a guess, and you will be charged for the difference later.

Why the ranges you find are useless

The word "app" covers a booking form and a two-sided marketplace. Both are apps. They are not the same build, and the difference in price is an order of magnitude.

What actually drives your number:

• How many features are in the first version, and how complex each one is
• How many platforms you want on day one, because each one is its own build
• What has to happen behind the scenes: accounts, payments, data, integrations with other systems
• How many changes you make after work starts
• Who you hire, and whether they are pricing a document or a conversation

The cheapest thing you can do is write the scope

I built a full strategy and one pager for an app idea, and when I finished I thought: if founders had this when they walked into an agency, or hired a designer, or hired an engineer, their lives would be so much better, and they would not waste as much money. That realisation is why I started this company.

Founders arrive at agencies with an idea and no research, and it is a waste of their money, often a waste of their time, and a frustrating experience for everyone. That happens before anyone writes a line of code.

So the sequence that costs least is: research, then scope, then quotes. Not: quotes, then discovery, then surprises.

Get the estimate in sizes, then convert it to money

Sit down with the developer and go through your feature list, asking them to size each item as small, medium, large or extra large. Tell them you know they cannot be precise yet. You are not asking for a commitment, you are asking for shape.

From that you can see where the money is, cut what is not essential to a first release, and ask for a quote on what is left. Releasing in pieces rather than building the whole thing at once also means you can stop, or change direction, before you have spent it all.

A word about no-code and AI, since that is where the cost question usually goes

Building it yourself with no-code or AI tools can be the cheapest start, and plenty of good products begin that way. Two things to know so they do not cost you more later.

First, what happens when the tool does not stretch far enough. People start building, get excited by how much they can do, then get close to launch and find they cannot launch with it. Now you are starting over, and building from scratch takes a lot longer. If you take a Bubble or FlutterFlow app to an agency and ask them to build your real product from it, they will tell you it is a great start and they have to start over.

I watched a company come into the agency I worked at with government grant money, having spent about $500,000 building a prototype on Bubble that barely worked. When we explained what a rebuild would cost, their answer was: yes, but I did that in Bubble in five minutes.

Second, the tools do not tell you what to build. There are plenty of courses teaching you to ship something with no-code or AI, and they work, in the sense that you get an app. Without the research, there is no way to know that what you built solves a real problem for anyone.

The costs people forget

• Design, if you want it to look like something people trust. If you hire a good designer and then just tell them what to build, you are wasting your money, because they can design a better product than your feature list can.
• The app stores, hosting, and whatever services you depend on, every month, forever.
• Maintenance and bugs. Complexity you buy once, you pay for repeatedly.
• Advertising too early. It is a waste of money to run ads before you know onboarding works, because you can pay for a hundred signups and find out none of them get through.

What I would do with a fixed budget

Spend nothing until the research is done. Spend the next portion on a scope document and a design you can hand over. Keep back enough to build the small version twice, because you will learn something in the first build.

Keep reading

How Long Does It Take to Build an App, and Why Most Estimates Are Wrong

Hiring a Developer vs. Learning to Code vs. No-Code

What Do I Need to Know Before Hiring a Developer?

Learn this with me

From Passion to Product is free, six weeks and live, and what you walk out with is the document this article is about: the research, the scope, and a plan you can put in front of anyone you are paying. Week five is the scoping and prioritising week, and a scope is what turns a quote from a guess into a number.

The course being free is deliberate, because the people who most need to stop wasting money are the ones with the least of it.

If you are at a nonprofit or a community organisation on the BC coast, I teach the same six weeks in person in your town, for up to 30 people, and I will help you go after a grant to pay for it.

Join the waitlist, get the workbook, or read about the community cohorts.