How much it costs to build an app, a web platform or an AI chatbot is the first question anyone who builds digital products gets asked, and the one that gets the worst answers. You will not find a dollar figure here, because it does not exist before we define what gets built; you will find what can be known beforehand: what the price depends on, how many weeks it usually takes, and how to read a quote. The honest answer is "it depends on the scope", which sounds evasive until you understand exactly what it depends on. In this article I explain the variables that move the price, why I do not give a number before defining what will be built, and how I quote: a fixed price in writing for the first version, and hourly for the work that cannot be bounded. The goal is for you to be able to read any quote, mine or someone else's, and know what you are being sold.
TL;DR
- The price of a digital product depends on how many flows it has, what backend it needs, which services it integrates with, whether it ships to the app stores and whether it includes AI. Not on the technology it is written in.
- A number given before the scope is defined is a guess. That is why the first step is a 30-minute call and a written proposal, at no cost if you decide not to go ahead.
- I quote a fixed price for the first version because the scope has already been defined and the risk of estimating wrong is mine. The audit and the maintenance are hourly, because there the scope cannot be pinned down in advance.
How much does it cost to build an app: what drives the price
The price of a digital product is, for the most part, the time of one person with judgment. What makes that time grow is the number of different things the product has to do well. These are the variables I look at before quoting any project, and they explain almost all of the difference between one quote and another:
| Variable | What makes it grow | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Flows and screens | Every complete journey a user can take | Sign up, search, book and pay are four flows, not one app |
| Backend and data | Whether it needs its own server, a database and business rules | A read-only catalog is cheap; an inventory several people edit at once is not |
| Integrations | Every external service the product has to talk to | Payments, push notifications, maps, email, invoicing, a system you already have |
| Publishing | Whether the product goes to the app stores | Accounts, Apple and Google review, signing, and going through it again with every release |
| AI | Whether a language model answers real users | It has to be evaluated before it goes in front of real users, and you have to decide what it does when it is wrong |
| Design | Whether a Figma design exists or the interface still has to be defined | Building on a finished design is faster than deciding it while coding |
| What already exists | Whether you start from zero or from a product in use | An inherited product is quoted after I have read it, not before |
Two of those rows tend to surprise people. The first is publishing to the stores: Apple and Google review is work with its own timelines and rejections, and it repeats with every version. The second is AI: a chatbot that answers well in the demo and badly in front of a real customer is worse than no chatbot, and avoiding that costs evaluation time you never see in the interface.
What does not move the price, or moves it far less than people think, is the list of technologies. Whether the app is written in React Native or in Swift changes important decisions, but it does not change the fact that sign up, search, book and pay are four flows that have to be built and tested.
What I can say before the call are the ranges that come out of my own work. A focused first version of a mobile app or a web platform, with one core flow, real data and a polished interface, usually takes 4 to 8 weeks of full-time work. An AI feature on top of a product that already exists, such as a RAG chatbot or a generation flow, usually ships in 2 to 5 weeks. Larger products, such as a streaming or healthcare platform, are planned in phases and each phase is quoted separately. Those weeks are what gets quoted: the price in the proposal is that time, locked in writing, and with any market rate you know you can work out an order of magnitude before you write to me.
Keep reading
That is the first half. The full walkthrough — with the rest of the implementation, the trade-offs and the things that only show up in production — is on my blog:
Read the full post on ramonchancay.me →
Originally published at www.ramonchancay.me/blog/how-much-does-it-cost-to-build-an-app-fixed-price.
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