We get it. You have an idea, a budget, and a lot of questions. Maybe you have been Googling "how much does it cost to build an app" and gotten answers ranging from $5,000 to $5,000,000 — which is not exactly helpful.
At Apptitude, we take dozens of discovery calls every quarter. The same questions come up again and again, and they deserve straight answers. Not sales pitches. Not "it depends" followed by silence. Real talk from engineers who build this stuff every day.
Here are the questions we hear most, answered honestly.
Can I build an app for $10K?
Yes — but let's talk about what that actually means.
For $10,000, you can build a focused MVP (minimum viable product) that does one thing well. Think: a single-platform mobile app with user authentication, a core feature loop, and basic data storage. A booking tool. A simple marketplace listing flow. A utility app with a clean interface.
What you cannot get for $10K is a polished, feature-rich product on both iOS and Android with real-time chat, payment processing, admin dashboards, push notifications, and a custom backend. That is a $50K-$150K+ conversation, depending on complexity.
Here is how we think about budget tiers:
- $5K-$10K: No-code or low-code MVP. Tools like FlutterFlow, Bubble, or a well-configured Supabase backend with a simple React Native frontend. You are validating an idea, not building a business yet. Design will be functional but not bespoke.
- $10K-$30K: A real custom MVP. One platform, core features, clean UI, basic backend. Enough to get in front of users and start learning.
- $30K-$75K: A solid V1 product. Cross-platform support, thoughtful UX, integrations with third-party services, and an architecture that can scale.
- $75K-$200K+: A mature product with multiple user roles, complex business logic, real-time features, admin tooling, and infrastructure that handles serious traffic.
The biggest mistake we see at the $10K budget level is trying to build a $75K app and just cutting corners everywhere. You end up with something that is half-finished in every direction instead of fully finished in one direction. Our advice: ruthlessly scope down. Pick the one workflow that matters most, build it properly, ship it, and learn from real users before spending another dollar.
One more thing — your budget is not just development cost. Factor in an Apple Developer account ($99/year), Google Play registration ($25 one-time), any third-party API costs, and hosting. These are small numbers individually, but they add up when cash is tight.
Should I go native or cross-platform?
For most startups and new products, cross-platform is the right call. Specifically, React Native or Flutter.
Here is why: you get one codebase that runs on both iOS and Android, which cuts your development and maintenance costs roughly in half. The performance gap between cross-platform and native has narrowed dramatically. For 90% of apps — anything that is primarily UI-driven with standard interactions — users will never notice the difference.
Go cross-platform (React Native or Flutter) when:
- You need to be on both iOS and Android
- Your app is content-driven, form-driven, or CRUD-based
- Your budget is under $100K
- Speed to market matters more than pixel-perfect platform conventions
- Your team (or your dev shop) has stronger web/JavaScript talent
Go native (Swift/Kotlin) when:
- You are building something performance-critical: games, video processing, AR/VR, complex animations
- You need deep integration with platform-specific hardware (Bluetooth LE with specific protocols, advanced camera features, on-device ML pipelines)
- You are only targeting one platform and want the tightest possible experience
- You have the budget to maintain two separate codebases long-term
Between React Native and Flutter, we lean toward React Native for most client projects. The ecosystem is more mature, the talent pool is larger, and sharing code with a React web app is a real advantage. Flutter is excellent — especially for highly custom UI — but the Dart ecosystem is smaller, and finding Flutter developers for long-term maintenance is harder in most markets.
The one thing we will push back on: do not go native on both platforms with a $30K budget. You will get two mediocre apps instead of one good one. Pick cross-platform or pick one platform to start.
How long does it take to build an app?
The honest answer is 2-6 months for most custom apps, but that range is wide for a reason.
Here is a more useful breakdown:
- Simple MVP (no-code/low-code): 2-4 weeks. You are assembling pre-built components, not writing custom code. Fast, but limited.
- Custom MVP (single platform, 3-5 screens, basic backend): 6-10 weeks. This assumes a clear scope, existing design direction, and a small focused team.
- Full V1 product (cross-platform, 10-15 screens, custom backend, integrations): 3-5 months. Design, development, testing, iteration, and app store submission.
- Complex product (multiple user types, real-time features, admin portal, third-party integrations): 5-9 months. Often longer if requirements shift during development, which they almost always do.
The number one thing that extends timelines is not technical complexity — it is decision-making. Every week you spend debating button colors, rethinking user flows, or adding "just one more feature" before launch adds cost and delay. The teams that ship fastest are the ones that make decisions quickly and treat V1 as a learning tool, not a final product.
Another timeline killer: underestimating design. If you show up with napkin sketches and expect development to start on day one, you are adding 2-4 weeks of design work to the front of your timeline. Show up with wireframes or a Figma prototype and you will save real time and money.
At Apptitude, our typical engagement for a custom MVP runs 8-12 weeks from signed contract to app store submission. That includes a focused discovery sprint, design, development, QA, and deployment. We have done it faster when scope is tight and the client is decisive.
Do I need a backend?
Maybe not. And that can save you a lot of money.
You can skip a custom backend and use a Backend-as-a-Service (BaaS) like Firebase or Supabase when:
- Your data model is straightforward (users, posts, messages, basic relational data)
- You need authentication, file storage, and a database but nothing exotic
- You want real-time sync out of the box
- Your user base will be under 100K for the foreseeable future
- You are building an MVP and want to move fast
You need a custom backend when:
- You have complex business logic that should not live on the client (pricing engines, matching algorithms, multi-step workflows)
- You need to integrate with multiple third-party APIs server-side (payment processors, shipping APIs, AI model endpoints)
- You have strict compliance or data residency requirements (healthcare, finance, government)
- You need background job processing, queuing, or scheduled tasks
- You want full control over your data and infrastructure
Here is an important consideration most people overlook: data ownership and portability. Firebase is convenient, but you are locked into Google's ecosystem. If you ever want to migrate, it is painful. Supabase, being built on Postgres, gives you a much cleaner exit path. We generally recommend Supabase over Firebase for new projects unless you specifically need Firebase's real-time database or ML Kit integration.
For many of our clients, we start with a managed service like Supabase for V1 and plan the migration to custom infrastructure when the product proves itself and the business logic demands it. This is not cutting corners — it is smart capital allocation. Spend your money on the product experience, not on infrastructure you do not need yet.
What happens after launch?
This is the question nobody asks during discovery, and it is the one that matters the most.
Launching your app is not the finish line. It is the starting line. Here is what to budget for:
Ongoing maintenance: $1,000-$5,000/month depending on complexity. This covers bug fixes, dependency updates, OS compatibility (Apple and Google release new OS versions every year and will break things), security patches, and minor improvements. You cannot skip this. An unmaintained app will be pulled from the app stores within 1-2 years.
App store compliance: Both Apple and Google regularly update their policies. Privacy labels, data handling disclosures, new permission models — someone needs to keep up with these and update your app accordingly. Apple in particular has started cracking down on apps that have not been updated recently.
Monitoring and infrastructure: Error tracking (Sentry), analytics (Mixpanel, PostHog, or even simple Google Analytics), uptime monitoring for your backend, and log management. These tools have free tiers that work for early-stage apps, but budget $50-$200/month as you grow.
User feedback loops: The most valuable thing that happens after launch is learning from real users. Build in mechanisms for feedback — in-app surveys, support channels, session recording (with consent), and crash reporting. The data you collect in the first 90 days after launch should drive your entire V2 roadmap.
The real cost nobody mentions: your time. After launch, you are triaging bug reports, responding to app store reviews, prioritizing feature requests, and making product decisions. If you do not have a technical co-founder or a retained development partner, you will feel this gap fast.
Our recommendation: budget 15-20% of your initial development cost per year for maintenance, and keep a development partner on retainer rather than trying to find someone new every time something breaks. The context-switching cost of onboarding a new team to fix a bug in an app they have never seen is brutal — for your timeline and your wallet.
Got a question we did not cover? We do free discovery calls where we will give you the same straight answers — no obligation, no pitch deck. Just an honest conversation about what it takes to bring your idea to life.