How Much Does It Cost to Make an App? Guide for UK Businesses

A mobile app development cost for a basic app in the UK can start from £15,000, while a complex product often reaches £40,000–£100,000+. With such a wide price gap, it is a challenge for businesses to understand whether they are getting a realistic estimate, inflated quote, or else.

That’s why our experts provide a clear answer to “How much does it cost to make an app?” search, allowing businesses to not get trapped by value estimates ot susriciously cheap offers. In this guide, you will see realistic UK price ranges, get what actually drives the cost, and uncover the hidden expenses many agencies leave out of the first quote.

When you compare quotes from UK mobile app development companies, it is important to see if the price corresponds to the level of product complexity. £20,000 minimum viable product and £150,000 enterprise-level platform are two different projects, even though both of them can be termed as “the app.”

Here is a quick comparison of different app types:

Finding the answer to “How much does an app cost?” it is advisable to consider these price ranges as just a budgetary consideration and nothing more. 

The real price is dictated by the logic that lies beneath the user interface and other nuances we will consider in the section below.

In fact, two UK companies can give you estimates on the same application, starting from £35,000 and going up to £90,000 for the same project. That happens because of the scope of work, which includes the backend development, APIs, payments, platforms, UX design, QA, security, etc.

A £35,000 quote may include an MVP with basic functionality and testing. A £90,000 quote may include development of custom back-end infrastructure, admin panel, payment gateway integration, external service integration, QA process, security audit, and post-launch support.

Complexity and feature set

The price discrepancy is mainly due to the complexity of the functionality. Simple registrations might take about 20–40 hours since the logic behind such services is clear and predictable, like registration, logging in, resetting passwords, etc. On the other hand, developing a payment gateway or face recognition feature may take up to 150–300+ hours.

eCommerce mobile app development cost tends to be expensive due to the greater number of components involved: product catalogue, shopping cart mechanism, payments and order fulfilment process, promotion codes, billing, refunds, customer account management, and statistics.

The table below shows how this factor changes estimated development hours and budget impact.

Native vs. cross-platform development

Native development results in two applications – one for iOS and the other for Android. This approach requires two different sets of codes, two testing rounds, platform-specific optimisation, and many more man-hours.

When businesses evaluate different native iOS development companies in the UK, they generally opt for native iOS when their apps require certain requirements.

Either Flutter or React Native may save time from repetition since only a single code base is required for iOS and Android. These frameworks will help developers build an MVP, booking app, eCommerce, a marketplace, an internal application, customer application.

This comparison can be used to demonstrate how platform selection impacts the cost of app development in the UK.

When evaluating Android development companies in the UK, they will likely recommend a native approach for projects requiring hardware support, background tasks, custom notifications, offline capabilities, and platform-specific features.

UI/UX design requirements

A template-based design could be £2,000–£6,000, as the designers use standardised designs, pre-fabricated designs, and standard user flow designs. The cost of custom UI/UX could range from £6,000–£18,000 since the designers will have to develop their own user flows and clickable layouts.

Even a highly advanced design may cost more than £50,000 when the application requires UX design, usability testing, animation, accessibility, dashboard, onboarding process, and a scalable design system.

The following table shows various levels of cost associated with design based on the number of UX design and branding requirements.

A custom UX design is usually necessary for any payment process, booking process, dashboard, onboarding, multistep form, or application in which conversion rate matters. Badly designed UX will require redesigning and rebuilding screens that may consume additional development time.

Based on our experience, budgeting problems emerge once the app launches, not while developing it. The app is up and running; people are using it and the traffic is increasing; and costs, which were small at the planning stage become regular operational costs – hosting, API, payments, monitoring, upgrades, and support.

This aspect of answering, “How much does it cost to build a mobile app in the UK?” is not common, so experienced software development companies in the UK discuss after-launch expenses during the estimation stage, and not afterwards. The reason for this is to prevent a frequent occurrence where companies launch an app successfully but later realise that there are additional costs for hosting, APIs, payment, and maintenance every month.

Here is the list of common hidden fees and their estimation (some numbers are converted from USD):

Cloud hosting is usually affordable at the MVP stage, but costs will scale with the amount of traffic, video storage, database access, and back-end processes used. An accommodation booking app with medium traffic will remain relatively inexpensive, but marketplaces, streamable products, or even apps with AI features will rapidly rise in price.

The cost of third-party APIs depends on their use. The cost associated with Google Maps depends on API calls, whereas Stripe charges fees per transaction. These services seem to be cheap at first; however, with actual use of the system, the running costs will increase.

The maintenance aspect of app development is one that most businesses overlook when it comes to unexpected costs. Every now and then, Apple and Google update their OS platforms; there may be changes to SDKs, library support gets out of date, and there are always changes in security standards.

The price does not always reflect the actual cost of the project even when a low-cost app quote is being advertised. This is because low-cost mobile app development may only account for the surface aspects of their services, like coding and fast turnaround time.

Here are the points often missing from the quote from coders:

• Product planning before developing
• Clean and scalable architecture
• Proper quality assurance (QA) testing across devices
• Security checks and GDPR-aware data handling
• Clear technical documentation

If those steps are not followed, then the application is likely to work without errors, but it will come at the expense of technical debt. It refers to the poor quality of the code written, which introduces unnecessary challenges when trying to implement changes or scale the software down the line.

The upfront expenditure would take care of coding integrity, proper development, internal knowledge, and meeting all the security concerns of the British market, including the GDPR. In most situations, it would cost less than bug fixing resulting from a poor foundation built by freelancers.

Well-prepared apps development cost estimation will be much easier and more precise. Prior to contacting your development team, gather all important information for your future estimation:

• State the primary business objective of the app
• Describe the target audience and user groups
• List the core MVP features for the first release
• Choose the platform (iOS/Android) or cross-platform
• Outline required integrations
• Note any security or compliance requirements
• Share an approximate budget range for the start

For a large number of companies in the UK, the best thing to do would be to begin by developing an MVP (minimum viable product). This enables you to have basic features and test your concept out using actual customers without having to incur too much expenditure.

To answer, “How much does it cost to make an app?” we gathered our experience in building different types of applications and defined what is behind the most obvious factors.

The costs of developing applications in the UK depend upon their complexity, target platforms, design features, integration capabilities, and the expertise required for development. 

The former can be completed with a small budget, while the latter is definitely more expensive due to its numerous features, such as a unique user experience and secure payment processing.

In terms of choosing a mobile application developer for UK-based companies, it’s not about going for the least expensive choice. It’s about finding a reliable partner that will offer you a stable, bug-free app, scalability, and an easy launch process. 

Your application must be designed properly to ensure that it will serve your needs in terms of growth and protect user experience for many years to come.