YC partners keep repeating the same survival rule: make your $600k pre-seed last 24 months. That caps total burn near $25k a month, and the largest line item is usually the cost to build an app.
In 2025, putting together a mid-complexity mobile product chat, payments, and a modest AI feature runs $50k–$120k. Miss that by 30 % and a two-year runway shrinks to fifteen months, well before marketing or support enters the spreadsheet.
Why Most Founders Get App Costs Wrong
In YC’s S22 batch, one team budgeted $50k to build a simple app for real estate agents with just listings, chat, and notifications. It looked solid on paper. A local agency agreed. But six weeks in, real users broke things. The backend couldn’t handle image uploads. Push notifications failed on half of iOS devices. Firebase limits kicked in early. Final cost? $98k, nearly double.
They didn’t get scammed. They just missed what most early-stage founders miss:
- They budgeted only for features, not the systems behind them.
- They ignored post-launch costs like bug fixes, updates, and app store rejections.
- They didn’t account for growth, like higher API usage or server upgrades.
If you’re planning a build, account for three layers:
- The app itself: UI, features, basic backend.
- Infrastructure: hosting, auth, storage, monitoring.
- Support and iteration: bug fixing, small updates, and user feedback loops.
To avoid surprises, most YC grads sanity-check their numbers upfront with an app cost calculator. It’s three minutes of prep to save months of pain.
What Really Pushes the Price Up: Five Knobs You Can Turn
Most founders anchor on a headline figure, usually what it took to hack together a prototype. That covers screens and buttons, but not the infrastructure, compliance, and post-launch fixes that turn a demo into a real product. These five levers are what quietly stretch the bill.
1. Feature Depth
Login screens and a plain content feed can be built for $30–50k. Add real-time chat and you’re another $15–25k in the hole. Bolt on an AI “smart assistant”? Budget an extra $20–40k and a few more weeks. A YC fintech team in the W23 batch learned this the hard way when their “one quick GPT feature” doubled the scope and delayed launch by six weeks.
2. iOS, Android, Or Both
Single-platform apps are roughly 30 % cheaper than going dual-platform. Flutter/React Native can trim 20–40 % off a v1 budget, but heavy graphics or sensor work still run better with native code.
One health-tech startup shipped a Flutter MVP for $70k, hit device-sync limits, and spent another $60k rewriting native. Cheap isn’t cheap if you pay twice.
3. Design Ambition
Off-the-shelf UI kits are basically free. Custom animations, brand-level polish, and a full accessibility testing plan cost $10–20k. A cosmetics app out of YC S21 sank $15k into pixel-perfect design and credits that spend for its first thousand paying users. Good design pays; vanity design bleeds.
4. The Invisible Backend
Firebase or Supabase will get you to demo day, but once you add SSO, Stripe, file storage, SMS, and dashboards, backend work can swallow 40–60 % of total hours. A marketplace founder penciled in $60k, then added Algolia search and Twilio messaging; the final invoice landed at $92k.
5. Who Writes The Code
- Bay Area agency: $150–200/h
- Senior team in Eastern Europe or LATAM: $40–70/h
One Ptolemay client moved from New York freelancers to a Polish product team and cut build costs by nearly half without cutting corners on quality.
Back in 2023, a lean MVP often squeaked in under $40k, as we outlined in this earlier deep dive but AI add-ons and higher infra tariffs have pushed today’s budgets into the $50–120k range.
The “Cost to Build an App” isn’t a single sticker price. It’s a stack of choices. Nail down what really moves the needle for launch, price those choices honestly, and your runway stays intact. Ignore them and the budget will decide for you, usually at the worst possible moment.
The Three-Layer Budget Most Founders Skip
When you google the Cost to Build an App, you’re usually seeing only the first layer. A real budget has three:
| Layer | What’s inside | Typical share |
| 1. Build | Design, coding, basic backend, first QA pass | 60-70 % |
| 2. Launch | App-store approvals, legal checks, analytics setup, soft-launch fixes | 10-20 % |
| 3. Maintain | Bug patches, OS updates, feature tweaks, server scaling | 15-25 % per year |
Example. If the build phase lands at $80k, plan another $12–16k for launch formalities, plus $15k a year to keep the thing alive and compliant. Skip layer two or three and the “cheap” project turns into an emergency round of fixes just when you should be talking growth.
App Development Cost 2025: Compare Top Calculators Before You Budget
Most numbers you see online about the mobile app budget breakdown gloss over the details. A bare-bones prototype login, a couple of screens, and no fancy backend can slip in under $40k if you keep the scope tight. The moment you add chat, payments, or real-time data, you’re more realistically looking at $60–100k. Push further with custom AI features or heavy integrations and six figures comes fast.
How do you pin down a figure for your own roadmap? Spend ten minutes running the same feature list through a few independent calculators, then compare where they agree and where they don’t. Three widely used options:
- Cleveroad estimator: quick but tends to lowball infra costs.
- Builder.ai scoping tool: solid on feature pricing, light on post-launch spend.
- Ptolemay App Cost Calculator: breaks out build, launch, and maintenance in one go.
A founder recently put five of these tools head-to-head and wrote up the results of what lined up, what missed, and where each tool’s blind spots showed.
Rule of thumb: if two calculators land in the same ballpark and one is way off, trust the consensus, not the outlier and remember to add at least 15 % for post-launch fixes and updates.
How to Keep Your App Budget Sane
- Scope like a surgeon. Launch with one killer feature, not a buffet. One W24 YC team stripped its real estate app down to instant listing alerts and cut build time (and cost) by 35 %.
- Go cross-platform first. Flutter or React Native can save 20–40 % on the upfront Cost to Build an App. If you hit scale-or-latency issues later, rebuild the hot paths natively; by then, revenue should cover it.
- Rent, don’t build, your backend. Firebase, Supabase, or AWS Amplify handle auth, storage, and push for a few hundred bucks a month. A fintech founder saved $18k just by skipping a custom user-management service.
- Use no-code for proof. Bubble or Glide prototypes cost hundreds, not tens of thousands. They’re good enough to test onboarding, pricing, and basic UX before committing dev dollars.
- Time-and-materials with a ceiling. Fixed bids hide change fees; pure T&M can drift. Negotiate a range (e.g., 700–1,000 hours) so you share risk but still retain flexibility.
- Track burn weekly. YC’s mantra: “Don’t run out of money.” Set a simple dashboard for hours logged, dollars spent, and scope completed so surprises surface while they’re still cheap to fix.
Play it this way and you save serious dollars without gutting the product, leaving runway for marketing, support, and the inevitable v2.
The Smarter Solution: How to Build a Native App Under $100 Using nandbox
I know this might sound unrealistic, especially after seeing all those app development costs in the tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars, but believe me, it’s true.
How? The short answer: nandbox AI-powered native app builder.
Building a native app does usually require thousands of dollars, a lot of time and tons of effort. I’m not here to tell you otherwise. That’s just the reality of traditional app development, which requires writing code, hiring a team of developers, and even spending months before your app is even ready to launch.
But with nandbox, it’s a completely different story.
You can now build a fully native iOS and Android app without writing a single line of code and without hiring any developers, all for less than $100 per month.
So let me take you through how nandbox makes all that possible:
1. No Code Needed
With nandbox, anyone can build a full-featured, enterprise-level native app on their own, without any coding or even technical skills.
2. Pre-Made App Templates
nandbox offers a vast library of industry-specific app templates. You can find premade templates for e-commerce apps, messaging apps, news apps, educational apps, and much more.
3. Pre-Built Features
nandbox offers 100+ ready-made native app features that can easily be added to your app with just a single tap.
You can add features like a built-in messenger, a booking system, voice calls, video calls, channels, a newsfeed, payment gateways and many more in just a few seconds.
4. Drag-and-Drop Interface
To add any feature, all you have to do is just drag and drop it into your app interface. Yes, it’s really that easy.
5. AI-Powered Design
nandbox offers powerful AI tools that can easily create full-featured iOS and Android apps complete with their backend, features, tabs, themes and everything.
All you have to do is just chat and describe your app idea, and nandbox will take care of the rest.
These AI tools include
App Development Cost 2025: Wrapping Up
App budgets go off-track when founders treat them as a single line item. Break yours into build, launch, and maintenance; pressure-test it with at least two independent calculators; and challenge every “nice to have” that creeps in. If two tools agree and one diverges, trust the consensus, then add a buffer for the unknowns: user feedback, store rejections, and surprise API fees.
However, if you want to build full-featured native iOS and Android apps on a budget, then nandbox AI-powered no-code app builder is for you. So yes, you really can build a native app for under $100, without coding and developers.
Whether you want to build the next WhatsApp, launch an e-commerce store, or bring a fresh new app idea to life, nandbox gives you everything you need without the high price tag or complicated setup. Why waste time and money on the old way of app development when you can build smarter? Sign up for your free trial and build your dream app today!
App Development Cost 2025 Estimate FAQ: Budgets, Timelines & AI Extras
How much does it cost to build a mobile app?
A mid-complexity app in 2025 with chat, payments, and push runs $50k–$120k. Bare-bones prototypes can slip in under $40k, while AI-heavy or multi-tenant products often top $150k. Factor in another 15 % per year for maintenance so the headline price doesn’t eat your runway later.
How long does it take to build an app?
Most YC teams ship a lean mobile MVP in 12–18 weeks. Add two more sprints (≈4 weeks) for app store reviews, bug fixes, and soft-launch tweaks. Projects with real-time features or custom AI can stretch to six months, so plan your cash burn accordingly.
How much does it cost to hire someone to build an app?
Rates swing from $40–70/h for senior devs in Eastern Europe or LATAM to $150–200/h at Bay Area agencies. A 1,000-hour project therefore ranges from $40k to $200k. Blended teams with senior leads plus offshore support often deliver quality without San Francisco pricing.
Is it cheaper to build an app or a website?
A responsive web app usually lands 30–40 % cheaper because you write once and skip App Store hurdles. Mobile apps, however, unlock push notifications, in-app payments, and offline mode, which can boost retention and revenue. Choose the channel that best fits your product’s core loop.
What is the cheapest way to build an app?
Stick to a single platform, reuse open-source UI kits, and lean on back-end-as-a-service tools like Firebase. Teams that follow this recipe often launch for $30–50k instead of six figures. Just keep the scope narrow; each extra “nice to have” adds weeks and dollars fast.
Can I build my own app for free?
Free tools like Glide or Adalo let you drag-and-drop a proof of concept with no code fees. Still, expect to pay for custom domains, app store listings, and any upgrade that removes platform branding. Even DIY founders should budget at least $1–2k for launch odds and ends.
How much money do I need to start an app?
Pre-seed founders typically raise $300–600k to cover the Cost to Build an App, initial marketing, and 18–24 months of runway. If your build estimate alone approaches that range, cut features or seek a bigger round otherwise support, analytics, and founder salaries end up underfunded.
How much does it cost to make an app with AI?
Adding an on-device vision model or GPT-powered chat can tack $20–40k onto the base build, plus monthly fees for model hosting or API calls. For example, a fintech MVP we tracked jumped from $90k to $128k after integrating fraud-detection ML worth it, but only with clear ROI.
