Fifty thousand euros. That’s the number most agencies throw at you when you ask how much it costs to build an app. Some say thirty. Others say a hundred. And you still don’t have a single user, any revenue, or any proof that someone actually wants your app.
We’ve spent twelve years building apps and platforms. First running a digital agency, now co-founding ventures. And the answer to “how much does it cost to build an app” isn’t a number. It’s a counter-question: why would you pay for it yourself? (Spoiler: it can be free. But we’ll get to that.)
First, the facts.
What does building an app actually cost
Google “app development cost” and you’ll find ten articles with the same pricing table. That’s not a coincidence. Those articles are written by agencies who want you to call them. The ranges they mention are roughly correct, though:
A simple app with a few screens: €5,000 to €15,000. Think an informational app or a basic tool. Functional, not exciting.
An app with user accounts, a backend and some logic: €15,000 to €50,000. This is where most entrepreneurs end up. You want something that actually works, with a database, integrations, maybe a dashboard.
A fully custom platform: €50,000 to €150,000+. Multiple user roles, complex workflows, integrations with external systems. The enterprise corner.
Hourly rates at a decent agency run between €90 and €140. And for a first version you’ll easily burn through 200 to 400 hours. Do the math.
Why app development costs so much
The price of an app isn’t the price of code. Writing code is the easy part. The price is in everything around it: figuring out what you actually need, designing an interface people understand, picking an architecture that won’t collapse in six months, testing, adjusting, and then testing and adjusting again.
A good agency spends as much time thinking as building. That’s exactly what you want. Because the most expensive thing you can do is build the wrong thing. Two months of development on a feature nobody uses. That doesn’t cost €15,000. That costs €15,000 plus three months of delay plus your team’s morale. The most expensive line of code is the one that never needed to be written.
A real example from our own work: for ProFit Gym we built an ecosystem of seven applications over ten years. From a member app to a coach app to narrowcasting in their clubs. That ecosystem wasn’t designed in one go. The first version was a single, simple app. The rest grew because at every step we first looked at what the gyms and their members actually needed. ProFit went from 3 to 18 locations in that period. Not because we wrote a lot of code, but because we built the right things.
The problem is: most entrepreneurs who want to build an app don’t have that money. Or they do, but it feels like an enormous gamble. And it is.
The alternatives for building your app
No-code platforms (Bubble, Glide, AppMachine). Starting at a few dozen euros per month. Sounds fantastic. And for a simple tool or prototype, it can work. But the moment you want something that works slightly differently than the platform allows, you’re stuck. You don’t own your product, you’re renting it. And migrating to “real” software often costs more than building it properly from the start.
Freelance developers. Cheaper than an agency, often €50 to €90 per hour. The downside: you get exactly what you ask for. Not what you need. A freelancer builds your brief. But who writes that brief? If you don’t have a technical background, you don’t know which questions to ask. And a freelancer isn’t going to ask them for you.
Vibe coding (building it yourself with AI). With tools like Cursor, Bolt or Lovable you describe what you want in plain English, and AI generates working code. No programming skills required. We’re fans ourselves and use it daily. For a prototype or an internal tool, it can be fantastic.
But the limit is treacherous. Research by Veracode shows that nearly 45% of AI-generated code contains security vulnerabilities. The code looks good, but under the hood it’s missing input validation and secure authentication. After six months you’re sitting on a codebase full of hidden debt that nobody can maintain. For a product that handles customer data or needs to meet compliance requirements, you need someone who knows what’s going on under that hood.
Offshore development. Teams in India or Eastern Europe for €20 to €40 per hour. Four times cheaper on paper. The discount you pay back in grey hairs: twice as much time lost on communication, corrections and quality control. Sometimes it works. Often it doesn’t.
Every alternative has the same blind spot: you’re paying for code, not for thinking. And the biggest cost of building an app isn’t the code. It’s the wrong decisions you make because nobody asks you the right questions.
How to actually reduce app development costs
If you go the traditional route, there are a few things that’ll save you thousands.
Start with a web app instead of a native iOS or Android app. A web app runs in the browser, works on every device, and costs 20 to 30% less to develop. For most B2B products, that’s more than enough.
Build only what you truly need for your first ten customers. No admin portal, no reporting module, no integration with system X. Every feature you add before someone asks for it is money thrown away. Start narrow, expand based on what customers actually use.
Choose a proven tech stack. React, Node.js, PostgreSQL. Not exciting, but fast to build, easy to maintain, and there are plenty of developers who know their way around it. Exotic technology costs more in development and in maintenance.
Building an app: do you have to pay for it yourself?
So far, every answer to “how much does an app cost” has been about the same question: how do you get the money together. But maybe that’s the wrong question.
If you know a market, see a problem nobody is solving well, and know who the customers are, you’re not sitting on a cost estimate. You’re sitting on an opportunity. And for an opportunity, there are other models than paying an invoice and hoping it works.
Think co-founder instead of vendor. Someone who thinks along about your business model, designs and builds your product, and has a stake in your success. Not for an hourly rate, but for a share in what you build together.
That’s the model we use at Breach. No invoice, no upfront investment. Equity. We invest our time and expertise. The entrepreneur invests market knowledge, network and sales power. Together we build a company we both own.
When does the equity model work for app development?
Not always. Here’s how the process works. It works if you bring three things:
You know a market from the inside. Not “I have an idea for an app”, but “I’ve been working in this industry for ten years and I see the same problem every day.”
You can and want to sell. We build the product. You bring the customers. That’s the deal.
The opportunity is scalable. We specifically look for niches, but niches where hundreds or thousands of companies have the same problem.
If you have those three things, paying €50,000 to have an app built is the most expensive option. Not because the amount is high, but because you’re entering the wrong relationship. You’re buying a service when what you need is a partner.
What building an app actually costs (when you don’t pay)
Time. Commitment. At least three days a week, for at least a year. This isn’t a side project for Friday afternoon, squeezed between drinks and good intentions. You’re building a company. We take ownership of the product domain, from first sketch to working software. But you’re the entrepreneur. You talk to customers, you validate the pricing, you close the first deals.
No cash investment. But everything you’ve got in knowledge, energy and network.
Is that cheaper than €50,000? In euros, yes. In effort, absolutely not. But the difference is that you’re not spending money on a gamble. You’re investing time in something you co-own. And you have a partner who has just as much at stake as you do.
Know a market that nobody is serving well? Schedule a conversation and we’ll figure out together if it’s a fit. No obligations, no pitch.
