What a mobile app costs and what makes up the price

Answers to this question range from 200 thousand to 20 million roubles, and both figures can be honest. It is not contractor greed — it is that "an app" describes a delivery format rather than a product. Let us break down what the estimate consists of and what each line item really affects.

What the budget is made of

• Analysis and design planning — 10–15% of the budget. Scenarios, screen structure, technical specification.
• Interface design — 15–20%. Mockups of every screen state, not just the happy path.
• Client development — 35–45%. The app itself for iOS and Android.
• Server side and API — 20–30%. Frequently underestimated: logic, database, integrations, admin panel.
• Testing — 10–15%. On real devices, not only in an emulator.
• Publishing and launch — 3–5%. Accounts, store assets, passing review.

Three complexity tiers with numbers

A simple app — catalogue, booking, personal account, payment: 1.2–2.5 million roubles, 3–4 months. Mid-tier — with a personal account, integrations with the accounting system, a loyalty programme, chat: 2.5–6 million roubles, 5–8 months. Complex — a marketplace, fintech, real-time logic, in-house logistics: from 6 million and from 8 months. These ranges assume a cross-platform implementation; two separate native codebases add 30–50%.

The hidden line item: the backend

This is where expectations and reality diverge most often. The client counts the cost of screens, but an app is a shop window with a server behind it: authentication, database, business logic, integrations with 1C and payment systems, an admin panel for managing content. If you already have a working CRM or ERP with a ready API, this line item shrinks by 60–70%. If you do not, it can turn out larger than the mobile development itself.

What affects the price most

• The number of user roles. Client, specialist, administrator — that is effectively three apps in one.
• Offline mode. Synchronisation and conflict resolution double the complexity of working with data.
• Payments and subscriptions. In-app purchases, acquiring, receipts under 54-FZ — each item is weeks of work.
• Custom animation and non-standard interfaces instead of system components.
• Integrations with legacy systems that have no documented API — a line item of unpredictable effort.

Costs after launch

These get left out of the budget, and that is the main financial mistake. The Apple developer fee is 99 dollars a year, Google's one-off fee is 25 dollars. Server infrastructure runs from 5,000 to 50,000 roubles a month. Support and bug fixing cost 10–20% of the development price per year. And one unavoidable item: adapting to new iOS and Android versions twice a year, otherwise the app stops passing review and at some point simply disappears from the store.

How to cut the budget without losing quality

Start with an MVP: two or three key features instead of twenty. Real usage will show which of the remaining eighteen are needed at all — usually half fall away on their own. The second route is cross-platform development, which gives around 70% shared code at a quality indistinguishable to the user in most scenarios. The third is starting with a PWA and testing demand for less money before investing in a native build.

Where you must not economise

Not on analysis: reworking the logic during development costs ten times more than changing a diagram on paper. Not on testing with real devices: an emulator does not reproduce the behaviour of a budget Android phone with 2 GB of RAM, and those are exactly the phones a large share of your audience carries. And not on security: the app stores tokens and personal data on the device, and 152-FZ requirements apply to it exactly as they do to a website. Approaches to protecting mobile clients are systematised by the OWASP project.

A practical tip: ask not for a single figure but for a breakdown across the line items above. An estimate that reads "app development — 3,000,000" lets you neither compare proposals nor manage the budget. We always provide a stage-by-stage breakdown — send us the brief and we will cost out your project.