The market
London agency
£40k–£250k
Same Kotlin or Swift you would get anywhere, with a Soho lease baked in.
Offshore body shop
£8k–£25k
Cheaper, but timezone friction and patchy quality control.
Where we sit: a £499 PWA Android starter offer (Play Store listing add-on £100), and a fixed quote inside 24 hours for everything bigger. £0 upfront until you approve the result.
Why the gap is so big
An app build is mostly time. Around 30% of that time used to go on plumbing: setting up auth, wiring up the database, repetitive UI screens, integrating Stripe, writing tests. Modern AI coding tools (Claude, Cursor, Copilot) compress that 30% into a fraction. The remaining 70%, the bit that needs human judgement, still takes the same time. The total comes down by 60 to 80%.
Agencies have not passed those savings on. They still bill at 2018 rates because the market lets them. We pass them on.
What changes the price
- Number of screens. Up to a point. After 8 to 10 it tends to plateau.
- Auth and roles. Adding admin/staff/customer tiers adds about a week.
- Payments. Stripe is fast. In-app purchase on iOS adds time for store review.
- Real-time features. Chat and live updates push the price up noticeably.
- Custom hardware. BLE devices, AR, deep camera, native is cheaper to maintain than fighting cross-platform.
What does not change the price
- Whether your idea is "the next Uber" or "a booking app for my salon". The build effort decides, not the size of the dream.
- Where you are based. We work UK-wide for the same prices.
- Whether you bring designs or not. We can bring our own at no extra cost.
Total cost of ownership
The build is one cost. After launch you also need:
- Hosting: from £5 a month for a small web app, more for a busy one.
- Apple Developer Account: $99 a year.
- Google Play Account: $25 once.
- Maintenance: £39 a month with us covers OS updates, security and unlimited small changes.
An MVP that used to cost £30k can now ship for £3k. The trick is finding a builder who is using modern tools and not pretending they are not.