How much to build an app
in the UK?

Tier 1 — MVP / single-platform (£11,999–£30,000): one platform (web or mobile), ~6 screens, basic backend (Firebase / Supabase). Suits validation, pre-seed, and product-market-fit testing. Our floor is £11,999.

Tier 2 — cross-platform consumer (£30,000–£100,000): Flutter or React Native, iOS + Android + web, 12–25 screens, custom backend, payments, push notifications, basic admin. Most consumer SaaS lands here.

Tier 3 — complex native (£100,000–£200,000): native Swift + Kotlin where platform-specific features matter (camera intensives, AR, biometrics, offline-first). 25+ screens, complex domain logic.

Tier 4 — regulated (£150,000–£350,000): fintech (FCA), healthcare (CQC, MHRA, NHS DSPT), legaltech with audit-trail. KYC, encryption, compliance documentation, third-party integrations.

Tier 5 — enterprise / multi-region (£250,000+): multi-tenant, multi-region backend, SLA-grade ops, dedicated DevOps. SaaS at scale.

Native (separate Swift iOS + Kotlin Android codebases): highest performance, full platform-specific feature access, biggest codebase to maintain. Cost: roughly 2x cross-platform because you build twice.

Flutter: single Dart codebase, near-native performance, mature widget library, strong on iOS + Android + web + desktop. Cost: 50–60% of native equivalent.

React Native: single JS / TypeScript codebase, slightly lower performance than Flutter but bigger talent pool. Cost: 50–60% of native, sometimes lower for teams already using React.

"Flutter for 95% of consumer apps. Native only when AR, complex camera, biometric, or platform-specific UX absolutely requires it. The 5% premium for native rarely pays back."

At our published £11,999 MVP price, you get: discovery sprint (free), wireframes + Figma design, single-platform Flutter or Next.js build (your choice), 6 core screens, sign-up/login, one backend integration (Stripe or similar), basic admin, deployed to TestFlight / Play Store / Vercel. 12-week timeline. 30-day post-launch support.

Anything beyond — cross-platform, more screens, complex backend — sits in higher tiers. We're upfront in the discovery call about which tier your scope fits. Most founders need Standard (£24,999) or Pro (£49,999) once they list everything they actually want.

Senior London app developer day rates: £500–£1,200. London agency loaded rates: £800–£2,000/day equivalent (covering PM, design, QA). MVP at £11,999 implies ~80 working days at our blended rate — plausible because templates and reference architecture cut 40% off greenfield work.

Offshore (typically Eastern Europe, India): £200–£600/day. Often produces working software but with higher PM overhead and slower iteration cycles. Below £200/day is template territory or junior labour where quality is binary.

Apple Developer Programme (£79/yr). Google Play Console (£20 one-off). Backend hosting (Firebase £0–£100/mo at small scale, Supabase £0–£25/mo, AWS variable). Third-party API costs (Stripe 1.4% + 20p, SendGrid £15–£100/mo, Twilio variable, MapBox £0–£500/mo).

Ongoing engineering: most apps need £1,500–£5,000/mo retainer for bug fixes, OS-update compatibility, App Store / Play Store policy changes, and incremental features. Below that, apps drift into bit-rot within 12 months.

Don't build when: existing SaaS solves 80% of the need (Bubble + Webflow + Zapier covers most internal tools below 100 employees), the app is a feature inside someone else's platform (Shopify app, Slack app), or you're below £100k revenue and could test the hypothesis with a Notion + Stripe + Calendly stack first.

Build when: the app IS the product (consumer-facing apps with brand experience), regulatory or data-sovereignty constraints rule out SaaS, or you've validated demand and are scaling beyond what no-code permits.