What a Mobile App Actually Costs in India

A mobile app in India starts around ₹35,000 for a genuine build — a few screens, a real backend, published on the Play Store — and runs to ₹70,000 and beyond once accounts, payments and an admin panel are involved. Anything quoted below about ₹20,000 is almost always a template with your logo on it.

The spread is enormous and it is not arbitrary. Five things move the number, and knowing them is the difference between comparing quotes and guessing.

1. How many screens, and how much each one does

A screen that displays information is cheap. A screen where something happens — a form that validates, a list that filters, a cart that calculates — is several times the work.

Count the screens where the user *does* something rather than reads something. That is the number that matters, and most people undercount it by half because they forget the ones nobody wants to think about: the empty state, the error state, the "you are offline" state.

2. Whether it needs accounts

This is the single largest step change in the price.

An app with no login is a delivery mechanism for content you control. An app with login has to store people, verify them, let them reset a forgotten password, keep their data separate from everyone else's, and keep all of that secure. That is a backend, and a backend is not an afterthought bolted onto an app — it is roughly half the project.

If your app can work without accounts, it will cost dramatically less. It is worth thinking hard about whether it can.

3. One platform or two

Android and iOS are different platforms. Building the same app twice, natively, roughly doubles the cost.

Cross-platform frameworks — React Native, Flutter — write one codebase that runs on both. That is what most projects at this size should use, and it is what makes ₹35,000 possible at all. The trade-off is real but narrow: for apps that need deep camera work, heavy 3D or very tight platform integration, native is still better. For a booking app, a catalogue, a service business, cross-platform is not a compromise.

In India, also ask whether you need iOS at all. Android is the overwhelming majority of the market for most local businesses. Shipping Android first and adding iOS when there is demand is often the right sequence, not a cut corner.

4. What it has to talk to

Payments, WhatsApp, maps, a delivery partner, your existing accounting system — each connection is separate work with its own rules and its own failure cases. Two or three integrations can add more to a quote than five extra screens.

5. Who is publishing it, and on whose account

Google charges a one-time $25 for a Play Store developer account. Apple charges $99 every year, indefinitely. Neither is included in a development quote and both are ongoing facts of owning an app.

Make sure those accounts are registered in your name. An app published under a developer's account is an app you cannot move, update or keep if the relationship ends. This is the single most common way small businesses lose an app they paid for.

What the ranges actually look like

• Around ₹35,000 — a straightforward app: a handful of screens, content you control, contact and enquiry, published to Play Store. No accounts.
• Around ₹70,000 — accounts, saved data, an admin panel to manage it, one or two integrations. This is where most real business apps land.
• Beyond that — payments, live tracking, chat, anything with meaningful logic of its own. Quoted per project, because at that point no two are alike.

Two to eight weeks, depending on which of those it is.

The costs that arrive after launch

An app is not a one-time purchase, and a quote that does not mention this is incomplete:

• Backend hosting, monthly, forever, if it has accounts or data.
• The Apple $99, annually.
• OS updates. Android and iOS both ship yearly. Apps that are never updated eventually break, and Google removes apps that fall too far behind its requirements.
• Store policy changes, which arrive without asking.

Budget something for the year after launch. An app nobody maintains has a shelf life of about eighteen months.

Do you actually need an app?

The honest answer, often, is no — and it is worth asking before spending ₹35,000.

An app has to be *installed*, which is a real barrier. People install apps they will open repeatedly: their bank, their food delivery, their gym. They do not install an app to look at a restaurant menu once.

If what you need is to be found, show what you offer and let people get in touch, a good mobile website does that better and costs a fraction — nothing to install, and it turns up in search, which an app never does.

An app earns its place when people come back regularly, when you need something a browser cannot do (reliable notifications, offline use, hardware access), or when the app *is* the product.

If that is not you, the money is better spent elsewhere, and anyone quoting you should be willing to say so.