Is it cheaper to build for Android only?

Yes, meaningfully — roughly half the cost of doing Android and iOS natively. In India, Android-first is usually the right call because it is the large majority of the market. Cross-platform frameworks like React Native let you cover both from one codebase for less than two native builds, at the cost of a little platform polish.

Should I hire a freelancer instead of a company?

For a small, well-defined app a good freelancer can be excellent value. The risks are availability and continuity: one person gets ill, takes another contract, or moves on, and you have no one who knows your code. For anything business-critical, the question to ask either way is what happens to your project if the individual working on it disappears next month.

Can I build an app for a lakh or less?

Sometimes — a genuinely simple single-purpose app with no backend can land there. What you cannot get for that is anything with user accounts, a server, payments, or multiple roles. If someone quotes that for a multi-role platform, the quote is not real.

How much does it cost to maintain an app after launch?

Budget roughly 15–20% of the build cost per year for a maintained app. That covers platform compatibility as Android and iOS change, dependency and security updates, bug fixes, and small improvements. Doing nothing is an option for a while, but an unmaintained app typically breaks within two years.

← All guides

CostAndroidWeb

What does it actually cost to build an app in India?

31 August 20269 min read

The short answer

There is no single price, because "an app" covers everything from a three-screen catalogue to a multi-role platform with payments and live tracking. What actually moves the number is the count of user roles, whether you need a backend, and how many external systems you have to integrate with. Below is what each tier really involves — and the two quote patterns that should make you walk away.

Every agency page that promises "apps from ₹40,000" is either quoting for a template with your logo dropped on it, or quoting a number they intend to revise once you've signed. Neither is useful to you. What follows is how the cost is actually built up, so you can read any quote — ours included — and tell whether it's serious.

What actually drives the price

Screen count is the metric everyone asks about and it is close to the least important one. Two apps with fifteen screens each can differ by five times in cost. These are the things that genuinely move the number:

User roles. One kind of user is straightforward. A customer, a delivery partner, and an admin means three interfaces, three permission models, and three sets of edge cases where they interact. This is usually the single biggest multiplier.
Whether you need a backend. An app that only stores data on the phone is a fraction of the cost of one needing a server, a database, authentication, and an admin panel. Many businesses need the backend and don't realise it until they ask "can I see all orders in one place?"
Payments. Taking money brings gateway integration, refunds, failed-payment states, reconciliation, and a compliance conversation. It is never just "add a pay button".
Integrations. Every external system — Tally, an ERP, WhatsApp Business, a courier's API, a POS — costs time proportional to how good its documentation is, which is usually not very.
Real-time features. Live tracking, chat, and instant updates need infrastructure that polling doesn't, and they are much harder to test.
Offline behaviour. An app that must work with no signal and reconcile later is significantly more complex than one that shows an error.
Design. Whether you're getting a designed interface or a developer's default components is a genuine cost difference, and it is the difference users actually notice first.

Realistic ranges by app type

These are honest Indian-market ranges for competent work — a team that designs the interface, writes production code, and ships to the store. They are not the cheapest numbers you will find, and they are well below what a large agency with a sales floor will quote you.

Type of app	What it involves	Realistic range
Single-purpose app	One user type, no backend or a very light one. A calculator, a tracker, a catalogue, a utility.	₹1.5–4 lakh
Business app with backend	One or two roles, server and database, admin panel, authentication. Ordering, bookings, field-staff reporting.	₹4–10 lakh
Multi-role platform	Three or more roles, payments, notifications, live status. Marketplace, delivery, aggregator.	₹10–25 lakh
Complex or regulated	Real-time infrastructure, heavy integrations, compliance requirements, or unusual scale.	₹25 lakh+

Web applications broadly track the same tiers. A marketing website is a different and much smaller category — typically ₹50,000 to ₹3 lakh depending on page count, whether the content is bespoke, and whether you need a CMS.

The costs people forget

The build is not the whole bill. None of these are large individually, but budgeting zero for them is how projects go over.

Google Play developer account: a one-time $25. The Apple equivalent is $99 per year.
Servers and hosting: anywhere from nearly nothing on a free tier to a few thousand rupees a month once you have real traffic.
Third-party services: SMS and OTP, push notifications, mapping, payment-gateway percentages. Small per unit, real at volume.
Maintenance. Android and iOS both ship breaking platform changes yearly. An app nobody maintains stops working within about two years — this is not a scare tactic, it is just how mobile platforms operate.
The second version. Your users will want things you didn't anticipate. Budget for a follow-up round rather than treating launch as the end.

Quotes you should walk away from

Two patterns reliably signal a project that will go badly, and both are easy to spot before you commit.

A fixed price quoted before anyone has asked what the app does. That number is not an estimate, it is a hook — and it will be revised upward once you have paid a deposit.

The second is a quote so far below every other one you've received that it doesn't make sense. Development work has a floor: someone competent has to spend weeks on it. A price well under that floor means the work is being done by someone learning on your project, or it is a template you'll outgrow immediately, or the low number is the opening move in a change-request negotiation. Cheap becomes expensive when you have to rebuild in a year.

How to get a quote that means something

1Write down the problem, not the solution. "Customers can't check order status without calling us" tells a developer far more than "I need an app with a tracking screen".
2List every kind of person who will use it, and what each can do. This is the biggest cost driver, so it is the thing worth being precise about.
3Name the systems it must talk to — your accounting software, your website, your payment provider.
4Say what version one absolutely must do, and what can wait. A good developer will help you cut this list; be suspicious of one who only adds to it.
5Ask for the estimate itemised by feature. If a quote is one number with no breakdown, you cannot tell what you'd save by dropping something.

The honest summary

For most small and mid-sized businesses in India, a genuinely useful first app lands somewhere between ₹4 and ₹10 lakh, takes six to twelve weeks, and needs a modest budget afterwards to stay healthy. If that is far above what you expected, the productive question is not "who will do it cheaper" but "what is the smallest version that solves the actual problem" — that conversation saves far more money than shopping on price.