The short answer
In France, a mobile app typically costs between €8,000 and €20,000 for a functional MVP with a narrow scope, between €20,000 and €50,000 for a mid-tier app with user accounts and a backend, and €50,000 and up for a complex app (integrated payment, real time, high volume). No-code solutions sit between €3,000 and €15,000, with limits that show up quickly once the need moves off the standard path.
Those numbers say almost nothing on their own, because the word "app" covers projects that have nothing in common. A three-screen appointment book and a delivery service with real-time geolocation are both called "an app", for budgets that can differ by a factor of ten.
The right first question is not "how much does an app cost", but "what does this app actually need to do, for whom, and from when do I need to be able to measure whether it works".
What explains the gap between two quotes
The number of genuinely distinct screens
As with a website, what drives the price is not the number of screens but the number of different screens. A 15-screen app built on 4 or 5 templates (list, detail view, form, profile) costs noticeably less than a 6-screen app where every screen is custom-built with its own interactions.
The backend and user accounts
An app that displays static content barely needs a backend. An app with sign-up, login, profiles, and data specific to each user needs a server, a database, session management, and a security policy. That is often the invisible half of the budget — the part you never see on screen.
Payment and third-party integrations
Integrating card payment is a well-trodden but non-trivial project (compliance, handling failures, refunds). Connecting to a CRM, business software, or a third-party API adds a dependency whose stability is not yours to control: every integration is its own edge case to test.
Native, cross-platform, or no-code
Native (Swift for iOS, Kotlin for Android) offers the best performance and the best access to phone features (camera, sensors, notifications), but doubles the development effort since it means two codebases.
Cross-platform (Flutter, React Native) shares most of the code between iOS and Android. It is the most common choice for an MVP or a mid-tier app: the time saved is real, with a few trade-offs on the most platform-specific features.
No-code lets you launch a working first prototype very quickly, provided you accept the limits of the chosen platform: restricted customisation, heavy dependency on the tool, and a wall that arrives early as soon as the need becomes specific.
Volume and performance
An app tested by 50 internal users and an app designed to absorb peaks of several thousand simultaneous connections are not built the same way. Architecture, load testing, and monitoring become part of the price as soon as volume becomes a real concern.
The recurring costs quotes forget to mention
This is the least understood point for project owners: development is never the last expense.
Developer accounts. Apple charges its developer programme annually, Google Play charges a one-time registration fee. Modest in absolute terms, but often missing from the initial quote — and without them, no publishing on the stores at all.
Backend hosting. If your app has a server, it runs somewhere, and that somewhere is billed every month, roughly in proportion to your active users.
OS updates. Apple and Google evolve their systems every year. An app that is never updated eventually misbehaves, and can even be pulled from the store after a period of inactivity.
Store resubmissions. Every new version goes through review, with a variable turnaround time and a risk of rejection if something is missing (privacy policy, justified permissions, test content).
An app budget that does not set aside at least 15 to 20% of the development cost for annual maintenance is underestimating the project's real cost.
Our price list
At ÜMAIN, an MVP app starts from €9,000, which covers a deliberately narrow scope: the screens essential to the main journey, a minimal backend where needed, and a version ready to publish on the stores. That is a starting point, not a fixed package: the final price depends on the variables described above. Maintenance starts at €150 a month, on the same principle as for a website: hosting, fixes, and tracking OS updates.
We respond within 24 hours to any project description, with a reasoned estimate rather than a number pulled from thin air.
The real question: MVP first, or the full app right away?
The most common temptation is to want to build everything in version 1: advanced profiles, personalised notifications, an analytics dashboard, social features. That is almost always a sequencing mistake.
An MVP exists to answer a single question: do users actually do what you think they will do? Until that question has an answer, every extra feature is a bet, not an investment. Better to spend €9,000 to €15,000 to test the core hypothesis than €40,000 to discover six months later that a key feature is used by nobody.
This is the same logic we apply to a website: launch is not the finish line, it is the start of measurement. If pricing and budgeting interests you more broadly, our article on website pricing in 2026 applies the same reasoning on the web side.
The mistakes that cost the most
Confusing a clickable prototype with a functional MVP. A mockup you can scroll through is not an app: it connects to no database, manages no real accounts. Useful for validating a design, not for testing actual usage.
Forgetting developer accounts and store review in the schedule. These are fixed, non-negotiable steps, with timelines your provider does not control.
Wanting native and cross-platform at the same time for no clear reason. Doubling the development effort should be justified by a real need (critical performance, specific hardware access), not by default.
Budgeting no maintenance at all. An unmaintained app ages faster than a website, because operating systems evolve faster than browsers.
In summary
A mobile app costs between €8,000 and over €50,000 depending on scope, and that range only makes sense once the real need is defined: number of distinct screens, presence of a backend and user accounts, payment, integrations, native or cross-platform, expected volume. Development is never the last line of the budget: developer accounts, hosting, OS updates, and store resubmissions continue after launch.
The best first version is not the most complete one. It is the one that lets you verify, at the lowest cost, that the use case you imagine actually exists.
Have an app idea you'd like priced? Describe your project and we will come back to you with a reasoned estimate in under 24 hours. Describe your project — or see the details of our website and app development offer.