Cost
How much does it cost to build an app? There is no menu price
Short answer
A custom app costs whatever the agreed scope costs. Studios that ship real products do not publish a package menu, because two products with the same buzzwords are not the same job. After a discovery call, a serious studio should send a proposal with scope, timeline, and investment for that slice — and should not surprise you with change orders on the work you already signed.
If you are googling this question, you probably want a number you can put in a spreadsheet. That number only exists after someone has named the first screen, the platforms, the data, and what “done” means. Until then, any figure on a blog is marketing.
RR Tech does not publish fixed packages. That is not a tease. It is the same answer as the homepage FAQ: every product is scoped differently, then you get a proposal. This guide is about how to think about cost so that proposal is comparable — not so you can reverse-engineer a secret rate card we do not print.
What you are actually buying
You are not buying “an app” as a commodity. You are buying a period of senior engineering against a defined job, plus design for the core loop, plus a way to launch (App Store, Play Store, or a production backend). UI/UX sits in the engagement. Post-launch support for active clients is a separate, written set of channels and severities — not a vague promise of “we’ll be there.”
RR Tech’s public process is Discover, Design, Build, then Launch & Scale. Cost lives mostly in Build, but Discover is what stops Build from becoming an unbounded hourly relationship. If a studio skips discovery and quotes from a one-line brief, they are guessing with your money.
Published timelines are a scope signal — not a price
This site does not publish dollar figures. It does publish how long shipped work took. Treat those weeks as a map of how big the job was, not as a calculator.
Public RR Tech delivery windows (time only — not prices)
| Product | Status | Published timeline | What shipped, in one line |
|---|---|---|---|
| InspectAI | MVP | 2 weeks | Morning briefing: today’s properties, issues, start a job |
| CraveNow | MVP | 2 weeks | Nearby places, offers, ETA — not a full ordering stack |
| WaitlistAI | MVP | 2 weeks | Tonight’s occupancy, queue, wait with an AI confidence band |
| Ghost Mode | In production | 4 weeks | Focus loop on iOS and Android, shared core |
| BrainSync AI | In production | 6 weeks | Capture, natural-language reminders, search in your own words |
| Fantasy Cricket Hub | In production | 10 weeks | Live Android fixtures, player form, graphs — not an MVP week-count |
What actually moves the number
These are the levers that show up in real scoping. They are boring. They are also honest.
- Platforms. One store is cheaper than two native clients. Ghost Mode shipped iOS and Android together with a Kotlin Multiplatform core so product rules did not drift. Fantasy Cricket Hub is Android. BrainSync AI is published as Kotlin, AI, and Cloud — this site does not name iOS or a store for it. Do not assume every product is dual-platform.
- How many jobs the first version must do. Fantasy lineups, a focus timer, and a second brain are different products. Extra tabs that do not teach you anything still cost design, QA, and store review time.
- Live data. FCH uses Firebase so fixtures and stats stay current. A static spreadsheet export is cheaper. A live feed is not.
- AI-shaped behaviour. Natural-language reminders, suggested session lengths, or a wait-time confidence band are product features with data and UX cost. They are not a licence to add a chatbot nobody asked for. See how to build an AI-powered app.
- What already exists. A greenfield app is different from wrapping an API you already run. We do not invent integrations we have not scoped.
- Launch channel. App Store and Play Store submission is part of launch on the relevant pages. Approval timing belongs to Apple and Google, not to the studio’s quote.
MVP cost vs production-app cost
Typical mobile MVP delivery on this site is 1–2 weeks after kickoff. That is the most-requested offer, and it is still engineered — a scale-ready base, not a throwaway. A 10-week production Android app is the other end of the same studio, not a padded MVP. If you need the slice question spelled out, use how much it costs to build an MVP and how to build an MVP.
What a usable proposal contains
Before you compare two quotes, check they name the same things
- The job on the first screen, in one sentence
- Platforms in v1 (iOS, Android, web, or a sequence)
- What is explicitly out of scope
- Timeline after kickoff — and what kickoff requires from you
- Who you talk to (engineers vs a revolving account team)
- Launch: store submission, production deploy, handover
- How change requests are priced after the slice is signed
- Support: what “critical issue” means, and that it is written down
RR Tech’s commercial stance on the agreed slice is: no surprise change orders. New work is a new conversation. That is cheaper than a cheap quote that explodes in month two.
Questions that waste money
- “What’s your price for an Uber for X?” — Uber is a company, not a template.
- “Can you match this other blog’s $15k / $50k / $150k tiers?” — those tiers were not scoped against your job.
- “Can you include every platform and AI and a marketing site in the same two weeks?” — published MVPs cut to one job on purpose.
A better brief is: who opens the app, what they must finish in under a minute, and which platform they already live on. That is enough to start discovery.
Need a number that belongs to your product?
Bring the job on the first screen. We will come back with scope, timeline, and investment for that slice — not a package from a menu we do not have.
If this matches the brief: custom app development · how we scope a first version
Work Fantasy Cricket Hub · Ghost Mode · InspectAI (2-week MVP)
Related guides How Much Does It Cost to Build an MVP · How Long Does It Take to Build an App · How to Choose an App Development Company