How much does it cost to build an app in India in 2026?
Ask five developers in India what an app costs and you get five answers, from a few thousand rupees for a template to several lakh from an agency. Both can be honest. The useful question is not "what does an app cost" but "what is the floor for my kind of build, and what moves it".
DevLune publishes its floors, so this page uses them. They are low, negotiable starting points, not final quotes: the exact figure comes from a written proposal after we have read your brief, and it moves up or down with scope.
Starting prices by type of build
Each floor covers a complete, working product: design, development, deployment and handover of the source code. Not a prototype.
| Type of build | Starts from | Typical timeline |
|---|---|---|
| Website (landing page, company site) | ₹10,000 | 3-5 weeks weeks |
| API or backend | ₹18,000 | 2-4 weeks weeks |
| Android app | ₹30,000 | 6-10 weeks weeks |
| iOS app | ₹35,000 | 6-10 weeks weeks |
| Android + iOS, one backend | ₹55,000 | 8-12 weeks weeks |
| Online store | ₹35,000 | 6-8 weeks weeks |
| Web app / SaaS | ₹45,000 | 8-12 weeks weeks |
| Consulting or audit | ₹6,000 | 1-2 weeks weeks |
What moves the price up
Features that take real engineering time are priced as line items, so you can see each one and drop the ones you do not need yet.
- Payments (Razorpay or Stripe): about ₹6,000
- Admin dashboard: about ₹10,000
- Realtime updates (live orders, live tracking): about ₹6,000
- Push or email notifications: about ₹3,000
- File uploads: about ₹3,000
- Multi-language: about ₹6,000
- Screens or pages beyond the first 5: a flat ₹1,500 each, never a percentage of the base
- A rush timeline: ×1.25 on the fee
What should never be an add-on
Login and accounts, search, SEO basics and analytics. On a modern stack these are hours of work, not weeks, and a quote that lists them as paid add-ons is padding the invoice.
Third-party costs, paid at cost
These go to the vendor, not to the developer, and a good quote lists them separately so the total is the whole picture.
- Google Play Console: ₹2,350 one-time to Google for your own account. A personal account must pass a 14-day closed test with 12 testers before launch, and a rejected test restarts the 14 days; an organisation account has no testing period. Or publish under DevLune's account, with no wait, and transfer later.
- Apple Developer Program: ₹9,000 a year to Apple for your own individual account, renewing yearly. Or publish under DevLune's account and transfer later.
- Domain: about ₹800 a year for a .in, ₹1,300 for a .com, at registrar cost.
- Hosting: Vercel's free tier covers most sites; Vercel Pro is about ₹1,700 a month for teams or heavy traffic.
- Database: Supabase and Firebase free tiers are enough until you have real traffic; Supabase Pro is about ₹2,100 a month.
- Payment gateways charge their own per-transaction fee (Razorpay is about 2%); nothing is added on top.
Why some quotes are several times higher
An agency quote pays for the people between you and the code: account managers, project managers, sales, and the office. A freelancer quote often pays for uncertainty, padded because the scope is vague. A small studio with a written process sits between the two: one person accountable for the build, a fixed proposal before any money moves, and no layers to fund.
None of this makes the higher quote wrong. It makes it worth asking what, exactly, the extra is buying.
If you are outside India
The same floors apply, quoted in your currency at a purchasing-power rate: USD and EUR at about 2.5× the rupee figure, GBP about 2.8×. Third-party costs stay at cost. The work is remote either way, with a few hours of overlap with most time zones.
Short answers
The questions this guide gets asked most.
Crafted in the dark. Shipped to the world.
Tell us what you are building. You get a private project space with a proposal and a line-by-line quote within a day.