When a client sees a proposal, the first reaction is often: “It is only a few screens.” Screens are the visible part. Here is the full breakdown.
Cost breakdown by stage
| Stage | Share | What happens |
|---|---|---|
| Discovery and specification | 5–10% | Turning an idea into a prioritized feature list |
| UX and UI design | 15–20% | User flows, screen layouts, and a design system |
| Architecture and setup | 5–10% | Database, backend, environments, and security rules |
| Development | 40–50% | What most people picture when they think of app development |
| Testing | 10–15% | Real devices, edge cases, and fixes |
| Release | 5% | Store materials, review, and the first production release |
In other words, if you are being charged only for development, the other stages have not disappeared. Someone is doing them for free, doing them poorly, or billing you later.
The stages most often skipped
Discovery
The most valuable stage of the project. A few days of discussion can remove a third of the first version’s features once it becomes clear they solve problems the client does not have. Skipping discovery does not save money; it shifts the cost to building features nobody will use.
Testing on real devices
A simulator will not show how your app behaves on a three-year-old Android phone with 78% of its storage used, a weak signal, or battery saver enabled. Your users are often in exactly those conditions.
App store materials
The icon, screenshots for different device sizes, description, keywords, privacy policy, and answers to Apple’s questions about data collection. None of it is difficult, but it is work—and it often gets noticed at the last minute.
Apple’s review can take anywhere from a few hours to several days. Rejection is normal, not a disaster. Allow a week between the final fix and the date your app needs to be publicly available.
Items clients often forget
- Account deletion in the app. Apple requires this for any app with sign-in. It is not complicated, but it must be there.
- Terms of service and privacy policy. If you process other people’s data in Europe, you also need a data processing agreement.
- Multiple environments. Keep testing separate from production so experiments do not use live data.
- Error monitoring. Without it, your first sign of a crash may be a one-star review.
- Migrating existing data. If you are replacing an old system, someone has to migrate the data. That is rarely a trivial task.
- Training. A 30-minute call with employees can save a month of questions.
After launch
An app is not finished when it launches. Plan for 15–20% of the development cost per year for maintenance, even without adding new features. This covers:
- adapting to new iOS and Android releases each year;
- updating libraries with security patches;
- changes to app store policies;
- fixes for issues found by real users.
If a proposal does not mention maintenance, it is not a cheaper offer. It is a bill deferred.
How to turn this into a useful question
When comparing proposals, ask for a stage-by-stage breakdown, not just a single total. Two proposals with the same price can describe very different work—one may include design and testing, the other may not. The breakdown makes that clear.