“How much for an app?” is unanswerable in the same way “how much for a building?” is unanswerable. But the spread is not random, and once you see which features carry the cost, the five-times difference between quotes makes sense — and you can tell which quote is actually for the app you described.
The four bands
| Band | Typical range | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| Template app | ₹40k–1L | Your content in a bought template. Catalogue or brochure. Changes are limited to what the template allows. |
| Simple custom app | ₹1.5L–3.5L | Original design, a handful of screens, login, a form or catalogue, basic admin panel. Android, or React Native for both. |
| Transactional app | ₹3.5L–8L | Ordering or booking, payments, push notifications, order tracking, a real admin panel, user accounts. Most business apps live here. |
| Platform app | ₹8L–20L+ | Multi-role (customer, vendor, delivery, admin), live tracking, wallets, commissions, analytics. This is a product, not an app. |
Most Indian businesses asking for “an app like Zomato” are describing the fourth band and budgeting for the second. That gap is the source of most failed app projects, and it is worth confronting in the first meeting rather than the fourth.
What each feature adds
Indicative additions to a base build. They are not strictly additive — some share plumbing — but they show you where money goes.
| Feature | Typical addition | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Login and user accounts | ₹35k–60k | Registration, OTP, password reset, sessions, profile. More screens than anyone expects. |
| Payment gateway | ₹40k–80k | Integration is the easy half. Failure states, refunds and reconciliation are the other half. |
| Push notifications | ₹20k–40k | Setup is quick; segmentation, scheduling and deep links are not. |
| Live tracking (maps) | ₹70k–1.5L | Location permissions, battery behaviour, background updates, map costs. Deceptively hard. |
| Chat between users | ₹60k–1.2L | Realtime infrastructure, delivery states, media, moderation. |
| Admin panel | ₹80k–2L | Frequently the largest single item and the one most often left out of a cheap quote. |
| iOS alongside Android | +30–40% | Even with React Native: separate testing, store review, device matrix, release process. |
| Multi-language | ₹30k–60k | Not just translation. Layout, fonts, dates, numbers and text that grows 30% in Hindi. |
The admin panel. An ordering app without one means somebody logs into a database to change a price. If a quote looks 40% below the others, check whether it includes the backend and the admin panel — that is usually the difference, and you will pay for it later at a worse rate.
Why the same brief gets five different numbers
- Backend included or not. An app is the visible third of the work. API, database, hosting and admin are the rest. Some quotes are for the visible third only.
- Original design or template. Proper UX for twenty screens is weeks of work. A bought template is an afternoon. Both are legitimate; they are not the same product.
- Release included or not. Store listings, screenshots, privacy policy, data safety declarations, review responses and the almost-inevitable first rejection. This is real work and it is often excluded.
- Post-launch period. One agency includes 90 days of fixes, another bills from day one. On a ₹4 lakh app that is a meaningful difference.
- Who writes the content. If nobody has agreed who writes the screen text and supplies the product data, it defaults to you, late, and it delays launch.
Compare those five lines before you compare totals. Two quotes that differ by three times are often quoting two different projects.
The costs that start at launch
- Google Play — a one-time developer registration fee, currently US$25 for a lifetime account.
- Apple App Store — an annual developer programme fee, currently US$99 a year, which stops your app being distributed if you let it lapse.
- Hosting and backend — ₹1,500 to ₹15,000 a month depending on traffic and whether you are on a managed platform.
- Payment gateway — roughly 2% per transaction. On ₹50 lakh of annual volume that is ₹1 lakh a year, which is more than most people's maintenance budget.
- Maps and SMS — usage-based, and the bill scales with success rather than with your plan.
- Maintenance — budget 15 to 20% of build cost per year. Android and iOS both ship breaking changes annually, and store policies move. An app nobody touches for two years eventually stops being accepted.
That last point is the one most businesses discover the hard way. The build is a project; the app is a commitment.
How to spend less without buying something worse
- Launch Android only. Check your own traffic first — for many Indian consumer businesses iOS is a small minority. Add it once the app has earned it.
- Cut features, not quality. Six screens done properly beat twenty done badly, and the twenty will cost you again in rework.
- Use React Native unless you have a specific reason not to. For ordering, booking and dashboard apps it is 30 to 40% cheaper than two native builds.
- Reuse a web admin panel if you already have one, rather than building a second.
- Supply your own content and images on time. This is free to you and genuinely removes weeks.
- Ask whether you need an app at all. A fast mobile website plus WhatsApp automation solves a surprising number of briefs at a fraction of the cost, and nobody has to install anything.
That last suggestion costs us work regularly and it is still the right advice. An app earns its place when people use it repeatedly — ordering, booking, tracking, loyalty. For anything a customer does twice a year, a website is better and cheaper for everyone.
What a good quote looks like
Not a single number. A good quote has a feature list with a price against each line, a timeline with milestones, an explicit statement of what is excluded, a named post-launch support period, and a clear answer on who owns the code and the store accounts. If any of those five is missing, ask for it before comparing on price.
We publish apps from our own developer account and have shipped both consumer and internal apps, so the mobile app development page covers how we scope and release them. If you are still deciding whether an app or a system is the right spend, the build-versus-buy framework is the better starting point.
The short version
A simple custom app is ₹1.5L to ₹3.5L. A transactional app with payments and an admin panel is ₹3.5L to ₹8L. A multi-role platform is ₹8L and up. Add 15 to 20% a year to keep it alive, and check that any quote includes the backend, the admin panel and the store release before you compare it to another.
Frequently asked questions
What is the minimum realistic cost for a business app in India?
Is React Native cheaper than building separately for Android and iOS?
Why do quotes for the same app differ so much?
What does it cost to keep an app running after launch?
Do I need an iOS app?
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