Almost every Australian development studio puts this answer behind a contact form. We would rather just tell you, because the range is genuinely useful even before anyone looks at your idea, and because you deserve to know whether you are in the right conversation before you spend an hour on a call.
Short version: a focused first version from an Australian team generally runs from around $30,000 to $80,000. Apps with several user types, payments and real integrations commonly land between $80,000 and $200,000. Past that you are building a platform rather than an app, and the number follows accordingly.
One clear job, one type of user, and a small number of screens. Accounts and login, some data going in and out, push notifications, and a back end you can administer. This is where most sensible first releases sit, and it is enough to put something real in front of customers and learn from it.
Two or more kinds of user who see different things, payments or subscriptions, integrations with systems you do not control, and an admin area someone uses daily. Most of the extra cost is not the features themselves. It is the number of combinations that have to keep working when the features interact.
Marketplaces, anything with compliance obligations, real-time features, or an app that is one surface of a much larger system. Worth saying plainly: if you are pre-revenue and being quoted in this range for a first release, the scope is probably wrong rather than the price.
Founders tend to estimate cost by counting screens. Developers estimate it by counting states. That gap explains most of the surprise in quotes.
The build is not the whole number, and quotes that ignore this are not doing you a favour. Expect the Apple developer program at $149 a year and Google Play at a one-off $25. Hosting for a modest app is typically $50 to $500 a month. Then there is the ongoing part: operating system updates every year that can break things, security patching, and the changes your users ask for once they actually have the app.
A reasonable planning figure for keeping an app healthy is 15 to 20 percent of the build cost per year. Skipping it does not save money, it defers it, and deferred maintenance is more expensive than the scheduled kind.
Offshore rates are genuinely lower, and offshore teams are sometimes exactly the right answer. The honest caveat is that the total cost includes your time. If you are specifying, reviewing and correcting work across a timezone gap, that is unpaid project management you are doing yourself. It works well when you already know precisely what you want and can write it down unambiguously. It works badly when the requirements are still forming, which is the normal situation for a first app.
A good freelancer can be excellent value for a well-defined build. The risk is concentration: one person who takes a job, gets sick, or moves on, and you are holding a half-finished codebase with nobody who understands it.
Cut features, not quality. A smaller app built properly can be added to. A large app built badly has to be replaced, and you pay twice. The cheapest thing you will ever buy is a few weeks of scoping before anyone writes code, because it is where you discover which half of your feature list does not need to exist yet.
Two other practical levers. Build one cross-platform codebase rather than two native ones unless you have a specific reason. And be honest about whether you need an app at all, because a good mobile website is often cheaper, faster to change, and findable in search.
A number with no working shown is not a quote, it is a guess with a dollar sign. Ask for the features it covers and what was deliberately left out, who owns the code and accounts at the end, what happens when scope changes mid-build, and what support after launch costs. If any of those answers are vague, that vagueness is the risk you are being asked to carry.
We build apps in Melbourne and we scope before we quote, for exactly the reasons above. If you want to know what your idea would actually cost, see how we approach app development, or read about MVP builds if you are still at the first-version stage. Get in touch and we will give you a real range rather than a brochure.
A focused first version from an Australian team generally runs from around $30,000 to $80,000. Apps with several user types, payments and integrations commonly land between $80,000 and $200,000. Beyond that you are into platform territory rather than an app.
Because "an app" describes anything from a single-screen tool to a marketplace with payments, messaging and an admin backend. The number follows how many things your app has to do, not how many screens it has.
The hourly rate is lower. Whether the total is lower depends on how much of your own time goes into specifying, reviewing and correcting the work, and how much gets rebuilt later. Sometimes offshore is genuinely the right call. Often the saving is smaller than the sticker price suggests.
Cut features, not quality. A smaller app built properly beats a large one built badly, because you can add to the first and have to replace the second. Spending a little on scoping up front is the cheapest thing you will do.