What a native iOS app costs in the US, the UK and Germany, compared with Slovakia

The short answer

Our export price for a native iOS app starts at from 13,500 €+. Published prices for a comparable app are 25 000 to 90 000 EUR in Germany, 30 000 to 100 000 GBP for medium complexity in the UK, and a very wide band in the US and Canada.

So the honest version of the gap is roughly half, and at the top of the Western bands considerably more than half. It is not the ten to one difference that nearshore marketing likes to quote, and anyone promising you that is comparing different scopes.

One figure turns up in comparisons so often that it deserves a caveat rather than a headline: Clutch puts the average app development project at 90 780 dollars over roughly 11 months. It is an average across all project sizes on the platform, enterprise programmes included, so it works as a ceiling and not as a yardstick for a first version.

What the market publishes

Everything below is an asking price published by a supplier or a marketplace, not an independent survey. Read it as what sellers say, which is the only price data that exists in this market.

United States and Canada

US and Canadian agencies publish iOS rates of roughly 100 to 150 USD an hour, with complete builds spanning 20 000 to 500 000 USD depending on scope. Named studios set a visible floor: thoughtbot publishes 150 to 199 USD an hour with a 10,000 USD minimum project size.

In Canada, a specialist puts iOS apps at 45 000 to 250 000 CAD, with basic apps starting at 45 000 CAD and Toronto rates at 110 to 160 CAD an hour. Even a simple MVP is quoted at 15,000 to 40,000 CAD.

United Kingdom

Published guides put native iOS development at 30 000 to 100 000 GBP for a medium complexity app, with senior mobile developer day rates of 600 to 900 GBP.

Treat contractor data as the floor, not the price. ITJobsWatch, which indexes UK job adverts, reported median iOS contract day rates of 401 to 513 GBP for the six months to 5 October 2026. An agency adds project management, QA, design and margin on top of that number, which is most of the distance between the two figures.

Germany, Austria and Switzerland

For Germany, published figures put an iOS only app at 25 000 to 90 000 EUR with a build time of 4 to 16 weeks, and a simple app with basic functions at 20 000 to 45 000 EUR at agency rates of 120 to 200 EUR an hour. Another guide puts native mobile work at 125 to 150 EUR an hour at senior level and 155 to 180 EUR at expert level, with an MVP at 15,000 to 30,000 EUR.

In Austria, the iOS half of a medium complexity native build is quoted at 40 000 EUR on its own. In Switzerland, a native iOS app in Swift and SwiftUI is published at 50,000 CHF simple and 110,000 CHF medium.

Ours

A native iOS app starts at from 13,500 €+, which is 150 hours at our export rate of 90 € an hour. Pricing shows the hours, so the number is checkable rather than a matter of trust, and add-on work is priced the same way.

That price buys a defined first version, not an open ended programme. It is a statement about scope, and the honest comparison is against a Western quote for the same scope, not against the top of someone's published range.

Why the gap exists

The difference is in the cost of labour and it can be measured: an hour of work costs an employer in Slovakia roughly half what it costs in Germany or Austria. The figures per country, and how fast that gap is closing, we give in our article What a custom website costs in the West.

Two things that number is not. It is not a price, because an agency rate includes project management, QA, design, margin and idle time. And it is not a statement about skill, which labour cost data says nothing about either way.

English is the usual objection and the answer to it comes with a caveat. Briefs, code review and documentation we handle in writing without trouble; an all-day workshop run entirely by voice is harder work for both sides. What this rests on we give in the article on website costs.

Native versus cross platform, answered honestly

If you are shipping to both iOS and Android, cross platform is usually the right answer, and we will say so rather than sell you two codebases.

A published Austrian comparison puts a medium complexity app at 75 000 EUR built natively for both platforms separately against 45 000 EUR in React Native, and over three years including maintenance 123 000 EUR against 69 000 EUR. It is one supplier's published model rather than measured outcomes, so use the direction, not the decimals. The same source names the exceptions where cross platform is not enough: high performance 3D or AR, deep hardware integration, and extremely complex animations.

Two qualifications that are often left out:

• If version one is iOS only, the cross platform saving largely disappears. You are paying an abstraction layer for a second platform you have not built. For a single platform launch, native is frequently the simpler and cheaper choice, not the premium one.
• Cross platform moves a dependency onto your balance sheet. Your release cadence becomes partly a function of someone else's framework support for new OS features. That is an acceptable trade for most business apps and a bad one for a few.

What is not in the quoted price

No quote, ours included, covers the following. Budget for them separately.

• Apple Developer Program: 99 USD per membership year, or 299 USD a year for the Enterprise Program. Not optional if the app is to ship to the App Store under your name.
• App Store review: Apple states that review typically handles more than half of submissions in under 24 hours. Rejections and resubmissions happen, so do not set an immovable launch date with no buffer. Apple decides whether an app is published, under rules that change, so nobody can guarantee approval.
• App Store commission: if your app takes money, Apple's Small Business Program offers a reduced 15% commission for developers with up to 1 million USD in proceeds in the prior calendar year. Above that threshold the standard rate applies.
• Analytics, crash reporting and backend hosting: a published Austrian breakdown puts server hosting alone at 50 to 500 EUR a month.
• Maintenance: see below. This is the line that gets cut from cheap quotes and then eats the project.

A realistic maintenance budget

The figure most often published is 15 to 25% of the original build cost per year, and it comes from suppliers rather than from an independent study, so treat it as a planning assumption rather than a measurement.

On a from 13,500 €+ that is roughly 2 000 to 3 400 EUR a year. On a 90 000 USD US build it is 13 500 to 22 500 USD a year. Whoever builds your app, the second year is not free, and the biggest single driver is that Apple ships a new iOS version every autumn whether your app is ready or not.

A cheap app nobody maintains is the most expensive thing you can buy. Two things speak for that: part of the industry ships code without full testing, and unmanaged scope overruns budgets even on far larger projects. Both figures and their limitations we cover in our article How to vet a development partner, because what follows from both is a question to ask before you sign, not a forecast for your project.

What you get from us that is not in the price comparison

Three things are written into our terms and conditionsrather than promised in a sales call, and they are worth comparing against any quote you hold.

TestFlight from the first build. You get access to Apple's own testing tool as soon as the project starts, install the app on your own iPhone or iPad, and watch it grow. The access runs under our developer account, so you do not need one until the app is to appear in the App Store under your name. The most common failure in custom app work is that the client sees the result only at the end, when changing it is expensive.

The source code and the repository handed over once the price is paid in full, with its history, not as a zip file. Until full payment neither the licence nor the handover happens, and the terms say so plainly.

A 12 month warranty for clients based outside Slovakia and Czechia, six months otherwise, covering defects that appear after browser and operating system updates. For an app, that last clause is the one that matters, because the autumn iOS release is exactly when things break.

What we can show you today: MeaUnda, our own app for iPhone and iPad written in SwiftUI with StoreKit 2, built from idea to submission including its website; and Runway, a booking and administration system we are building for a Bratislava salon, with a client environment, a team calendar and a loyalty engine. Runway is in development and we say so on its own case study page rather than implying otherwise.

Where we are the wrong choice

This section exists because a supplier who admits nothing is harder to trust, not easier.

Time zones. We work on Central European Time. Against London that leaves about seven hours of overlap on a 9 to 17 day, which is nearly a full shared day. Against New York it is about two hours, or three if we work to 18:00. Against San Francisco it is effectively zero on standard hours. If your product needs same hour collaboration with a West Coast team, we are not the right studio.

Our size. We are a small studio. We do not offer 24/7 support and we do not have a bench of developers to drop onto your project next month. If you need to scale a team of twenty in a quarter, buy from someone who can.

Spoken English versus written English. Slovakia's English profile is strongest in reading at 621 and weakest in speaking at 505. Written specifications, documented decisions, code review and asynchronous updates are where that profile is safest. Treat long unstructured calls as the weaker channel.

Rankings do not flatter Slovakia. Slovakia sits 57 of 69 economies in the IMD World Digital Competitiveness Ranking 2025 and 48 of 139 in the WIPO Global Innovation Index 2026. We are not going to pretend those say something they do not. The honest selling points are cost, English, EU legal footing and time zone, not national rankings.

The price gap is closing. Nearshore prices are a window, not a permanent state: labour costs are rising considerably faster in Slovakia than in Germany. The year-by-year figures are in the article on website costs.

We have not shipped a client app to the App Store yet. Runway is in development and MeaUnda is finished and awaiting release. If you need a supplier who has already taken a client's app through Apple review several times, say so and we will tell you plainly whether we are the right fit.

Comparing quotes without being misled

Four different numbers get published as „the nearshore rate“: employer labour cost, developer pay, freelance asking rate and vendor billing rate. Poland alone was published at anything from 29,30 EUR to 93 EUR an hour by five different sources in the same year. When you compare quotes, compare a defined deliverable and a total, and ask what the second year costs. Rate times hours does not give you the cost of a team.

One structural note for buyers in the European Union. We are a Slovak company and we host in the European Union by default, so for app data the question of a transfer to a third country does not arise for the hosting itself. What exactly that means, which two caveats belong with it and what it still does not settle, we cover in our article How to vet a development partner under the question of where your data will be.

What to do next

Write down the scope of version one, the platforms it must ship on, and what you will spend per year to keep it alive. Then ask every supplier for a total against that scope rather than an hourly rate. If our starting price fits your scope we will say so, and if it does not, we will tell you what it would actually take before you commit.