How much does it cost to make an iPhone app in 2026?

By Sigsten Gustavii· 26 October 2026· 8 min read

"How much does an app cost?" has always had the same honest answer: it depends. But in 2026 the range is wider than it has ever been. The same habit tracker can cost nothing if you make it for yourself with AI, a few hundred dollars a year if you publish it, or many thousands if you hire a team to build it.

This post breaks the cost into its parts, so you can see which ones apply to you. Apple's fees are the same for everyone. The big swing is in who writes the app, and AI has changed that part completely.

The costs at a glance

Apple's costs: the part nobody avoids

The Apple Developer Program

To publish on the App Store you need a membership in Apple's Developer Program, $99 a year. It covers every app you publish under that account, so ten apps cost the same as one. Apple waives the fee for some nonprofits, schools and government bodies.

You do not need it to make an app, test it in a simulator or keep it on your own iPhone. A free Apple ID covers that, with a few limits explained in our guide to the free Apple ID and the Developer Program.

Apple's share of what you sell

If your app sells subscriptions or unlocks features, Apple's in-app purchase system handles the payment and keeps a commission. Under the App Store Small Business Program, developers who earn under 1 million USD a year pay 15%; above that, the standard rate is 30%. Subscriptions drop to 15% once a subscriber has paid for more than a year. A free app with nothing to sell pays Apple nothing beyond the membership.

Borel takes none of what your app earns. Apple's cut is the only one.

A Mac, or not

Apple's own tools, Xcode and the iOS Simulator, run only on a Mac, so the traditional route starts with buying one. Even Apple's cheapest Mac costs several hundred dollars. With a builder that compiles in the cloud, that cost disappears: Borel runs Xcode on its own Mac and streams the simulator into your browser, so a Windows laptop or a Chromebook is enough. Our guide to making an iPhone app without a Mac explains how that works.

What writing the app costs

Hiring developers

This is where traditional estimates get large. A developer's time is the main cost of a custom app, and it adds up quickly: design, the screens, the backend, testing and App Store work. To see why quotes run high, take a simple example. If a modest app takes 200 hours and a freelancer charges between $50 and $150 an hour, the bill lands between $10,000 and $30,000. Agencies add project management and design on top. Those numbers are an illustration, not a quote; rates vary a great deal by country and experience.

The upside is that you get a person who thinks about your product. The downside is that every later change is a new piece of paid work, and many apps need a lot of changes once real people use them.

Learning to code it yourself

Swift and SwiftUI are free, and so are Apple's tutorials. The cost is time: most people need months before they can build a polished app alone, and you still need a Mac. If you enjoy it, it is a great skill. If you just want the app, it is a long way round.

Building it with AI

This is the new option, and the cheapest by a wide margin. On Borel, every account gets 5 free credits a day, up to 30 a month. Each message you send uses credits based on the real AI cost of that request: one credit pays for $0.10 of AI use, and a small change often uses part of a credit. You can see exactly what any message cost in the chat.

To make that concrete, here are four apps Borel built on 17 October 2026, each from a one-sentence prompt.

A free account covers a build like these and some changes. On Pro, $20 a month buys 100 credits, about $0.20 a credit, with larger tiers and $16 a month, billed yearly if you pay for the year. A finished app takes more rounds of changes than a test prompt, and each change uses credits, so the total depends on how much you add and change. All the plans are on the pricing page.

What running the app costs

Building is one cost; keeping the app alive is another. An app that keeps everything on the phone, like a personal habit tracker, has no running cost at all. An app with accounts, shared data, file uploads or AI features needs a server behind it.

With Borel, that server is part of the product. The database, sign-in and file storage are set up for you, and running costs come from a separate balance in real dollars that every account starts with. On the free plan the database is included; on Pro it is metered on what the app actually uses, with a monthly cap, so an app nobody opens costs nothing. AI calls inside your app are paid from your balance too, with no API key of your own. The FAQ has the details.

If you build the traditional way, you choose and pay a cloud provider yourself, and someone has to set it up and look after it.

Three example budgets

An app just for you

• Borel: $0, with the free daily credits
• Testing: $0, in the browser
• On your iPhone: $0, with Borel Companion and a free Apple ID
• Total: $0

A small app on the App Store

• Borel Pro: $20 a month while you build and publish
• Apple Developer Program: $99 a year
• Running costs: metered on real use, and nothing for an app that keeps its data on the phone
• Total in year one: from about $120 to $340, depending on how many months you keep Pro

A custom app built by an agency

• Design and development: commonly many thousands of dollars, as the example above shows
• Apple Developer Program: $99 a year
• Hosting and upkeep: a monthly fee, plus paid changes
• Total: thousands to tens of thousands of dollars

Common mistakes that make apps cost more

• Buying a Mac before you know you need one. Try a cloud builder; if you later want Xcode, your code downloads as a normal Xcode project.
• Paying for the developer membership too early. You only need it to publish. Build and test on a free Apple ID.
• Building every feature before anyone uses the app. Each feature is more to test, maintain and explain to Apple's reviewers.
• Forgetting running costs. Accounts, uploads and AI all cost something per use. Keep personal data on the phone when it only matters to one person.
• Ignoring Apple's cut when pricing. A $4.99 subscription brings in about $4.24 at 15%, before taxes. Price with that in mind.

The cost nobody invoices: your time

Money is only half of the bill. Whichever route you take, someone has to decide what the app does, test it, write the App Store listing and answer Apple's reviewers. With an agency, you pay for their time and still spend your own in meetings and feedback rounds. Learning Swift costs months before the app even exists.

Building with AI moves most of the time to the parts only you can do: knowing what you want and checking the result. Expect a simple app to take an afternoon, a more involved one a few evenings, and the App Store listing an hour or two. That is a fraction of the traditional timeline, and it is time spent on your product rather than on tools.

So, what should you budget?

If the app is for you, budget nothing and an afternoon. If it is for the App Store, budget $99 a year for Apple and a month or two of Borel Pro while you get it ready, and keep a little for running costs. If you need a team to own the product with you, budget for people, and expect the figure to have a comma in it.

Ready to see what your idea costs in practice? Start with the step-by-step guide on how to make an iPhone app with AI, or compare the tools in AI app builders for iPhone, compared.

When we priced Borel, I wanted making an app to cost less than a dinner out. If a number here looks wrong to you, tell me and I will check it.

– Sigsten

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