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How much does it cost to build an app in Australia?
Realistic ranges, what actually drives the price, and why the tools a studio builds with matter as much as its headcount.
Short answer
The short answer.
A focused MVP on one platform generally costs $15,000–$40,000. A cross-platform MVP (iOS and Android together) usually runs $25,000–$55,000 — a moderate premium over a single platform, not double. A full-featured app with a custom backend, integrations and polished design commonly starts around $60,000–$150,000, and complex products (real-time features, AI, heavy integrations) regularly reach $150,000–$300,000+. Ongoing maintenance typically runs 15–20% of the build cost per year. Those are market ranges, not a quote — your actual number depends on scope, and we'd rather scope your specific idea with you than sell you a figure that won't hold up once we understand what you need.
What affects the price
The variables that actually move the number.
Platform count. One platform is cheaper than two. Building natively for iOS and Android separately costs more than a single cross-platform codebase covering both — which is why we default to cross-platform frameworks unless there's a genuine reason (deep hardware access, platform-specific performance needs) to go native.
Backend and integrations. An app that's mostly a UI over a simple database is far cheaper than one that needs authentication, payments, push notifications, offline sync, or several third-party services wired together. Each integration is its own scoped piece of work, not a checkbox.
Design depth. A handful of clean, functional screens costs less than a fully custom design system with animation and edge-case states considered throughout. Both are legitimate choices — they just aren't the same price.
One-off build vs ongoing product. A build that ends at launch is cheaper than one that's planned, from day one, to be maintained, monitored and iterated on for years. Budgeting for the second kind up front avoids an unpleasant surprise later.
Where we differ
How AI-assisted development changes the equation.
Modern AI coding tools genuinely speed up the mechanical parts of building software — boilerplate, test scaffolding, refactoring, first-draft implementations of well-understood patterns. Used well, that compresses weeks of implementation time without touching code quality, because the tool is accelerating typing, not making the decisions.
The decisions that actually determine whether a project succeeds — what to build, how to structure it, where the edge cases are, what "good enough for launch" actually means for your users — still require an experienced person driving. AI tooling doesn't replace that judgment; it just means the person who has it can move faster once the call is made. We apply the same "does this genuinely earn its place" filter to our own tooling that we apply to AI features inside client products.
This is where a smaller, senior-led studio has a real structural advantage over a bigger agency. At a larger shop, the efficiency gain from AI tooling tends to get absorbed into existing overhead — more account managers, more layers of review, more people billing hours on the same task. At Swivel Digital, you work directly with the person using those tools on your project, so the speed gain shows up where it should: in your timeline and in your quote, not in someone else's margin.
It also shortens the feedback loop. Faster iteration means a working change can be in front of you for review in hours rather than days, which matters most on an MVP, where the real cost driver isn't typing speed — it's how many rounds of "actually, let's try it this way" you can afford before the budget runs out.
Real projects
What this looks like in practice.
The Hello Now and OpenGround case studies are examples of the scale and complexity this article is talking about — cross-platform mobile apps with a real backend (Firebase), subscription billing (RevenueCat), and offline-first functionality, not throwaway prototypes. We haven't published exact figures for those projects here, but they sit toward the fuller end of the "full-featured app" range above rather than the MVP end.
If you want a real number for your own idea rather than a market range, the fastest path is a short scoping conversation — we'll tell you honestly which end of these ranges your project sits in and why.
FAQ
Common questions.
A focused MVP on a single platform, with a narrow feature set and a straightforward backend, typically lands in the $15,000–$40,000 range. Cross-platform (iOS and Android from one codebase) usually adds a moderate premium over a single platform — commonly $25,000–$55,000 — rather than doubling the cost the way two separate native builds would.
A full-featured app with a custom backend, several integrations and polished design commonly starts around $60,000–$150,000. Complex products — real-time features, heavy data models, AI-powered functionality, multiple third-party integrations, admin tooling — regularly run $150,000–$300,000 or more. The honest answer is that scope decides the number, which is why we scope before quoting.
Different studios include different things in a quote — some include ongoing support, some don't; some include design from scratch, some assume you already have it; team structure (a large team with account managers vs one experienced developer) changes overhead significantly. Compare scope, not just the headline number.
It can, but only for the parts of the job that were ever mechanical — boilerplate, tests, refactoring. The scoping, architecture and UX decisions that actually determine whether a project succeeds still need an experienced person. Where it helps most is compressing the implementation and iteration cycle once those decisions are made.
App store fees, cloud/backend hosting, any third-party services you rely on (payments, push notifications, analytics), and ongoing support or maintenance time. As a rough planning figure, budgeting somewhere around 15–20% of the build cost per year for maintenance is a reasonable starting point to refine once your app is live.
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