How much does it cost to make an app in Australia?

Making an app for an Australian small or medium business costs between $15,000 and $50,000 ex GST with us, depending on what kind of app it is. A web app, software your team or your customers sign in to in the browser, costs $15,000 to $40,000 and takes 6 to 12 weeks; a first version of a new product for founders, an MVP, sits in the same range. A mobile app installed from the App Store and Google Play costs $20,000 to $50,000 and takes 10 to 16 weeks. Larger agencies charge $30,000 to $100,000 for a similar web app, and a freelance senior developer charges $85 to $140 an hour, usually without a fixed price. Where your project lands within its range depends on the number of workflows, user roles and integrations it needs. The rest of this article explains each of those, works through an example and shows how to get a price you can rely on.

Here is how the market looks in October 2026, from our own pricing and the market context we publish alongside it.

A $4,000 to $8,000 figure will also come up in your search. That is the price of a business website: pages that describe your business, with contact and booking forms. How much a website costs in Australia covers that figure in detail. A web app is different. It is software your team or your customers sign in to and use every day. If you are not sure which one you need, read website vs web app vs mobile app first.

Our web app package starts at $15,000 and includes:

• a discovery workshop and UX wireframes
• sign-in with email, Google and passkeys
• a database, one core workflow and an admin panel
• email notifications
• deployment with continuous integration, plus documentation
• a 30-day warranty after launch

One core workflow means the single process the app exists to run: a job gets booked, a document gets approved, an order moves from quote to invoice. Most of the value of a web app comes from doing that one thing well.

Our mobile app package costs $20,000 to $50,000 ex GST and takes 10 to 16 weeks. One React Native codebase ships to both iOS and Android, and the package includes the API and database behind the app, sign-in, push notifications, an admin panel and the submissions to both app stores. The extra over a web app pays for two platforms, the store review process and testing on real devices.

Before you budget for one, check that you need it. A mobile app earns its cost when the phone itself is part of the job: the camera, GPS, offline use or notifications people must act on straight away. A web app opens in the phone's browser and can be added to the home screen, so for most business tools it does the same job for less. Website, web app or mobile app walks through the decision.

Every extra piece of work adds time, and time is what you are paying for. These are the items that move a project from the low end of the range to the high end.

More workflows. Each additional process the app has to run (quoting as well as scheduling, for example) is roughly another core workflow: more screens, more rules, more testing.

More user roles. An app with one kind of user is simpler than one with customers, staff, managers and an administrator, each seeing different things. Every role needs its own screens and permissions, and permissions have to be tested properly.

Integrations. Connecting the app to Xero, Stripe, HubSpot, Google Workspace or another system costs $1,500 to $5,000 per integration. The price depends on how well documented the other system is and how much data has to flow in each direction.

AI features. Reading documents, extracting data from receipts or invoices, or a chat assistant that answers questions from your own content start from $3,000 on top of the base price. Reckonly, a product our co-founder Anis built before ELORA DIGITAL, is an example: it reads receipt photos with AI, then has a person confirm each one before it goes to the accounting software.

A custom design system. The package includes a clean, consistent interface. A bespoke set of components in your brand, reusable across future products, is an extra from $2,500.

Existing data. Moving years of records out of spreadsheets or an old system takes cleaning, mapping and checking, so say so early.

• Start with one workflow. Build the process that costs you the most time first and add the rest once the app has proved itself. This is the thinking behind our MVP package for founders, and it works just as well for an established business.
• Use the standard parts. Sign-in, roles, email notifications and an admin panel are included because every app needs them. Asking for them to work a special way is where budgets drift.
• Decide before the build. A paid discovery workshop ($500 to $1,500, credited to the project if it goes ahead) settles the scope while changes are cheap. Every project over $10,000 starts with one.
• Have one decision-maker. Projects slow down, and cost more, when feedback arrives late or from several people who disagree.

Imagine a Melbourne cleaning company with twelve staff. Jobs are booked by phone and email, written into a shared spreadsheet and sent to cleaners by text message each evening. Invoices are typed into Xero by hand at the end of the week.

The app that replaces this has one core workflow: a job is booked, assigned to a cleaner, completed and invoiced. It needs three roles: the office, the cleaners on their phones, and an administrator. Sign-in, the database, the admin panel and email notifications are all in the package. The one extra is a Xero integration, so a completed job becomes a draft invoice without retyping.

That project would be quoted within our $15,000 to $40,000 web app range, plus $1,500 to $5,000 for the Xero integration, and built in 6 to 12 weeks from the discovery workshop to launch. The exact figure comes out of the discovery workshop. If the company later wants customers to book online and see their own invoices, that is a second workflow and a fourth role, quoted as a separate stage. Hosting, backups and updates after launch come from the care plan at $300, $700 or $1,500 a month, depending on how many change hours it wants each month.

We do not bill a build by the hour, because a quote that can grow is not a quote. The process is:

1. Estimate range. You describe the project on our quote page and get an estimate range within one business day.
2. Discovery. For anything over $10,000, a paid discovery workshop turns the idea into a written scope: the workflows, the roles, the integrations and what is deliberately left out.
3. Fixed price. Once you sign the scope, the price is fixed. A 30 to 50 percent deposit starts the work, and the rest is paid at milestones: design approval, the first working build and launch.
4. Changes. If you want something that is not in the scope, we price it in writing before we build it. A small change can fit inside a sprint; a larger one is added to the fixed price and the timeline. You always choose. After launch, change requests outside a care plan are $130 an hour with a two-hour minimum.

Our process page explains what happens in each of the 6 to 12 weeks, and how long it takes to build an app walks through a realistic week-by-week plan.

A web app needs hosting, backups, security updates and the occasional fix, and most businesses want small changes once their team has used it for a while. Our care plan covers all of that for $300, $700 or $1,500 a month ex GST, with 2, 5 or 10 hours of changes each month and a monthly report. It runs month to month after the first three months. For comparison, maintenance for a small-business app across the Australian market usually costs $500 to $2,000 a month.

Budget for it from the start: an app that nobody updates becomes a security risk. What a maintenance package should include lists what to check in any plan.

Write down the one process the app must run, who uses it and which systems it has to talk to. Then tell us about your project in your own words. You will get an estimate range within one business day, the written scope and the fixed price follow the discovery workshop, and there is no obligation at any point.