Mobile App Costs in 2026: From MVP to the Stores

Three price bands

The price of a mobile app hides how broad the word “app” really is. As of 2026 in Türkiye there are three bands.

Showcase app (₺50,000–120,000). Catalogue, contact, a simple form. Unnecessary for most businesses — a mobile-friendly website does the same job for less.

Transactional app (₺120,000–350,000). Membership, ordering, payment, notifications, admin panel. This is the band restaurants, salons, e-commerce and service businesses actually need.

Platform (₺350,000 and up). Real-time messaging, matching, maps, multi-sided marketplaces. Here the cost comes from the system behind the screen, not the screen.

Answer this question first

There is one question to settle before commissioning an app: why will the user open it a second time?

If the answer is “to see our campaigns”, you do not need an app; a website with notifications and a WhatsApp list will do. If the answer is “to reorder, to check their appointment, to spend their points”, an app makes sense.

An app that is downloaded and opened once is more expensive than an app never built: you pay for it, and it sits in the store carrying a low rating.

Starting with an MVP

The right approach is to do one job perfectly in the first release. “Order from the table” for a restaurant, “book an appointment” for a salon, “reorder” for retail. Everything else waits for version two.

This buys you two things. First, budget: an MVP is usually a third of full scope. Second and more important, you move on real usage data. Which of the features you imagined actually get used is something you only learn after launch — and it is usually a surprise.

Hidden costs

There are items that never appear in the quote but always arrive.

Store accounts. An Apple developer account is $99 a year; Google Play is a one-off $25.

Servers. An API runs behind the app. Cost tracks user numbers: low in the early months, rising as you grow.

Store submission. Screenshots, privacy policy, data-collection declarations, age rating. Apple rejects more often than people expect, and every rejection costs a week.

Maintenance. Apple and Google ship a new OS every year and require apps built on older SDKs to be updated. An app left untouched for years eventually gets pulled from the store. Maintenance is not an upsell; it is the app’s survival condition.

The single-codebase question

Writing separately for Android and iOS means doing the same job twice. Single-codebase approaches such as React Native cut that cost roughly in half and let you ship to both stores on the same day.

The exception: heavy graphics, advanced camera processing, or apps that reach deep into device hardware. Outside those three cases, a single codebase is the right call for almost every SMB-scale project.

Ask yourself this: does your app use a special capability of the device, or does it display data? If it is the second, do not hesitate.

Web or app?

For most SMBs the right answer is web first. A fast, mobile-friendly site reaches everyone with no download barrier, while an app asks the user for a decision — the decision to install. Getting that decision is more expensive than people expect.

Where an app wins is repeat usage. In a business where people buy once a month, an app struggles; where they order three times a week, it wins. Work out how many times a year a customer would open yours. If the answer is under six, put the budget into the site and notifications instead.