Pricing guide
Android app budgets: from the $25 account to five-figure builds
The Google Play account costs 25 dollars; everything else goes into development and testing.
Publishing on Google Play costs a one-off 25 dollars — and that is roughly where the cheap part of an Android app ends. Actual development on the 2026 market sits between €6,000 and €18,000 for an MVP and €18,000–50,000 for a business application with authentication, payments and an admin panel. What makes Android specifically dearer is fragmentation: thousands of phone models, screen sizes and OS versions translate into extra hours of testing and device-specific fixes that iOS simply never demands. The technology choice weighs just as heavily: native Kotlin gives maximum performance and full hardware access, while Flutter covers iOS too for a modest additional effort — which makes it the rational pick for most business apps. One more variable worth knowing if you are comparing quotes across borders: these are Romanian-market figures, which is much of why a nearshore build from an EU member state often lands well under equivalent Western European or US quotes for identical scope. Screen count and integrations can still move any of these ranges, so treat them as brackets rather than price tags.
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Key takeaways
Android MVP: €6,000–18,000
One main flow, 8–12 screens, a simple backend. Enough to validate the idea with real users before funding the full version.
Business application: €18,000–50,000
User accounts, notifications, payments, an admin panel, integration with company systems. Roughly 3–5 months of development with a small team.
Native Kotlin vs Flutter
Kotlin when you need raw performance and specific hardware; Flutter when the same code should also ship on iOS — for most company apps the second road costs less per platform.
Testing across a fragmented fleet
Samsung, Xiaomi, Pixel, different Android versions: budget 10–15% of the project purely for real-device testing, or learn about the problems from one-star reviews.
Where the money actually goes in an Android project
The visible screens are the small part. A business Android app spends its budget on the backend (the server holding the data), on integrations (payments, SMS, internal systems) and on testing across device fragmentation. A form that behaves perfectly on a Pixel can clip fields on a Samsung with a different keyboard layout, or freeze on a Xiaomi whose aggressive battery optimisations kill notifications. Each such case means debugging hours that never appear in the initial estimate if the vendor lacks Android experience.
A concrete example: a loyalty app for a coffee-shop chain — QR code scanning, points, push offers. As a Flutter MVP: roughly €9,000–13,000, with the advantage that the iOS version arrives for an extra 15–20%, not double. The same app in native Kotlin: €8,000–12,000, but iOS would then mean an almost entirely separate second project. If your audience is mixed, the arithmetic tilts toward cross-platform nearly every time.
Frequently asked questions
Why is testing more expensive on Android than on iOS?
Because the Android market means thousands of combinations of manufacturer, screen size and OS version, each with quirks — from display cutouts to aggressive battery-saving modes. On iOS you test a handful of models and have covered nearly the entire fleet.
Are there Google Play costs beyond the $25 fee?
The account fee is one-off. Beyond it, Google takes a service fee on digital payments made inside the app, and that structure changed: for users in the EEA, the UK and the US a new model applies from 30 June 2026, with a separate 5% billing fee. The exact percentages depend on content type and annual thresholds, so check the official Google Play fee grid before modelling revenue — most company apps, which sell no digital goods in-app, pay no service fee at all. Budget compliance time too: privacy policy, data-safety forms and Google review, usually cleared within a few days.
Should my company app be native Kotlin or Flutter?
Flutter, in most business cases: one codebase covers Android and iOS, and the performance gap is imperceptible in list-form-payment style apps. Native Kotlin remains the pick when you depend on specific hardware — industrial Bluetooth, video processing, sensors.
What does maintaining an Android app cost after launch?
Plan for 15–20% of the build cost per year: Android ships a major version annually, Google periodically tightens publishing requirements (target SDK), and the libraries you use need updating for the app to stay in the store.
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Let’s talk about your project
Message us on WhatsApp or send an email — you talk directly to a developer.
office@northdan.com · +40 752 070 247