How much does it cost to develop a mobile app? — answered by Engineer Saeed Baatiah
A simple app with a handful of screens and no complex backend starts around SAR 10,000. An app with sign-in, a database, and notifications runs SAR 20,000 to 60,000. One with payments, maps, and an admin dashboard goes beyond that. Using React Native cuts roughly a third off the cost versus building two separate native apps for iOS and Android, because one codebase serves both platforms.
Saeed Baatiah prices per project rather than from a fixed rate card, because a fixed price means either paying for what you do not need or quietly losing scope that never made it into the quote. What actually moves the number: the count of screens and states rather than pages, whether you need an admin dashboard with roles and permissions, how many external systems must be integrated (payments, e-invoicing, shipping, inventory), whether the content is fully bilingual, who supplies content and design, and how much data has to migrate off an old system.
For mobile specifically, the single largest cost driver is one decision: one codebase or two. React Native builds for both iOS and Android from a single source, cutting development and maintenance cost together to roughly half that of two separate native apps. Taqah and Lazy Wait are both built this way.
Line items many people miss when budgeting: the annual Apple developer account and the one-off Google Play fee, store review that may send the app back for changes, push notifications, and a backend dashboard if the app needs content or user management. These go into the quote from the outset.
- React Native: one codebase for iOS and Android — roughly half the cost
- Budget store fees and review inside the plan, not outside it
- The backend dashboard is a separate item to settle early