App development cost in India 2026: what each band actually buys

Summary. There is no methodology-backed hourly rate card for Indian app development, and the figures that dominate search results are published by companies selling app development. Those pages disagree with each other by more than five times for the same job title. What is verifiable: Clutch's directory data, updated 14 August 2026, places India-based firms in a sub-$25 per hour band against $25 to $49 for United States firms, with an average project cost of $90,780 across an 11-month timeline and a typical band of $10,000 to $49,999. Stack Overflow's 2025 Developer Survey puts the median total annual compensation of a mobile developer in India at $10,462, from 1,093 India respondents. Nasscom's FY2025E totals of $282.6 billion across 5.8 million people imply roughly $48,700 of revenue per employee. The Apple Developer Program costs $99 a year, Google Play registration is a one-time $25, GST on IT services is 18% with exports zero-rated, and Google Play takes 15% on the first $1 million of annual earnings in India. This page separates the costs you can check from the ones you cannot.

The honest structure of an app budget

An app development quote has four components. Three of them are knowable to the rupee. The fourth is the one every published cost guide pretends to know and does not.

The differentiator of an honest estimate is that it names its own weakest number. Labour is that number. Everything else on this page can be checked against a vendor or government page in under a minute.

What the verifiable cost anchors actually say

Platform fees

Apple charges $99 per membership year for the Apple Developer Program, priced in local currency at enrolment, with fee waivers available to nonprofits, accredited educational institutions and government entities. Google Play charges a one-time US$25 developer registration fee, payable by credit or debit card, with prepaid cards refused. These are the entire fixed platform cost of shipping to both stores. Any estimate that cannot state them has not been built from the bottom up.

The rate of take, which is larger than the build cost over time

In India and all markets outside the EEA, UK and US, Google Play's service fee is 15% on the first $1 million of annual earnings and 30% above that, with a flat 15% on auto-renewing subscriptions regardless of revenue. Where a developer offers an alternative billing system to users in India, the applicable service fee is reduced by 4 percentage points, so an India developer on the 15% tier pays 11%. Apple's App Store Small Business Program cuts commission to 15% for developers with $1 million or less in proceeds in the prior calendar year, with new developers qualifying automatically.

One change worth watching even though it does not apply to India yet: from 30 June 2026 Google Play is restructuring fees for EEA, UK and US transactions, splitting rates by whether the user's install is new or existing. Auto-renewing subscriptions move to 10% plus a 5% billing fee, and other transactions to 20% plus 5% for new installs or 25% plus 5% for existing ones. If your revenue is Western and your build is Indian, that restructure changes your unit economics more than any development rate does.

Tax

GST on IT services in India is 18%, per the GST Council's sectoral FAQ for IT and ITeS. Export of software services is zero-rated with full input tax credit retained, subject to five conditions covering supplier location, recipient location, place of supply, payment in convertible foreign exchange, and the parties not being establishments of a distinct person. The 56th GST Council meeting on 3 September 2025 collapsed the four-slab structure into a two-rate structure with a standard rate of 18% and a merit rate of 5%, effective 22 September 2025, so 18% remains the applicable standard rate for software services.

Deadline-driven engineering, which is the cost people forget

From 31 August 2026, new Google Play apps and all app updates must target Android 16, API level 36, with extensions available to 1 November 2026 through Play Console. Apps targeting below API 35 stop being discoverable to users on newer Android versions. Since 28 April 2026, every build uploaded to App Store Connect must be compiled with Xcode 26 and the iOS 26 SDK. Apple's updated age rating system took effect on 31 January 2026, and apps that did not answer the new questions faced interruption when submitting updates. None of this is discretionary, none of it adds a feature, and all of it consumes engineering time that a first-year budget rarely contains.

Cloud running costs

AWS Lightsail publishes flat list prices that anchor a small backend, on a page last updated 7 August 2026: a $5 per month Linux instance, a $15 per month standard managed database or $30 with high availability, an $18 per month load balancer, a $2.50 per month CDN distribution covering 50 GB, and $1 per month object storage. AWS's own worked example of a multi-tier application, combining a Nano container service, a load balancer and a 1 GB managed database, totals $40 per month. Two India-specific details matter: the Asia Pacific (Mumbai) bundles include half the data transfer allowance of other regions, and Mumbai object-storage transfer overage runs $0.1093 per GB against $0.09 in us-east-1.

Labour: the number nobody can cite cleanly

Stack Overflow's 2025 Developer Survey is the only compensation source in this space that publishes its methodology and its sample size. For India it reports median total annual compensation of $10,462 for a mobile developer, $13,949 for a full-stack developer, $22,086 for a back-end developer, $46,496 for a software or solutions architect and $52,308 for an engineering manager. The India compensation question drew 1,093 respondents, 2.2% of the survey. It is self-selected and self-reported, and the mobile developer figure is among the lowest bands in the India list, so it should be read as one signal rather than a market rate. The 2026 survey opened on 23 June 2026 and has not published results, which makes the 2025 edition the most recent released data.

Two industry totals bound the range from above. Nasscom's Strategic Review of 24 February 2025 puts FY2025E revenue at $282.6 billion across 5.8 million employees, implying about $48,700 of revenue per employee. The Nasscom-Zinnov GCC Landscape Report, with data as of March 2026, puts 2,117 GCCs at $98.4 billion revenue across 2.36 million people, implying about $41,700 per person. Both are derived figures, and both measure billing output rather than cost. They are the ceiling your money passes through, not a salary.

That is the entire honest evidence base. Anyone quoting you a precise blended hourly rate for Indian app development is quoting a number with no published source behind it.

What each band actually buys

The bands below are Clutch's own project-cost buckets from directory data updated 14 August 2026, with what that budget realistically covers given the platform and deadline costs above. They are ranges reported by listed firms, not an audited price list.

The single most useful reframing: Clutch's own numbers put India one pricing band below the United States, not four to eight times below. If a quote implies an eight-times saving, the saving is coming from somewhere other than geography, and it is usually seniority or QA.

India-specific considerations

If your users are in India, three cost drivers are structural rather than negotiable. Personal data falls under the DPDP framework, whose Rules were notified in November 2025 with an eighteen-month phased compliance period placing substantive obligations in May 2027, and consent capture, retention and deletion are engineering line items. Payments run on UPI and the NPCI rails, which carry their own integration and reconciliation work. Device and network variance is far wider than in a single-market Western build, which makes offline data synchronization and payload size real engineering decisions. For a fuller treatment of the regulated case, the fintech build requirements page covers the RBI constraints, and the India versus US cost comparison goes deeper on the geography question.

How we estimate

1. Scope before price. We write down what the application must do, what it integrates with, and what its compliance surface is. An estimate produced before this exists is a guess with a decimal point.
2. Separate the knowable from the estimated. Platform fees, tax, cloud list prices and deadline-driven work go in as fixed lines. Labour goes in as a range with the assumptions stated.
3. Price the first year, not the build. Maintenance, store requirement changes like the API 36 cutover, and the run cost of the backend belong in the number you approve.
4. Name the risks with cost attached. Integrations you do not control and regulatory dates are where estimates move, so they are called out separately rather than buried in a contingency percentage.
5. Re-estimate at the end of discovery, against the scoped backlog rather than the original brief.

If you are choosing between partners rather than pricing a scope, the India buyer guide covers the checks worth running first, and the Flutter and React Native pages cover where a shared codebase changes the cost shape.

Why eCorpIT

eCorpIT is eCorp Information Technologies Private Limited, founded in 2021 and based in Gurugram, Haryana. We are assessed at CMMI Level 5, certified to ISO 27001:2022, and MSME registered, and we are partners with AWS, Microsoft, Google, Shopify and Kaspersky. We quote against a scoped backlog with the assumptions written down, which is slower to produce than a rate multiplied by a guess and considerably harder to argue with later.

FAQ

How much does it cost to develop an app in India in 2026?

Clutch's directory data updated 14 August 2026 reports an average project cost of $90,780 over an 11-month timeline, with a typical band of $10,000 to $49,999. These are self-reported ranges from listed firms rather than audited prices. No source publishes a methodology-backed hourly rate card for Indian app development.

Why does every website give a different app development cost?

Because almost every page ranking for this query is published by a company selling app development, and none of them publish a methodology or a sample. Figures found in a single search pass ranged across $12 to $99 per hour for the same work, differing by more than five times, with no primary source behind any of them.

Is India really much cheaper than the US for app development?

On Clutch's directory data updated 14 August 2026, India-based firms sit under $25 per hour while United States firms sit at $25 to $49. That is roughly one pricing band. Claims of a four to eight times saving are not supported by that data, and usually reflect a difference in seniority or QA.

What are the fixed platform costs of launching an app?

The Apple Developer Program is $99 per membership year and Google Play registration is a one-time $25. On revenue, Google Play in India takes 15% on the first $1 million of annual earnings and 30% above, reduced by 4 percentage points where alternative billing is offered, and Apple's Small Business Program charges 15% under $1 million in proceeds.

What does an app developer earn in India?

Stack Overflow's 2025 Developer Survey reports median total annual compensation of $10,462 for a mobile developer in India, $13,949 for a full-stack developer and $46,496 for a software architect, from 1,093 India respondents. The sample is self-selected and self-reported, so it is one signal rather than a market rate.

What is GST on app development services in India?

GST on IT services is 18%, per the GST Council's sectoral FAQ for IT and ITeS. Export of software services is zero-rated with full input tax credit retained, subject to five conditions covering supplier and recipient location, place of supply, payment in convertible foreign exchange, and the parties being distinct persons.

What hidden costs should I budget for after launch?

Store requirement changes are the most commonly missed. Google Play requires target API level 36 from 31 August 2026, and App Store Connect has required Xcode 26 builds since 28 April 2026. Add backend running costs, which AWS's own worked multi-tier example prices at $40 per month, plus ongoing maintenance.

How eCorpIT can help

We scope and price app builds from Gurugram with the fixed costs itemised and the labour assumptions written down, so you can see which parts of the number are checkable and which are judgement. If you have an estimate from someone else, we will review it and tell you what it has left out, most often the first-year run cost and the store deadline work. Send us the scope at contact us.

References

1. Clutch mobile application developers pricing data — updated 14 August 2026.
2. Stack Overflow 2025 Developer Survey, work and compensation section — India median compensation by role, n=1,093.
3. Apple Developer Program enrolment and the $99 annual fee.
4. Google Play one-time $25 developer registration fee.
5. Google Play service fees, including the India alternative billing reduction and the 30 June 2026 EEA, UK and US restructure.
6. Apple App Store Small Business Program.
7. Target API level requirements for Google Play apps — API level 36 from 31 August 2026.
8. Apple upcoming requirements, including Xcode 26 builds from 28 April 2026 and the 31 January 2026 age rating change.
9. AWS Lightsail pricing — page updated 7 August 2026.
10. GST Council sectoral FAQ on IT and ITeS: 18% rate and zero-rated exports.
11. 56th GST Council press release on the two-rate structure effective 22 September 2025.
12. Nasscom Strategic Review press release — FY2025E figures, 24 February 2025.
13. Nasscom-Zinnov India GCC Landscape Report 2026 — data as of March 2026.
14. DPDP Rules 2025 notification and phased compliance period — 17 November 2025.

Last updated: 15 August 2026.