What does a mobile app development project with Purrweb look like end-to-end?

A project starts with a discovery phase: we interview stakeholders, map out user flows, and define the feature scope. From there, the team moves to UI/UX design in Figma, then development in React Native (or native Swift/Kotlin when the project requires it), QA testing, and finally App Store and Google Play submission. Across our 550+ completed projects, the typical sequence from signed contract to first public release runs 3–6 months for an MVP-scale product. You get weekly progress updates, a shared Jira board, and a dedicated project manager throughout — not just a dev team you hand off requirements to.

Do you sign NDAs before discussing my project?

Yes — we sign an NDA before the first call, not after. You do not need to ask for it; it is part of our standard onboarding. The NDA covers your product concept, business logic, and any technical details you share during discovery. All source code produced during the project is transferred to you in full at handoff; Purrweb retains no rights to your IP. This applies to all engagements regardless of project size or duration.

Do you provide support and updates after the app launches?

Yes. Post-launch support is a separate contract that covers iOS and Android OS updates (Apple and Google release major versions annually), bug fixes, performance monitoring, and incremental feature additions. Most clients who ship with us move into a support retainer rather than assembling a new team. The support scope is defined at launch — you can choose a basic maintenance package or a dedicated sprint cycle for continued feature development.

Who will work on my project and how is the team structured?

A standard Purrweb team includes a project manager, one or two UI/UX designers, two to four React Native developers (or native iOS/Android devs depending on stack), a QA engineer, and a business analyst on larger projects. Team size scales with scope — a focused MVP may run with 4 people; a complex dual-platform product typically involves 6–8. You have a single point of contact (the PM) for daily communication, and direct access to leads when technical decisions need input. We do not rotate project managers mid-engagement.

Can we work together if we are in different time zones?

Yes. Our clients are primarily in the US, UK, and the UAE, and our team is distributed across UTC+2 to UTC+5. For US-based clients (EST/PST), we schedule a daily sync in the morning your time — 4–6 hours of overlap is enough for async-first development. Communication runs through Slack, Jira, and Figma. We have shipped projects with zero in-person meetings and zero timezone-related delays. If you are in a significantly different region, we flag the overlap window upfront so there are no surprises.

Do you build for iOS and Android at the same time, or one at a time?

We typically build for both platforms simultaneously using React Native, which shares one codebase between iOS and Android. This means you get two apps in roughly the same time and cost as building one natively. The tradeoff: React Native has known limitations for projects that need deep hardware access (custom camera pipelines, Bluetooth peripherals, complex on-device ML). In those cases we recommend native Swift for iOS and Kotlin for Android, which means separate codebases and longer timelines. We walk through this decision on the first scoping call so you know what you are committing to before signing.

What is the difference between native and cross-platform mobile development?

Native development means writing separate code for iOS (Swift/Objective-C) and Android (Kotlin/Java). You get full platform API access, the best possible performance, and no third-party runtime layer — but you maintain two codebases and roughly double the development cost. Cross-platform development (React Native, Flutter) uses one codebase that compiles to native components on both platforms. For most business apps — marketplaces, fintech, health tracking, on-demand services — cross-platform performs the same as native and ships faster. We use React Native for approximately 85% of our mobile projects. Native is the right call when the project needs ARKit, HealthKit deep integration, or custom peripheral communication.

What happens if I need to change the scope mid-project?

Scope changes are handled through a change-order process, not informal Slack messages. When a new requirement comes in, we estimate the impact on timeline and budget in writing and get your approval before any work starts. Minor adjustments within the current sprint (swapping one feature for another of similar complexity) are typically absorbed without a formal change order. Large scope additions — new platform, new integration, new user role — pause the current sprint for re-estimation. We have seen scope expand in roughly 60% of projects; the change-order process exists specifically so that does not turn into schedule or budget surprises.

How to Choose a Mobile App Development Company

To help you:

💰increase sales and customer loyalty
⚙️reduce costs through automation
🙋🏼♂️improve customer service
🚀get the product to market quickly

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IoT, Chats, 1M active users, 6.6K reviews on the App Store and Google Pay

Fintech, Credit card linking, QR codes, $1M in investments

E-commerce, Maps & GPS, 130K active users

Fintech, Investment & trading, Cross-platform app

See all projects

Ready to build a mobile app?

We can't wait to hear your ideas!
Contact us and get a free project estimation within 48 hours.

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Our technology stack for mobile app development

JavaScript

Nest.js

React.js

Electron.js

React Native

Flutter

Redis

PostgreSQL

AWS

Jenkins

Nginx

WebRTC

PWA

Vercel

Cost of mobile application development for iOS and Android

We've gathered rough estimates on mobile app development time and cost here, so, if you want to learn more about how they are formed — read our article. For platform-specific detail, see our iOS app development and Android app development pages.

Dating

Dating apps connect people with a certain interest — be it romance, casual sex, or friendship. The core functionality usually includes push-notifications, APIs integration, and matching-algorithms.

6 months

$100, 000

Matching

Chat

Subscriptions

Learn more

Meditation

Usually, people use meditation apps before bedtime to relax with the sounds of nature or listen to motivational affirmations. In order to enter the market, you'll need to, at a minimum, develop a player, build a library of sounds, and add payment options.

5 months

$53, 000

Media player

Catalog

Subscriptions

Learn more

Delivery

Food delivery services are mediators between a hungry customer and a restaurant. To release this kind of app, you’ll need to implement food catalogs, APIs, chat with push-notifications, and payment options.

6 months

$87,000

Catalog

Shopping cart

Promo codes

Learn more

Stock trading

A stock trading app is a user-end platform where stocks are being bought and sold. It’ll need things like onboarding, personal accounts, dashboards, and trading functionality. Read our article to find out the details!

7 months

$111,000

Payment

Analytics

Portfolios

Learn more

Messenger

Messengers are an integral part of modern life. With their help, we can keep in touch with family and friends, find out the latest news, and even make medical appointments. In the article, we've prepared a checklist of must-have to nice-to-have messenger features!

5 months

$85,000

Chat

Contacts

Attachments

Learn more

P2P payment

No one wants to waste their time on making financial transactions. You want to do these things in 2 clicks — no matter if it’s about chipping in for a gift, splitting a bill at a bar, or transferring money for work — it is easier to do through a mobile app. Here’s the guide to the world of financial apps, their monetization strategies, and key features.

6 months

$128,000

Bank card liking

Transfers

Contacts

Learn more

Social media

A social media mobile app helps users communicate, create photos and videos, and share them. The most important features here are profiles, chat, content creation functionality, push notifications, and increasingly AI-powered app development for personalization — check the article for more

6 months

$106,000

Chat

News feed

Multimedia

Learn more

Marketplace

A marketplace is a platform where users trade goods and services. If you want to know more about how to develop a marketplace with Airbnb as an example — read more of our guide.

8 months

$163,000

Catalog

Payments

Promo codes

As simple as 1-2-3

Schedule a call

After you fill out the form, our manager will contact you within 24 hours and arrange a call. If necessary, we are ready to sign an NDA.

At the meeting, we will get to know each other and discuss the project. We'll also talk about the approximate budget and deadlines.

Fill out the form

Dive into project details

After the first meeting, a business analyst will contact you for a mini-audit: gathering technical requirements and creating a portrait of the project's target audience. To do that, we'll talk about your project, what your goals and restrictions are, and look at positive and negative references.

Prepare and submit
an estimate

We prepare a detailed estimate and presentation, which includes cost, timeline, team, and project roadmap.

After that, all that's left is to sign the contract,and we'll get started on your project! Now, let's talk about what happens after the estimate.

William Angel

CTO

Personalised — wellness app design

Watch a video review

I'm the CTO of Personalised Co., an app for tracking supplement and vitamin intake. Purrweb designed the product's UI/UX with a Shopify store integration for automatic reordering, and built an interface for healthy living with personalized tracking.

Mobile payment platform in Kuwait Kem

HealthTech, Design, Mobile app, Shopify, Wellness

Personalised Co. is an app for people who take supplements and vitamins regularly: intake tracking and automatic reordering through a Shopify integration. Purrweb designed the product's UI/UX with a supplement marketplace and a personal intake schedule.

View full case

Seth Abel-Sadeq

CEO

KEM — Payment app

Watch a video review

I'm the CEO of KEM, a P2P mobile payment service for the Kuwaiti market, where not everyone has access to online banking. Our banking partners needed an MVP for demonstrations. Purrweb delivered the design and the MVP, working around the restrictions on connecting to the banking API. On completion, they handed the project over to our in-house team with full documentation and a month of technical support.

Mobile payment platform in Kuwait Kem

Fintech, Design+Development, Mobile app, Cross-platform, MENA

KEM is a P2P app for instant money transfers in the Kuwaiti market: linked bank cards, money requests from the contact list, and transaction history. The key challenge: for security reasons, Kuwaiti banks don't allow outside developers to work with their API — so Purrweb built the back end on mock data, fully simulating the final functionality for demos.

View full case

Matt Brzowski

Startup founder

Buzz

Watch a video review

I'm building Buzz, an app for finding and organizing events in small American towns. I came to Purrweb with almost nothing — just an idea. Purrweb helped with marketing, brand identity, and the logo, and walked the whole road to MVP with us, even when our requirements shifted a lot in the early stages. I valued the flexibility and the quality of the design.

Mobile payment platform in Kuwait Kem

Lifestyle, Design+Development, Mobile app, Social app, Geolocation

Buzz is a geosocial service for residents of small American towns: a geolocation-based feed of public events, private events with friend invites, group chats, and a Ticketmaster integration. Purrweb created the brand identity from scratch, optimized the architecture, reused ready-made modules, and shipped the MVP in 12 months.

View full case

William Angel

CTO

Personalised — wellness app design

Watch a video review

View full case

Seth Abel-Sadeq

CEO

KEM — Payment app

Watch a video review

View full case

Matt Brzowski

Founder

Buzz

Watch a video review

View full case

Mobile app development process

Systems analysis

Result: Database layout and BPMN-diagram, which describes the logic of interaction with the application

Average time frame: 2–3 weeks

We gather analytics and dive into the details of your project even deeper. At this stage, we lay out the app’s architecture and complete a chart for how exactly the app is going to work. This allows us to anticipate all possible difficulties and changes.

UI/UX design

Result: Finished mobile app screens and UI kit

Average time frame: 1-1.5 month

We start by working out the app's internal logic — creating a mind map. Then we translate it into black-and-white wireframes. When the app logic is agreed upon, we create 1–3 screens from the main user scenario to determine the core style of the app. Then we work out all the details, finalize the mobile app design, and create a UI kit for quick and convenient mobile app development.

Development

Result: A finished application with all the features working properly

Average time frame: 2–5 months

We divide the entire mobile app development process into 2-week sprints. This allows the client to control the development progress and quickly implement changes. Trial releases are made in TestFlight and Google Play beta testing to show how the application works on real mobile devices.

Testing

Result: The app displays correctly on any device of the chosen platforms, while running fast and bug-free

Average time frame: In parallel with the development

To ensure that mobile apps work smoothly and bugs don’t creep into the final product, we test each project both manually and using automated tests.

Release and post-launch support

Result: Your app is available for download in the app stores, while we add new features

Average time frame: Depending on your needs

We know the ins and outs of publishing to the App Store and Google Play and always bring releases to completion. Our mobile app development services also include supporting and improving products after release by adding new features and fixing bugs.

Some facts about us

550+

Project released

Clients from all around the world

Working with customers from USA, UAE, Japan, and Germany

10 years

Of making apps for startups and businesses

>50К

Positive reviews collected by our customers' apps in the app stores

>7 years

Longest partnership with the client

200+

People on the team

What sets us apart from other agencies

Experienced in 46 niches

Fintech, IoT, marketplaces, medtech, real estate, TV apps, Smart TV app development projects and 40 other niches. This helps us dive into a project faster and offer working solutions right away.

Help save up to 30% of your budget

We develop mobile and web apps with frameworks like React Native and Flutter. Cross-platform app development allows us to merge our Android and iOS workflows, delivering apps for both platforms. This is faster than creating native mobile apps with separate code bases.

Flexible

We start working on a project within a week. If deadlines change on your end, we'll be able to quickly expand the team and release the mobile app on time.

Focused on the long-term

Your success is our success. We are interested in your growth and do everything to keep the mobile app alive and growing after release. So far, our longest partnership has lasted 7 years. During that time we've launched and improved 3 client projects. One of them has reached a turnover of $5 mln/year.

224

reviews on 3 platforms

4,9

average rating

41 reviews

18 reviews

165 reviews

What does a mobile app development company actually do?

A mobile app development company is a team that takes a product idea through design, engineering, testing, app store submission, and ongoing maintenance. That full-cycle scope is the line separating an agency from a solo contractor who disappears after the first build. Mobile app development costs $25,000–$60,000 for an MVP, $60,000–$150,000 for a mid-complexity app, and $150,000+ for enterprise builds.

The work runs in six stages: discovery (scope and architecture), design (UX/UI against Apple's Human Interface Guidelines and Google's Material Design), development (sprints with weekly builds), QA (device and store-policy testing), app store submission, and post-launch support.

Discovery, design, development, QA, store submission, post-launch

Discovery (1–2 weeks) locks in the feature set before any code gets written. Development runs in agile sprints with builds pushed to TestFlight or Play Console's internal track. QA covers manual and automated testing on physical devices — see how device testing differs on iOS app development and Android app development. Store submission means owning App Store Connect and Play Console setup through every round of reviewer feedback. Post-launch support monitors crash reports and store reviews for the first 2–4 weeks, then moves to a maintenance retainer or handover.

Agency vs. freelancer vs. in-house — which fits your project?

An agency fits best when a project needs a full team (design, engineering, QA, project management) on a fixed timeline without the overhead of hiring. A freelancer fits narrow, well-defined tasks with a flexible timeline. An in-house team fits products expected to run for years with continuous feature work after launch.

Team size and speed. A freelancer is one person juggling design, code, and QA sequentially. An agency staffs a project with a designer, one or two engineers, and a QA person from day one — agency timelines for MVP-scope work tend to run 8–16 weeks.

IP ownership and contracts. An agency contract should assign all IP to the client outright. If a vendor won't put that in writing, that's a red flag regardless of their portfolio.

Budget and long-term cost. In-house hiring makes sense once a product has product-market fit and needs a dedicated team shipping features indefinitely. For a first build validating a business idea, that fixed cost is premature.

How to evaluate a mobile app development company

Portfolio proof — live links, not mockups

Ask any candidate company for the Apple App Store or Google Play URL of an app they built — not a case-study screenshot, an actual listing you can install. A vendor that can only produce mockups hasn't shipped anything through the hardest part of the process: store review and real users.

Team structure — dedicated vs. generalist

A single mobile project typically needs a product designer, one or two mobile developers, a QA person testing on physical devices, and a project lead who handles store review correspondence. Ask who's assigned to a project before signing.

Post-launch support commitment

Post-launch support should be in the contract as a defined scope: a monitoring window, a maintenance retainer, or an explicit handover process. The best fit usually isn't the vendor with the most awards — it's the one whose contract stays active after the invoice clears.

Native vs. cross-platform — which should you build?

Native development means writing separate codebases in Swift (iOS) and Kotlin (Android). Cross-platform development means writing one codebase in React Native or Flutter that ships to both platforms at once. Native is the right call when an app needs deep platform integration on day one — CarPlay, ARKit, Android widgets. Cross-platform is the right call when the priority is validating a business idea on both iOS and Android before platform-specific investment is justified.

For the full tradeoff breakdown on each platform:

React Native app development — one codebase across iOS and Android
iOS app development — App Store submission, CarPlay, native-Swift tradeoffs
Android app development — device fragmentation, Google Play submission, Material Design
cross-platform app development — the full native-vs-cross-platform comparison across frameworks
React Native game development — for casual or mid-core games rather than utility apps

Purrweb's approach — cross-vertical case portfolio

KEM — P2P payment app for the Kuwait market

A fintech startup needed an MVP to pitch banking partners before securing a real banking API. We built it with React Native — mock banking data, phone-number signup, card linking, peer-to-peer transfers — for both platforms from one codebase.

Settler — renovation-tracking app for Dubai

A Dubai renovation service needed an app connecting homeowners with interior designers, including live-stream video of work in progress. We built it as a React Native MVP and delivered it live to the App Store in 4 months.

Fitness App — remote coaching platform

A fitness-industry client needed a platform connecting trainers with clients: video workouts, in-app chat, scheduling, Stripe payments. We built it with React Native and a Node.js backend, for iOS and Android.

How long does mobile app development take?

An MVP takes 8–16 weeks from kickoff to store listing. A mid-complexity app runs 3–5 months. Enterprise builds take 6 months or longer — assuming discovery is finished before development sprints start. Projects that skip discovery and figure out scope mid-build routinely run past their original estimate.

Will AI replace mobile app developers?

No. AI tools speed up scaffolding and boilerplate code, but the discovery, design, and QA judgment that decides whether an app actually works for its users still runs through people. Generated code still needs a human to catch platform-specific edge cases — whether a screen handles a notch correctly, whether a form meets App Store accessibility guidelines.

Let's go develop an app?

Fill out the form and we’ll contact you within 24 hours.

Let's go!

Why should you choose Purrweb for mobile app development?

Completed projects:over 550

Development timeframe:3 to 6 months

Cost of mobile app development:$45,000 to $130,000

Full development cycle:from UI/UX design to release

How much does it cost to develop a mobile app?

On average, from $45,000 to $130,000. The price depends on the design, number and complexity of features, and specific aspects of the project. If you want to know more about the costs of mobile app development services, read this article.

If you want to get an individualized estimate of your project, leave your contact information in the form.

How long will it take to create an app?

On average — 3 to 6 months. As with cost, it all depends on the specific details of the project. Leave your contacts in the form, and we will contact you, find out the details of the project, and prepare a customized estimate with cost and timeframe.

Do you sign NDAs?

If necessary, we'll sign an NDA on the first call to ensure the highest level of confidentiality.

Will you support the mobile app after release?

After release, our mobile app development company can support the developed software if needed. We can fix bugs that could not be detected before release, as well as add new features and improve the project.

Who will be part of the team on my project?

Project manager to coordinate the work of the team.
UI/UX designer to design the interface and logic of the application.
Mobile app developers — including cross-platform and game development specialists — to create the frontend and backend of the application.
A tester to verify the correct functioning of the product.

Do you work with customers from all over the world?

Of course! It doesn't matter to us whether you are in LA or Abu Dhabi, our teams are great at working asynchronously with customers from different time zones. We even wrote an article about how our project managers do it, so if you want to learn more — read our article.