What it actually costs to ship an app in 2026.
"Apps are basically free to build now" is half true and fully misleading. Here's the honest ledger for a solo developer shipping to both stores — the fixed fees, the cut the stores take, the tools worth paying for, and the costs nobody budgets for.
The unavoidable fixed costs
Two line items are non-negotiable. Apple's Developer Program is $99 per year, every year, whether you ship one app or fifty. Google Play is a $25 one-time registration. That asymmetry surprises people — over five years, Apple costs you $495 to Google's $25 — and it's the first reason many indies ship Android first, even when their audience is on iPhone.
Add a domain (roughly $10–15/year) if your app needs a landing page, privacy policy, and support address — and both stores effectively require the latter two.
The commission — and the discount most indies miss
Both stores take 30% of paid revenue as the default. But both also run small-business programs that drop the cut to 15% on roughly your first $1M per year — Apple's Small Business Program requires you to apply, while Google applies its reduced rate automatically. If you're charging money on iOS and haven't enrolled, you are donating half your margin back to Apple for no reason. Enrolling takes minutes.
Selling on the web avoids the commission entirely for products that qualify — which is why so many subscription apps now sell Pro on their website for less than the in-app price. (It's why our own web price is lower than mobile.)
Tools: where paying is worth it
The honest answer for a solo dev in 2026 is that the toolchain can be nearly free: the IDE, the frameworks, version control, and a generous free tier on most backends. The places where spending actually buys you speed:
- A backend you don't babysit. Managed auth/database/hosting free tiers carry most indie apps to real traction; expect $0–25/month early on.
- AI assistance. An AI coding subscription has become the single highest-leverage tool spend for solo developers — treat it like rent on a second pair of hands.
- Analytics/crash reporting. Free tiers are genuinely enough at indie scale.
The cost nobody budgets: looking like a real product
Here's the line item that kills more launches than any fee: the listing itself. You shipped the app, and now the store wants an icon, a description, keywords — and a carousel of screenshots that will do more for your conversion than anything else on the page. The traditional options are hiring a designer (hundreds of dollars per set, per store, per language) or hand-building frames in a design tool for a weekend.
This is the gap ShotCanvas exists to close: drop in raw screens, let AI compose the set and write the headlines, export every required size for both stores, and publish — in an afternoon, starting free. However you do it, budget real time for the listing; a great app behind a weak listing performs like a weak app.
The honest bottom line
A realistic first year for a solo developer shipping to both stores: $99 (Apple) + $25 (Google, once) + ~$15 (domain) ≈ $140 in unavoidable costs, plus whatever you choose to spend on tools — and 15% of whatever you earn in-store once you're enrolled in the small-business programs. The money is the easy part. The scarce resources are your time and your listing's first impression; spend both deliberately.