Native iOS apps in Swift for iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch and Mac, with Android alongside where it earns its place. From £4,000, live in eight to twelve weeks, and the App Store submission, the review and the first year of OS updates are part of the price rather than a surprise in month four.
Building an app and getting an app onto a store are two different jobs, and agencies that do the first one occasionally are the ones who get caught out by the second. Apple rejects builds for reasons that are nowhere in the design, privacy disclosures have to match what the code actually does, and every September a new iOS arrives and quietly changes something.
I have apps on the App Store under my own name right now, and I go through all of that every month whether or not a client is paying me to. The Racing Line has been live for years and is used by more than 100,000 people. Sauna & Plunge and Peek Notes are both shipping, with Location Vault and Widgeling in the queue behind them.
That is the honest reason to buy a mobile app from a person rather than a team of five: nothing about the process is theoretical, and the awkward parts get flagged in week one instead of discovered in week ten.
An app that lives on the phone is a known quantity. An app with accounts, payments and data syncing between devices is a second system behind the first one, and that is where the number moves.
£4,000 +
From · iOS, Android optional · 8 to 12 weeks
Design, native build, store listing and screenshots, privacy manifest and policy, submission and review, and the first year of OS updates.
Live in 8 to 12 weeks
This is where first-time app owners lose weeks, usually because nobody told them it existed. Here is the real sequence, so it holds no surprises.
An Apple Developer Program membership, which Apple charges for annually, plus identity verification. For a company that means a D-U-N-S number, which can take a fortnight on its own, so it is started in week one rather than week ten.
Name, subtitle, description, keywords, category, age rating, support URL and a privacy policy that has to exist at a real address. Plus screenshots at the exact sizes Apple asks for, which is a design job rather than a screen grab.
A privacy manifest in the build and a set of disclosures on the listing, both of which have to match what the app genuinely collects. Getting this wrong is a common reason for rejection and an unpleasant thing to be wrong about publicly.
A human at Apple opens the app and tries to break the rules with it. Review usually takes a day or two. Rejections are routine, specific and answerable, and I answer them rather than forwarding them to you.
Android follows the same shape with different paperwork: a Google Play developer account, a data safety form instead of a privacy manifest, and a review process that is usually quicker but less predictable. If you need both stores, both sets of admin are handled here.
Not a portfolio of work for other people. These are mine, which means I carry the reviews, the support emails and the store admin for every one of them.
Live motorsport and 220+ global series in one app. 100,000+ fans, 4.9 stars from 2,400+ ratings, and Brand of the Year at the 2026 Race Media Awards. iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, Apple Vision and Android.
02A contrast therapy timer for Apple Watch, built around the Action button on Ultra so it works with wet hands under Water Lock. HealthKit, App Intents, live heart rate.
03Short notes on your Home Screen, with a widget per folder that pages through it. iPhone, iPad, Mac and Apple Watch, synced through the user's own iCloud with no account.
04A custom widget maker with 128 widget types, a live editor, 31 themes and 60 palettes, across iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, Mac and Vision Pro. Coming soon.
From £4,000 for a native iOS app, with Android alongside it priced on top, and 8 to 12 weeks from start to the store. That includes the build, the App Store submission and review, the store listing and screenshots, the privacy manifest and policy, and the first year of OS updates. What pushes it up is anything with a server behind it: accounts and logins, payments or subscriptions, syncing between devices, or data that has to stay correct when the phone has no signal.
Yes. iOS comes first and is built natively in Swift, because that is where I ship my own apps, and Android is built alongside it. Whether you need both is worth a real conversation rather than a default yes: two platforms is close to twice the testing and twice the store admin, and for some businesses the honest answer is to launch on one, find out whether anybody uses it, and add the second once you know.
I do, and it is included. That means the store listing and the screenshots, the privacy manifest and the privacy policy, the age rating and the data disclosures, the build upload and the back and forth with review if something gets rejected. Rejections are normal rather than a disaster, and they are much less stressful when the person answering them has been through it with their own apps. The Racing Line, Sauna & Plunge and Peek Notes are all on the store, so this is a process I run regularly rather than read about.
Tell me what the app has to do and who it is for, and whether you need iOS, Android or both. I will tell you what it would take, what it would cost, and whether an app is genuinely the right answer or whether a website would do the same job for less.
dave@daveellis.devEdinburgh · Working with businesses across Scotland, the UK and worldwide