What a WooCommerce mobile app actually costs in 2026
September 5, 2026 · 6 min read
Almost every page that answers this question answers a different one. Some quote custom development. Some quote a $5 wrapper. Almost none add up the whole first year, which is the only number you can actually budget against.
So here is the whole first year, in four scenarios, with the fees that apply to all of them broken out separately.
The fees nobody can discount
These are the same whoever builds your app, because they are paid to Apple and Google, not to a vendor:
| Item | Cost | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Apple Developer Program | $99 / year | Required to have an app on the App Store at all. Renews annually. |
| Google Play Developer account | $25 one-time | Paid once, per account, ever. |
That is it. Two line items, $124 in year one, $99 every year after. Any vendor “including” these is including them in a price you are paying anyway.
Two timing costs are worth as much as money. If your Google Play developer account is a personal account created after 13 November 2023, Google requires 12 testers opted in to a closed test for 14 continuous days before you can apply for production access. An organization account instead needs a D-U-N-S number, which can take up to 30 days to obtain. Apple’s organization enrollment also needs a D-U-N-S matching your legal name, usually about a week. None of that is billed, and all of it is calendar you cannot buy back — start the accounts before you start the app.
Scenario 1 — custom development
A native iOS app and a native Android app, built for your store by a development shop, is a two-platform software project: design, two codebases or one cross-platform codebase, a backend integration against WooCommerce’s REST API, QA on a device matrix, store submission, then maintenance.
Published ranges for this work cluster in the tens of thousands of dollars, and the honest version of the estimate has two halves. The build is a one-time number. The maintenance is not: iOS and Android each ship a major version every year, and an app that is not updated for two OS cycles starts breaking in ways your customers report as “the app is broken,” not “the app is old.” Budget maintenance as a real annual line, not as a warranty.
Custom is the right answer when your store does something genuinely unusual — a configurator, a rental calendar, a B2B pricing engine no plugin models. It is an expensive answer to “I want my catalog on a phone.”
Scenario 2 — a WebView wrapper subscription
The cheapest tier in the category. Single digits to low tens of dollars a month, sometimes a free tier, and you get a native shell around your mobile site.
The costs that don’t appear on the pricing page:
- Platform tiering. In at least one popular builder, iOS publishing is not on the entry plans at all — the low tiers are Android-only, and the iOS half of your project starts at a higher plan.
- Automated publishing as an upsell. In that same product, automated publishing appears only on the $49 tier; below it, submission is your problem.
- Ads inside your own store app. Some builders offer to monetize your app with an ad network. Read that as: your product pages can carry a competitor’s ad unless you pay to remove it.
- Resubmission time. A Guideline 4.2 rejection is not billed, but it is a fortnight of your attention, and the fix for “this is a repackaged website” is usually architectural rather than cosmetic.
Scenario 3 — a managed WebView service
At the top of the market sit done-for-you services: they build, submit, and maintain a native shell fused with your live site, and they charge accordingly. One well-known option lists $1,499/month on its Business plan, covering up to 10,000 monthly active users, with $50 per additional 1,000 MAU beyond that.
That is roughly $18,000 a year, and for some stores it is a rational purchase: it is cheaper than a developer hire and it removes the project from your calendar entirely. Two things to check before signing. First, the MAU meter — success makes this bill grow, so model it at three times your current traffic. Second, what happens to the app if you leave: an app store listing you do not control is a customer relationship you do not control.
Scenario 4 — a native app builder subscription
The middle path, and the one this site sells, so treat the numbers as disclosed rather than neutral: $29/month Starter, $79/month Pro, $249/month Agency, every plan starting with a 14-day free trial, both platforms included on every plan, your own payment gateways, and 0% commission on your sales.
What that includes matters more than the number. On every plan: the native storefront, the design studio, over-the-air design updates, unlimited push campaigns and order-status notifications, guided publishing for both stores, signed direct-APK distribution, and the WordPress companion plugin. Pro adds abandoned-cart recovery push, advanced analytics and biometric app lock. Agency adds five client apps and white-label console branding.
There is no per-user meter, no session overage, and no per-notification charge — which is the specific thing to compare against, because at least one competitor bills session overage on top of the plan ($5 to $84 a month depending on volume) and deactivates the app if the subscription lapses.
The first-year total, side by side
Assume one store, both platforms, no unusual requirements:
| Path | Year 1 software | Platform fees | Year 1 total |
|---|---|---|---|
| Custom development | Tens of thousands, plus maintenance | $124 | Tens of thousands |
| WebView wrapper (with iOS unlocked) | ~$230–$600 | $124 | ~$350–$720 |
| Managed WebView service | ~$18,000 | often included | ~$18,000 |
| Native builder (StoreToNative Starter) | $348 | $124 | $472 |
| Native builder (Pro) | $948 | $124 | $1,072 |
The wrapper row is the cheapest and the native row is close behind it, which is the actual finding: the price gap between “a browser in a shell” and “a native storefront” is now small enough that architecture, not budget, should decide.
The costs that are not on any pricing page
Three real ones, in order of how often they surprise people:
Design changes after launch. If every visual change to your app needs a new build and a new store review, your marketing calendar inherits Apple’s queue. Ask specifically whether themes, home layout, banners and feature toggles can be published without a rebuild — that is what over-the-air updates are for, and it is worth real money in December.
Store submission labor. Screenshots at the right sizes, a privacy questionnaire per platform, a data-safety form, a support URL, an age rating. It is a day of work the first time. A guided checklist turns it into an afternoon; a PDF of instructions does not.
Getting the app installed. An app nobody has is free to run and worth nothing. Budget the install push — QR codes on packing slips, a smart banner on the mobile site, an app-only coupon — as part of the project, not as an afterthought.
What to do with this
Price the year, not the month. Add $124 whatever you choose. Start the developer accounts today, because the 14-day tester window and D-U-N-S timelines are the only parts you cannot accelerate with money. Then judge builders on the two things that a low monthly cannot buy back: whether the browsing screens are native, and whether you can change the app without a re-review.
Related reading
- Native, WebView or PWA: what a WooCommerce app really is
- Why Apple rejects wrapper apps
- Direct APK distribution, and when it makes sense
- Over-the-air updates, explained
Our own numbers are on the pricing section of the homepage — plans, what’s in each one, and the 14-day trial.