A senior mobile app developer in Warsaw bills somewhere between €35 and €60 per hour in 2026, and a finished cross-platform app lands between €3,000 and €15,000 depending on what you actually want to ship. That's the honest range. Anyone quoting you "an app for €1,500" is selling a template, not a product.
I build iOS and Android apps from Warsaw, so let me save you the three weeks of calls and unpicking quotes. Here's how hiring works here — who does what, what it costs, and where people get burned.
Your three options: freelancer, agency, offshore
Every quote you get falls into one of three buckets, and they are genuinely different products.
- Freelancer (independent senior in Poland). Direct contact, no account manager, no office overhead in the bill. You talk to the person writing the code. Cheapest of the three for the same quality — typically 25–40% below an agency for the identical scope.
- Software house / agency. A team: PM, designer, devs, QA. You pay for process and for someone who pushes back on bad requirements. Right call when the project is big, multi-disciplinary, and you have no technical lead in-house.
- Offshore (India, Eastern Europe at the cheapest tiers). Lowest sticker price. Also where most "we paid €4,000 and got nothing usable" stories come from. Timezone gaps, communication friction, and you only find out about the code quality at the end.
For most founders building a first app or an MVP, a Warsaw-based senior freelancer is the best price-to-quality ratio — you get EU timezone, English and Polish, GDPR fluency, and one person who owns the whole thing. An agency wins when scope is genuinely large or when several specialists must work in parallel.
What it actually costs in Warsaw and Poland
Warsaw carries the highest rates in Poland — Google, Microsoft, big consultancies and a deep startup scene all compete for the same senior people. Expect roughly:
- Polish software house: €50–€90/h, billed as a team. Real day rate adds up fast.
- Senior freelancer (direct B2B): €35–€60/h. No markup for sales and office.
- Offshore floor: €15–€25/h — and you usually get what you pay for.
Translated into project totals:
Simple app — €3,000–€6,000
A few screens, login, a clean API, push notifications. A booking app, an internal tool, a single-purpose consumer app. A freelancer ships this in 6–10 weeks.
Mid-complexity app — €6,000–€12,000
Payments, user accounts, real-time data, several third-party integrations, an admin panel. This is where most funded startups land for a serious MVP.
Complex app — €15,000+
Marketplace logic, chat, geolocation, offline sync, heavy backend, multiple roles. At this scale you want a team, or a freelancer who brings one.
In złoty, for the local-market readers: a typical Warsaw app project runs roughly 13,000–65,000 zł end to end, with the city average sitting noticeably above the national one.
React Native, Flutter, or native?
This single decision moves your budget by tens of thousands of euros, so don't let anyone hand-wave it.
- React Native — one codebase, iOS + Android. JavaScript/TypeScript, huge ecosystem, easy to hire for. My default for most business apps and MVPs.
- Flutter — also one codebase, excellent UI control and animation, slightly smoother performance on heavy custom interfaces. Strong choice, slightly smaller talent pool in Poland.
- Native (Swift + Kotlin) — two separate codebases, two skill sets, roughly double the build and maintenance cost. Worth it only for games, AR/VR, heavy hardware/sensor work, or when you need every last millisecond.
Cross-platform covers 80–90% of business apps at 30–60% less cost than building two native apps. If a developer pushes native "because it's better" without asking what your app does, that's a flag — they're optimizing their comfort, not your budget.
Timelines — what's realistic
- Simple app: 6–10 weeks.
- Mid-complexity MVP: 3–4 months.
- Complex product: 5–8 months, often phased.
Anyone promising a real app "in two weeks" is shipping a no-code wrapper or a template with your logo on it. That can be fine to test an idea — just know that's what you're buying.
Add to every timeline: App Store and Google Play review. Google is usually a day or two; Apple can take anywhere from hours to a week, and first-time submissions get rejected for small policy reasons constantly. A developer who has shipped before budgets for this. One who hasn't will be surprised by it — at your expense.
Red flags before you pay anyone
- No fixed scope, no fixed price, no contract. Walk away.
- "We'll figure out the design as we build." You'll pay to figure it out twice.
- No clear answer on who owns the code and the App Store accounts. It must be you. Insist the app is published under your developer accounts.
- No mention of post-launch. Apps aren't done at launch — OS updates, crash fixes, store policy changes. Ask what's covered.
- A quote with no questions. Anyone who quotes a number before understanding your app is guessing, and you'll pay for the gap.
What I actually do
I build cross-platform apps in React Native (Flutter when the project calls for it), with a proper backend, published under your accounts, store submission handled, and a fixed price agreed before a line of code is written.
- MVP from €4,000. Core features, clean UI, iOS + Android, store-ready.
- Full product — quoted individually. After a 30-minute discovery call you get a fixed quote and a start date, not a vague hourly promise.
- One person who owns it end to end — design direction, code, deployment, the App Store paperwork. You talk to me, not a ticket queue.
Full details and example scope on my mobile app development service page. The price is fixed before we start. No surprise line items halfway through.
Questions to ask any developer before you pay
- Cross-platform or native — and why for my app specifically? A good answer references your features, not their preference.
- Who owns the code and the App Store / Play Console accounts? The only acceptable answer is "you do."
- Is the store submission included? Both Apple review and Google review, including rejection fixes.
- What's the backend, and where does it live? Where does my data sit, and is it GDPR-compliant?
- What happens after launch? Bug window, OS-update support, who I call when something breaks.
- Can I see a real app you shipped that's live in the stores? Live links, not screenshots.
- Fixed price and a contract? If not, stop.
FAQ
How much does it cost to hire a mobile app developer in Warsaw? A senior developer bills €35–€90 per hour depending on whether you go freelancer or agency. A complete cross-platform app typically costs €3,000–€15,000, or roughly 13,000–65,000 zł, based on the number of screens, integrations and backend complexity.
Is it cheaper to hire a freelancer or an agency for an app? A direct B2B freelancer is usually 25–40% cheaper than an agency for the same scope, because you're not paying for sales, account managers and office overhead. An agency makes sense when the project is large and needs several specialists working in parallel; for an MVP, a senior freelancer is almost always the better value.
React Native or native — which should I choose? For most business apps and MVPs, React Native (or Flutter) is the right call: one codebase for iOS and Android, 30–60% cheaper than two native apps, and faster to ship. Go native only for games, AR/VR, or apps that lean heavily on device hardware.
How long does it take to build a mobile app? A simple app takes 6–10 weeks, a mid-complexity MVP 3–4 months, and a complex product 5–8 months. Add time for App Store and Google Play review — Apple in particular can reject first submissions over small policy issues.
Should I publish the app under my own Apple and Google accounts? Yes, always. The app must live under your own developer accounts so you own the listing, the reviews and the ability to switch developers later. If a developer wants to publish under their account, that's a serious red flag.
Do I pay extra to put the app on the App Store and Google Play? You pay Apple's $99/year developer fee and Google's one-time $25 fee directly — those are platform costs, not developer costs. A good developer includes the submission work itself (and any rejection fixes) in the project price; always confirm this upfront.
Can one freelancer build both iOS and Android? Yes — that's exactly why cross-platform exists. With React Native or Flutter, one developer ships both platforms from a single codebase, which is why it's so much cheaper than hiring separate iOS and Android specialists.
Got an app idea and want a straight answer on cost and timeline? Book a 30-minute call and within a day you'll have a fixed quote, a recommended stack, and a realistic start date — no vague hourly estimates.
