How Much Does It Cost to Maintain an App per Year? 2026 Figures

Straight answer: the floor is the developer accounts. The Apple Developer Program costs 99 USD per membership year, and the Google Play account is paid once: a one-time 25 USD registration fee, with no recurring annual fee from Google for the account itself (SplitMetrics, updated 2025). That makes your app exist in the stores. It does not include servers, third-party services, or a single hour of work.

Above that floor, the benchmark the industry uses to budget a full year is a percentage of what the app cost to build. Several agencies publish the same range: between 15% and 20% per year of the development cost (Dribba), a figure repeated by Actualizatec in its 2026 breakdown. If your app cost 400,000 pesos, plan on 60,000 to 80,000 a year just to keep it working exactly as it did on launch day. If that number surprises you, maintenance isn't the problem: the initial budget was calculated incomplete.

What exactly you are paying for

"Maintenance" is not one thing. It's four separate bills that arrive at different moments, and it pays to split them because they're negotiated separately.

1. The accounts: the only truly predictable part

Apple charges an annual membership and if you stop paying, your app leaves the App Store. The price is 99 USD per year, with a possible fee waiver for nonprofits, accredited educational institutions and government entities that meet certain requirements. Google works differently: you pay the registration once when setting up the Play Console account and publish apps with no renewal fee. There's an expensive variant almost no SMB needs: Apple's Enterprise program, for internal distribution, costs 299 USD per year.

One operational detail that gets expensive: register the accounts in your company's name, not the agency's or the freelancer's. Recovering an app trapped inside someone else's account is a slow process and sometimes impossible without their cooperation.

2. Infrastructure and services: variable, but containable

I won't invent a number here, because it depends on your app. What I can tell you is what to check before signing anything:

• Database and backend. If your app only reads a catalog that changes once a month, a basic plan is enough for years. If it stores orders, chats or real-time locations, consumption grows with every active user.
• Image and file storage. This is the line item that grows the most without anyone noticing. Product photos uploaded uncompressed multiply the monthly bill.
• Maps. Billed per request. An app that shows a map on the home screen consumes far more than one that only opens it to confirm an address.
• Transactional email and SMS. Confirmations, password resets, verification codes. SMS is the most expensive service per unit in the whole stack; if you can solve it with push notifications or email, do it.
• Push notifications. The delivery itself is usually included in the free tiers of the big providers. What costs money is the segmentation and campaign tool you layer on top.

Ask your provider to show you the last quarter's usage dashboard before renewing. If they don't have one, they're not measuring, and what isn't measured gets overpaid.

3. The updates you never asked for

This is the part that blindsides almost every business owner. Apple and Google force you to recompile the app periodically, even if you don't want to change a single comma.

Apple already published the date: starting April 28, 2026, apps uploaded to App Store Connect must be built with the iOS 26 SDK or later (notice from February 2026). That means updating tools, reviewing libraries that went obsolete and retesting everything.

Google has its own annual rule: since August 31, 2026, new apps and app updates must target Android 16 (API level 36) or higher to be submitted to Google Play. And if you don't update, the consequence isn't a fine: your app simply stops appearing to new users on devices running Android versions newer than what your app targets. It stays installed for current users and becomes invisible to everyone else.

Translated into budget: at least two technical work cycles per year that add zero new features. It's the cost of being in the stores, like renewing your car's registration.

When cheap maintenance is the right call

Not every app needs a monthly retainer. There are three scenarios where paying the minimum makes sense:

1. Internal or catalog app, no transactions. If you don't charge inside the app or store sensitive data, you can operate with the developer accounts plus an annual hour bank for the two compliance cycles. Nothing else.
2. App still being validated. In the first months what matters is learning whether anyone uses it. Buying 24/7 support for 80 users is burning money.
3. Seasonal app. If your business runs hard three months a year, the support contract should reflect that instead of charging the same in January and December.

Heavy maintenance is justified when the app generates direct revenue, processes payments, handles personal data or is your main service channel. There, two days of downtime isn't an inconvenience: it's a measurable loss.

How to request a maintenance quote without getting played

• Demand the breakdown across the four lines in the table above. If you get one global number with no detail, ask for the detail.
• Ask explicitly whether the iOS and Android compatibility cycles are included or billed separately. It's the most common ambiguity in these contracts.
• Ask for response times in writing, distinguishing between "the app won't open" and "I want to change a line of text."
• Confirm who owns the store accounts, the code repositories and the cloud access. You.
• Check the range you're being compared against: public references place annual app maintenance between 600 and 15,000 euros per year depending on complexity (Spanish agency, 2026), while others remind you that the 15%–20% per year covers maintenance, server fees and updates, not just developer hours.

How we do it at imSoft

At imSoft we split maintenance into what's fixed (accounts), what's usage-based (infrastructure and services, at provider cost and visible to you) and what's our work, with the estimated hours in plain sight. We plan the mandatory iOS and Android cycles months ahead, not when the deadline hits. Accounts and credentials are registered in your company's name from day one.

If you already have an app and want to know what you're overpaying, or you're about to commission one and want the full year-one number, we deliver a fixed-price proposal within 48 hours. The first call is free.