Tool 1 of the Get Paid Kit · For mobile app developers

Mobile App Developer hourly rate calculator

This free calculator works out the hourly rate a freelance mobile app developer should charge, starting from the income you need — not from a day rate borrowed from a salaried job. It counts the store admin, device testing, review cycles and client meetings that stretch an app project across weeks, divides by the hours you can actually bill, and then converts the result into the day and sprint terms app work is actually bought in.

Runs in your browser. Nothing you enter is uploaded, sent to a server or stored anywhere except this device.

The pricing reality for freelance mobile app developers

App work is milestone-shaped: discovery, build, testing, store review, launch. The awkward part is the waiting — days inside Apple’s or Google’s review queues, days waiting for client feedback on a build — where the project is alive, the deadline is moving, and nobody’s hour is being billed. The elapsed time of an app project and its billable time are very different numbers.

That is why the preset below starts billable time at 55%. Store admin, certificates and provisioning, testing across real devices, estimating and meetings all take hours that never appear in the app. The expenses are heavier than most desk trades, too: developer programme fees, a current Mac, test devices and build tooling are the cost of being able to ship at all, and they sit inside the $5,500 below rather than on top of the rate.

The numbers below are starting presets, not a survey: a $95,000 target income, $5,500 a year of expenses and 55% billable time. With those starting numbers the calculator lands near $140 an hour. Change any figure to match your own books; the point is that the review cycles and the waiting get counted before the quote, not absorbed by your evenings afterwards.

Your numbers — mobile app developer presets

Desired annual income ($) what you want to take home before tax

Annual business expenses ($) developer programme fees, test devices, build and CI tooling

Tax estimate (%) — planning estimate, not tax advice 25%

Vacation weeks per year

Hours per week

Billable time (%) 55% build time is billable; store admin, testing and meetings are not — 55% is a realistic start

Profit margin (%) a buffer for quiet months and savings

Your recommended rate

$0 / hour

$0Day rate (8 hours)

0Billable hours per year

Income + expenses needed	$0
Grossed up for tax	$0
With profit margin	$0
Working weeks	0
Total working hours	0
Billable hours	0

Your rate is saved on this device only, so the Proposal Generator can show it when you price a project.

Easy to miss

Costs mobile app developers forget to put in the rate

Store and programme fees. Developer accounts on both stores renew every year, and they are the price of existing as an app developer at all — before a single line of billable code.
Test devices and hardware. A current Mac, recent phones on both platforms and the odd tablet: apps misbehave on real hardware in ways simulators never predict, and finding that out is your cost.
Build and monitoring tooling. CI services, crash reporting and analytics subscriptions run quietly every month, including the months between projects.
Review cycles. A rejection means diagnosis, a fix, a resubmission and another wait — a loop imposed by the store that no client sees and few think to pay for. It is in the week; it belongs in the rate.
The post-launch tail. A new OS version breaks something months after launch, and the client reasonably expects you to fix it. The support tail is real work that the original fee is usually assumed to cover.

The maths

How this calculator works

Start with the hours you can genuinely sell. Take 52 weeks, subtract your vacation weeks, multiply by your hours per week, then multiply by your billable percentage. With the mobile app developer presets — four weeks off, 40 hours a week, 55% billable — that is 1,056 billable hours a year, just over half the 2,080 hours a salaried job is counted on. That gap is why dividing a target salary by 2,080 always underprices freelance app work.

Next, work out what those hours must bring in. Add your desired income and your annual business expenses together — $100,500 on the presets — gross the total up for tax by dividing by one minus your tax rate — at a 25% estimate, divide by 0.75 to get $134,000 — then add your profit margin to reach $147,400 and divide by your billable hours. That final number, $140, is the rate below which the year stops adding up.

Now convert it back into the units clients buy. A day at the preset rate is $1,117, so a two-week sprint of ten working days is $11,170 of development time, and a single 25-hour feature — a login system, a payments flow — is $3,500. Notice what the maths is saying: an app quoted as a lump sum is really a pile of these blocks, and the quote is only safe when each block was counted before the total was named.

Disclaimer: This is a planning estimate, not tax advice. Tax rates, deductions and allowances vary by country, state and business structure. Enter the rate you expect to pay, and check significant decisions with a qualified accountant.

Next: build a proposal with this rate Use the general rate calculator

Questions

Mobile App Developer rate questions

Should I charge a different rate for iOS and Android work?+

No — the rate prices your time, and your hour costs the same on either platform. What changes is the number of hours: two native builds are roughly two bodies of work, while a cross-platform framework shares much of it and the saving shows up as fewer hours, not a cheaper hour. Quoting one rate and an honest hour count per platform also keeps the conversation simple when a client drops one platform mid-project.

How do I turn this rate into a fixed price for a whole app?+

Break the app into milestones you can estimate in hours — discovery, the core build, integrations, testing and store submission — then multiply by your rate and add a buffer for the unknowns app projects always contain. A 300-hour build at the preset rate is $42,000 of development time before that buffer. Then stage the payments against the milestones, so the money and the work stay in step if the project changes shape or stops early.

Who should pay for store accounts and test devices?+

The store account belongs to the client: the app is their asset, published under their name, and your access is granted to it. Your own test devices and tooling are different — they serve every client you will ever have, so they are business expenses, and they are already inside this calculator’s expenses figure and rate. Buying a specific device purely for one project is a project cost, agreed with the client in advance, not a surprise on the final invoice.

Rates differ by trade — the same maths runs with different presets for graphic designer rates, freelance writer rates, web developer rates, marketing consultant rates, photographer rates, video editor rates, virtual assistant rates, social media manager rates, bookkeeper rates, translator rates, business coach rates, illustrator rates, copywriter rates, UX designer rates, SEO consultant rates, data analyst rates, motion designer rates, technical writer rates, podcast editor rates, email marketer rates, life coach rates, proofreader rates, event planner rates, voice actor rates, online tutor rates, personal trainer rates, interior designer rates, music producer rates, grant writer rates, UX researcher rates, book editor rates, transcriptionist rates, presentation designer rates, brand strategist rates, video producer rates, art director rates, WordPress developer rates, 3D artist rates, game developer rates, Shopify developer rates, online business manager rates, podcast producer rates and data entry specialist rates, or start from the general freelance hourly rate calculator.