Short answer
App maintenance cost = upkeep hours a month x 12 x hourly rate, plus store fees (Apple: 99 USD a year; Google Play: US$25 once). At this site's default of 32 hours a month for a standard app, that is $29,000 a year with a US development company at the Clutch band midpoint. Hosting and paid services come on top.
The calendar that forces updates
Both stores publish their minimums, and both move them on a yearly rhythm. From their own pages, read 2 October 2026:
| Since / from | Store | Requirement |
|---|---|---|
| 25 Apr 2023 | Apple | iOS and iPadOS apps must be built with Xcode 14.1 and the iOS 16.1 SDK or later |
| 29 Apr 2024 | Apple | Apps must be built with Xcode 15 for iOS 17, iPadOS 17, tvOS 17 or watchOS 10 |
| 31 Aug 2025 | Google Play | New apps and app updates must target Android 15 (API level 35) |
| 28 Apr 2026 | Apple | Apps must be built with Xcode 26 or later using an SDK for iOS 26 (and the matching iPadOS, tvOS, visionOS, watchOS) |
| 31 Aug 2026 | Google Play | New apps and app updates must target Android 16 (API level 36); extensions available to 1 Nov 2026 |
Each step means rebuilding with new tools, fixing whatever the new operating system changed, re-testing and re-submitting. That work is the floor of an app's maintenance budget.
Upkeep hours priced at sourced rates
The monthly hours below are this site's defaults by complexity, a planning assumption that covers store requirement updates, dependency and security updates, bug fixes and small changes. The rates are sourced.
| App size | Hours / month | US agency | Latin America | US in-house |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Simple | 16 | $14,000 | $10,000 | $18,000 |
| Standard | 32 | $29,000 | $20,000 | $36,000 |
| Complex | 64 | $57,000 | $41,000 | $72,000 |
Fixed fees
- Apple Developer Program: 99 USD a year (299 USD for the Enterprise Program).
- Google Play Console: US$25, paid once.
- Store commissions on paid apps and in-app purchases, if you charge: see app store fees.
What pushes maintenance up
- More platforms. Each store you ship to has its own yearly requirement change.
- More third-party SDKs. Payment, analytics and messaging libraries release their own breaking changes.
- Custom backends. Servers need patching and monitoring; managed backends move some of that to the provider.
- Users. More users find more edge cases, which means more bug reports to triage.
Questions
How much does it cost to maintain an app per year?+
It is the upkeep hours you need times the rate of whoever does them, plus store fees. With this site's default of 32 hours a month for a standard app, that is $29,000 a year at the midpoint of Clutch's $50 to $99 US development company band, plus 99 USD a year for Apple's developer program if you ship on iOS. The monthly hours are our planning assumption; set your own in the calculator.
Is app maintenance really 15% to 20% of the build cost every year?+
Agency articles disagree with each other: on 2 October 2026 the first page of search results gave 15% to 20%, 15% to 30%, a third, and half in the first year. We could not find a neutral source behind any of them with a stated method, so this site does not use a percentage. Maintenance effort depends on how many platforms you ship, how often the stores change their requirements, how many third-party services the app depends on and how many users report bugs, none of which is a fixed share of what the build cost.
What happens if I stop updating my app?+
It keeps running for existing users for a while, but you lose the ability to ship fixes once the stores move their minimums. Apple's upcoming requirements page shows that since 28 April 2026 apps uploaded to App Store Connect must be built with Xcode 26 or later, and Google Play requires new apps and app updates to target Android 16 (API level 36) from 31 August 2026, with extensions available to 1 November 2026.
Are hosting and backend costs part of maintenance?+
They are running costs, and they are real, but they depend on your usage and your providers' price lists rather than on development effort. The calculator leaves them out of the first-year figure and says so; price them from your hosting and backend providers' published pricing for your expected traffic.
Sources for this page
- Apple Developer (Upcoming requirements). Upcoming requirements. developer.apple.com/news/upcoming-requirements/ (read 2026-10-02)
- Google Play Console Help. Target API level requirements for Google Play apps. support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answer/11926878?hl=en (read 2026-10-02)
- Apple Developer (Enrollment support page). Apple Developer Program enrollment. developer.apple.com/support/enrollment/ (read 2026-10-02)
- Google Play Console Help. Get started with Play Console (registration). support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answer/6112435?hl=en (read 2026-10-02)
- Clutch (Software Development Pricing Guide). Software Development Company Pricing Guide, updated September 21, 2026. clutch.co/developers/pricing (read 2026-10-02)
- Accelerance (blog post by Peter Griffin, November 24, 2025, summarising the Accelerance 2026 Global Software Development Rates & Trends Guide). Price Pressure and Performance: The New Equation for Global Dev Rates. www.accelerance.com/blog/2026-outsourcing-rate-trends-asia-europe-latam (read 2026-10-02)
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS). Software Developers (SOC 15-1252), national, May 2025 estimates. www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes151252.htm (read 2026-10-02)
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Employer Costs for Employee Compensation (ECEC). Employer Costs for Employee Compensation, June 2026. www.bls.gov/news.release/ecec.nr0.htm (read 2026-10-02)
Hours are this site's own planning assumptions, set out line by line on the methodology page. Full quotes for every figure are on the sources page.