Turning a Lovable app into an iPhone and Android app costs $124 in store fees in the first year ($99 a year for Apple's Developer Program, $25 once for Google Play) plus the build itself, which with us is a fixed $300, $600 or $1,000 depending on how many screens the app has. So a typical 10-screen Lovable app lands at about $724 for year one, and $99 a year after that, before the stores take their cut of any sales.
People searching "how much does it cost to make an app" get quotes from $5,000 to $150,000, and those numbers are real for apps built from nothing. Your situation is different. The screens, the logic and the Supabase backend already exist in your Lovable project, and most of the cost of an app is building those.
The fees you can't avoid
Apple: $99 a year. That's the Apple Developer Program. You need it for TestFlight and the App Store, and it renews every year. If the app stops being paid for, it disappears from the store. Enrolling as a company instead of a person also needs a D-U-N-S number. The number is free, but getting one can take a week or more, and nobody warns you about that until you're stuck on the form.
Google: $25, once. The Google Play Console registration fee is a one-time US$25. The catch is time, not money: a new personal developer account has to run a closed test with at least 12 testers for 14 days before Google lets the app go to production. Line up those 12 people early. Your friends will forget to open the test link.
The cut, if you sell anything. Both stores take 15% of digital sales for developers under $1 million a year (Apple's Small Business Program has to be joined, it isn't automatic). If your Lovable app sells a subscription through Stripe, the native version may have to sell it through in-app purchase instead, and that changes your margins and some of your code. Physical goods and services, like bookings or deliveries, can keep Stripe.
The build: where the real money goes
There are two ways to do it, and the price difference between them is smaller than people expect.
Capacitor, from the same code. Your Lovable project becomes the app. We add the native pieces Apple wants to see before it approves anything (push notifications, a proper splash screen, offline handling, the share sheet), build it for both stores, and submit it. You keep building in Lovable, and every change ships to the web and to the apps. This is the default for most founders because it doesn't fork the codebase. You can compare it with React Native here.
A native rebuild in React Native or Flutter. Same Supabase backend, new front end. It makes sense for apps people live in all day: a feed, chat, maps, video. It's more work for us, but we price both paths the same, so pick the one that suits the app.
Our packages, for either path: $300 up to 5 screens, $600 up to 15, $1,000 for 25 and more. Count your screens honestly. A settings page with three tabs is three screens. The full breakdown is on the home page.
If you'd rather do it yourself, the build costs you nothing but time. Capacitor is free, and you can build Android on any laptop. For iOS you need a Mac with Xcode, and a few evenings to get through signing certificates, provisioning profiles and App Store Connect. One founder told us they spent a full weekend on the "No signing certificate found" error alone, and then the first submission came back under guideline 4.2 because the app was a plain wrapper. That rejection is the common one, and it's fixable.
What it costs after launch
Less than you'd think, but not zero.
Push notifications through Firebase Cloud Messaging are free. Your Supabase or Lovable Cloud bill doesn't change much because app users hit the same backend as web users. What does cost money is keeping up with the platforms. Apple and Google raise their minimum SDK targets every year, Capacitor ships a major version roughly yearly (Capacitor 8 came out this year), and an app that isn't updated for a year or two gets flagged or pulled. Budget a small update once or twice a year. For most apps that's a day of work, not a rebuild.
The other running cost is review time. Every update goes through Apple's review again, usually in a day, occasionally with a rejection over a screenshot or a missing account-deletion button. That costs time rather than money, but it's real.
The honest total
| Year one | Every year after | |
|---|---|---|
| Store fees | $124 | $99 |
| Build with us (10 screens, $600 package) | $600 | - |
| Platform updates | a day of work, if a new OS lands | a day of work, once or twice |
| Store cut on digital sales | 15% under $1M | 15% under $1M |
Around $724 to get a 10-screen Lovable app onto both stores, versus five figures for an app built from scratch. The difference is the work you already did in Lovable.
Want a fixed quote for yours? Tell us about the app and how many screens it has.
Originally published on lovable2app.com. Aakash Verma, software developer and founder of Lovable 2 Live.
