Cost to Publish an App on the App Store: The Full Bill

The cost to publish an app on the App Store is a $99 line item, and that is the least interesting number in your launch budget. Search engines will give you that figure in one sentence and stop. The bill that actually moves your launch date is made of waiting time, paperwork and a second store, none of which show up on an invoice.

I ship apps to both stores for a living, so here is the whole bill, in the order it tends to arrive.

The Cost to Publish an App on the App Store Is a Fee Plus Lead Time

Treat the cost to publish an app on the App Store as two numbers: money and calendar days. The money is small and fixed. The days are large and uncertain, and days are what burn runway while you wait to start earning.

Everything below is about shipping a build you already have. What it costs to build the app is a different question, which I cover in what an iOS build costs. Here I assume the code exists and ask what it takes to put it in front of users.

Most founders also ask what the cost to publish an app on the App Store looks like for a free app. It is identical. The fee buys access to the store, not a share of any sale, so a free app and a paid one start from the same line.

Apple Developer Program Fee: One Number, Paid Every Year

The Apple Developer Program fee is $99 per membership year, or the local-currency equivalent, according to Apple's own programme page. It is recurring: if the membership lapses, Apple can remove your apps from sale, so it belongs in the annual budget, not the launch budget.

Apple lets eligible nonprofits, accredited educational institutions and government entities request a fee waiver. A startup does not qualify. App Store Connect, the dashboard where you submit and manage the app, comes with membership at no extra charge, and so does TestFlight, Apple's beta-testing tool.

That is the entire cash cost on the Apple side. The rest is time.

Google Play Developer Account Cost: A Small Fee and a Testing Gate

The Google Play developer account cost has been a one-time registration fee, $25 at the time of writing, with no yearly renewal. Check the Play Console before you pay, because platform fees change. Founders sometimes read that and conclude Android is the cheap store. For money, it is. For time, it can be the slower one.

Google's help documentation says that a newly created personal developer account must run a closed test with at least 12 testers, opted in continuously for at least 14 days, before it can apply for production access. Google describes this as applying to personal accounts created after 13 November 2023. Organization accounts are exempt.

This closed testing requirement is the reason I tell founders the cost to publish an app on Google Play is not just $25. It includes a fortnight you cannot shorten, plus finding 12 real people willing to install a test build and stay opted in. In my experience, recruiting those testers is the part founders underestimate. If your launch has a fixed date, start this clock first.

The Whole Bill in One Table

Here is the launch bill as I would put it in a budget. Money first, then the time that does not appear on a receipt.

Line	Money	Time
Apple Developer Program	$99 a year	Enrolment and verification, no fixed approval time
Google Play registration	$25 once, at time of writing	Identity checks vary by account
Google closed test (personal accounts)	Free	14 days minimum, 12 testers
D-U-N-S number (organizations)	Free in most places, per Apple	Can take weeks for a new company
App review, both stores	Free	Hours to days per round, plus fix time
Your developer's time	Quoted by them	Often the largest real line

Two honest caveats. Apple gives no promised approval time for enrolment, and I will not invent one. Review turnaround varies by submission and by week. Anyone quoting you an exact number is guessing.

The table is also why I distrust a launch plan that has one line called "publish". Two stores, two accounts, two review queues and one testing gate is at least five separate tasks, and each can slip independently of the others.

Organization Paperwork: Where the Cost to Publish an App on the App Store Quietly Grows

If the app belongs to a company, Apple enrols you as an organization, and that needs a legal entity, a D-U-N-S number, someone with authority to bind the company and a working company website. Apple says the D-U-N-S number is free in most jurisdictions. The cost is the wait, not the price.

I have watched founders lose about two weeks because the legal name did not match the registry record exactly. The fee did not change. The launch did. The full list of requirements and the choice between account types is in individual versus organization accounts, so I will not repeat it.

There is a second hidden cost here: the person who enrols. If a contractor registers the account under their own name to move quickly, the cost to publish an app on the App Store later includes untangling ownership. It is a recoverable mistake, but it is a slow one, and it is entirely avoidable.

My rule: start enrolment before the build is finished. It costs nothing to begin and it is the one task that runs in parallel with development.

The Review Loop: Free to Submit, Expensive to Repeat

Both stores review your app, and neither charges for it. What costs you is the loop: a rejection, a fix, a new build and a fresh submission. A first-time founder, in my experience, should expect at least one rejection on the first submission.

Budget the loop as developer hours plus calendar days, not as a single "submit" task. Coin ID Scan shipped an AI image-recognition feature through review with the round trip planned from the start, so it never landed on the critical path. That is the posture to copy.

If your app was generated with an AI builder and you have not seen a reviewer yet, read what reviewers flag in vibe-coded apps before you submit. Rejections you can predict are cheaper than the ones you find out about by email.

What I Put in a Launch Budget

For a first launch on both stores, this is how I would write it down:

• Fixed cash: the Apple annual fee and the Google one-time fee. Small enough to round.
• Calendar reserve: two weeks for Google's closed test if you hold a personal account, and a buffer for organization verification.
• Rejection reserve: one extra build-and-resubmit cycle per store.
• Ownership: register the accounts in the founder's name or company, never a contractor's. If it goes wrong, you want to be the one holding the keys.

Commission on sales is a separate line from these fees; I cover it in how to avoid Apple App Store fees.

None of this is exotic. It is a checklist that turns an unknown into a schedule. The mobile MVP launch checklist covers the rest of the pre-launch sweep.

The Bottom Line

The cost to publish an app on the App Store is $99 a year. The cost to ship is a few weeks of lead time you can plan for if you start early. A founder who budgets only the fee tends to meet the other costs as surprises.

If you have a build and want help getting it through both stores on a realistic date, look at how I work on the services page, or tell me about your project.