11 September 2026 / 7 min read
What a web app costs in the UK, and what drives the number
Web apps start around £18,000 and reach £100,000. Here is what each part of that figure is actually paying for.
- web apps
- pricing
- systems
Most people asking what a web app costs have been quoted anything from £4,000 to £250,000 for what sounds like the same thing. The range is real, and it is almost entirely about accounts, money and integrations.
The short answer
In the UK, a focused web app — logins, a handful of core screens, one clear job done well — starts around £18,000. Add payments, permissions, reporting and third-party integrations and you are in the £30,000 to £60,000 range. A system that runs a whole business reaches £100,000, which is where our published estimates cap before we scope and phase the work instead.
Where the money goes
| Part of the build | Share of budget | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Data model and architecture | 15% | Get this wrong and every later change costs double |
| Accounts, roles and permissions | 20% | Who can see and do what is the hardest thing to retrofit |
| The screens people use daily | 30% | The bit users judge; deserves the largest slice |
| Integrations | 15% | Payments, calendars, email, CRM, AI — roughly £600–£1,800 each |
| Testing, handover and training | 20% | The difference between software you own and software you fear |
Three things that quietly double a quote
Reporting. "We just need a few reports" usually means a second product with its own queries, filters and exports.
Multi-tenancy. One company using it is straightforward. Many companies, each seeing only their own data, is a different architecture.
Migration. Moving ten years of spreadsheets into a clean structure is real work, and it is nobody's favourite line item — which is why it gets left out of cheap quotes.
How to spend less without regretting it
Cut scope, not quality. Pick the one workflow that hurts most — bookings, contracts, onboarding — and build that properly. Run it alongside your spreadsheets for a month. What you learn in that month is worth more than the features you would have guessed at.
We priced Kruger Cowne's booking and contract system this way: the booking pipeline first, then contracts generated from booking data, then invoicing.
Worth reading next
- Bespoke CMS or off the shelf
- Signs your business has outgrown spreadsheets
- What we charge, published in full
If you want a bracket for your own idea, the guided brief gives you three priced tiers in about two minutes.