A cross-platform mobile app in Saudi Arabia starts around SAR 25,000 and takes eight to sixteen weeks. Native builds cost more because you build twice. The number most businesses underestimate is not the build, it is the ongoing cost of maintaining an app across two app stores and their annual OS releases.
Starting prices
A cross-platform app built with React Native or a similar framework starts around SAR 25,000 and takes eight to sixteen weeks. That covers a working iOS and Android app with a backend, submitted to both stores.
Fully native builds, meaning separate Swift and Kotlin codebases, cost substantially more because you are building and maintaining two applications. That is worth doing when you need deep platform integration or performance that cross-platform genuinely cannot deliver, and it is not worth doing for most business apps.
What drives the number
- Number of screens and user roles. An app with an admin side is two apps wearing a trench coat.
- Offline behaviour. Working without a connection is a genuine architectural decision, not a feature toggle.
- Realtime features. Chat, live tracking and notifications each add infrastructure.
- Payments. In-app purchases carry store commission, external payment flows carry policy risk.
- Third-party SDKs. Maps, analytics, identity, each one is integration and maintenance work.
- Arabic and RTL support. Mobile RTL has its own set of layout problems distinct from the web.
The cost people forget: keeping it alive
A website you can leave alone for a year and it will still work. An app cannot be left alone. Apple and Google both ship a major OS release every year, both periodically change their store requirements, and both will eventually remove an app that stops meeting them.
Budget for ongoing maintenance from day one. At minimum that means OS compatibility updates, SDK updates, store policy compliance and bug fixes. An app that is shipped and then abandoned stops working within about two years, and usually sooner on Android.
If you cannot fund maintenance, do not build an app. A responsive website costs less, reaches more people, and does not expire.
Do you actually need an app?
This is the question we ask before quoting, and often the honest answer is no. An app makes sense when you need push notifications as a core mechanic, device features like the camera or GPS, genuine offline use, or when your customers use you frequently enough to justify installing something.
It does not make sense as a second version of your website. If someone visits you twice a year, they will not install an app, and a fast mobile website will serve them better and cost a fraction as much.
Cross-platform versus native, decided simply
Choose cross-platform unless you have a specific reason not to. One codebase, one team, one set of updates, and the performance is more than sufficient for the overwhelming majority of business applications.
Choose native when you need heavy graphics, tight hardware integration, or platform features that arrive before cross-platform frameworks support them. Be honest about whether that is genuinely your situation, because it is claimed far more often than it is true.
