A widely cited industry benchmark puts average app maintenance at roughly 20% of the original development cost per year. So if your app cost £80,000 to build, expect to budget around £16,000 annually to keep it healthy, secure, and competitive.
That figure can swing significantly depending on your app's complexity, your team's location, and how aggressively you want to improve the product over time. Bug fixes, performance monitoring, UI/UX updates, hosting, and where your development team is based all play a part, and getting the balance wrong is an easy way to overspend or under-invest.
We've broken all of this down for business owners in a full workbook: cost benchmarks by app size, hosting and developer rates by region, and five practical strategies to keep spending under control.
