How much does it cost to maintain an app each month?
The monthly costs of keeping an app running: hosting, database, store fees, third-party services and developer time, with official prices and budget tips.
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The monthly cost of maintaining an app has two parts: the services it runs on, and the people who keep it working. For a small web app the services can start at a few tens of dollars a month (for example, Supabase Pro starts at $25 and Vercel Pro at $20), while the people side varies far more, depending on how often things break and how much the app keeps changing. Budget for both, because the second one is the one that surprises founders.
This guide lists the costs you'll actually see, shows the official starting prices where they're published, and explains what drives the developer time and how to plan for it.
What are you paying for every month?
| Cost | What it covers | How it's usually billed |
|---|---|---|
| Hosting | Serving the frontend and server functions | Monthly plan, plus usage over the included limits |
| Database and backend | Data, authentication, file storage, backups | Monthly plan, plus compute and storage |
| Domain | Your web address | Yearly |
| Email sending | Sign-up, password reset, receipts | Free tier, then by volume |
| Third-party APIs | AI models, maps, SMS, search | By usage |
| Payments | Card processing | A percentage and fee per transaction |
| App stores | Publishing mobile apps | Apple yearly, Google once |
| Monitoring | Error tracking and uptime checks | Free tier, then by volume or seats |
| Developer time | Fixes, updates, security, small features | Hourly, fixed price or a monthly plan |
What do the main platforms charge?
Prices change, so check the official pages before budgeting. As of October 2026:
- Supabase: the Free plan is $0, and free projects are paused after a week of inactivity. Pro starts at $25 a month and includes $10 of compute credits, which covers the smallest instance. Larger instances and extra usage cost more. Details on Supabase's pricing page.
- Vercel: Hobby is free and meant for personal projects; Pro is $20 a month, with extra developer seats billed separately and usage on top. See Vercel's pricing.
- Apple Developer Program: $99 a year to publish on the App Store.
- Google Play: a one-time $25 registration fee.
A free tier is fine while you test. Once you have paying users, you generally want a paid plan for backups, support and no pausing.
Why does usage make the bill unpredictable?
The plan price is the floor, not the ceiling. Bills grow with:
- Traffic and function calls. More users mean more requests and more server time.
- Storage and bandwidth. Uploaded images and videos add up, especially when served at full size. See optimizing images in your web app.
- AI calls. Each request to a model costs money, and one feature used heavily can outspend everything else. Our guide on controlling AI API costs covers limits and caching.
- Inefficient code. A page that fetches the same data ten times, or a query without an index, costs more on every visit.
Set spending caps or alerts on every platform that offers them, so a bug or a spike doesn't turn into a large invoice.
What does the developer time go into?
Even an app nobody is adding features to needs regular work:
- Security updates. Frameworks and packages publish fixes for vulnerabilities. Someone has to update them and check nothing broke.
- Platform changes. Providers retire old APIs, change limits and update SDKs. Mobile apps also need updates to keep up with new iOS and Android versions and store requirements.
- Bug fixes. Real users find problems no test did.
- Monitoring and incidents. Looking at errors, answering alerts, restoring service when something goes down.
- Small changes. A new field, a price change, a new email template.
How much of this you need depends on the app. A simple internal tool with ten users needs little. An app with payments, personal data and daily users needs someone watching it.
How can you pay for maintenance?
There are three common models:
- Hourly, when needed. Cheapest when nothing breaks, unpredictable when something does, and there may be nobody available at the moment you need them.
- Fixed price per task. Good for known changes. Less good for emergencies, which can't wait for a quote.
- A monthly plan. A set amount for an agreed level of fixes, updates and monitoring. Predictable, and someone already knows the app when it breaks.
Our guide on fixed price vs hourly compares these in more detail.
How do you keep maintenance costs down?
- Keep the stack small. Each extra service is another bill, another dashboard and another thing that can change under you.
- Remove what you don't use. Old packages, unused functions and abandoned features still need updating.
- Automate the boring checks. Error tracking, uptime monitoring and automatic dependency alerts cost little and catch problems early.
- Write things down. A short document on how the app is built and deployed saves hours every time someone new touches it. See documenting your app for handoff.
- Fix causes, not symptoms. A bug patched three times costs more than one proper fix.
Quick answers
Can I maintain an app for free? The services can be free on small plans for a while, but someone still has to update and fix it. Time is the real cost.
Is maintenance a percentage of the build cost? Some people budget that way, but it depends far more on how complex the app is and how much it changes than on what it cost to build.
What happens if I stop maintaining it? It usually keeps running for a while, then something outside it changes (a package, an API, a store rule) and it breaks or becomes insecure.
Do mobile apps cost more to maintain? Usually, because they depend on two store platforms and need updates when iOS and Android change.
Want a predictable maintenance cost?
Devonauts' Care plan is $249 a month and Care Plus is $749 a month, for ongoing fixes and monitoring; details are on our pricing page and the maintenance and support page. If you're not sure what your app needs, start with the free App Health Check or ask us.
