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There is no single price, because an app quote is the sum of seven choices: scope, platforms, payments, integrations, design, hosting and upkeep. A one-screen M-Pesa checkout and a full ordering platform sit far apart. Fix the scope on paper first, then ask three teams to price the same list.
Picture a shop owner in Westlands holding three quotes for the same ordering app. One says a number with five digits. One says a number with seven. The third says "depends".
All three can be honest. They are pricing different things. This guide lists the things, so you can write them down before you ask anyone for a number.
It is written for the person paying: a founder, a restaurant or shop owner, a SACCO manager or a fintech operator. You do not need to read code to follow it. We build software for clients at Mctaba Labs in Nairobi, so we say plainly where we sit as we go.
Every app cost comes from seven drivers. Some are decisions you make. Some are fees other companies charge.
| Cost driver | What you decide | Does it grow with usage? |
|---|---|---|
| Scope | Which screens, roles and rules exist on day one | No, it is paid once per build |
| Platforms | Web, Android, iPhone, USSD, WhatsApp | No |
| Payments | M-Pesa, cards, mobile money in other countries | Yes, a fee on every sale |
| Integrations | eTIMS, accounting, SMS, WhatsApp, maps | Often, per message or per call |
| Design | Custom screens or a standard template | No |
| Hosting | Where it runs and how much traffic it carries | Yes, slowly |
| Upkeep | Fixes, updates, new requests after launch | Yes, every month |
The rest of this guide takes them one at a time. If you want to skip ahead and talk through your own list, you can scope a custom build with Mctaba Labs.
Scope is the list of things the app must do. It moves the price more than any other driver.
Take a matatu SACCO that wants "an app". That could mean a page where members check their share balance. It could also mean fleet tracking, driver rosters, fuel claims, loan approvals and a monthly statement in PDF. Both are called "an app".
Write the scope as a list of sentences that start with who and end with what they can do. For example: "A member logs in with a phone number and sees last month's contributions." Each sentence is a unit a developer can price.
One kind of user is simple. A customer, a cashier, a manager and an owner are four kinds. Each sees different screens and may do different things. Every extra role adds screens, permissions and tests.
Rules do the same. "A discount of 10 percent for orders above a set amount, except on Fridays, unless the customer is staff" is one sentence that takes real care to build and test.
The cheapest way to cut cost is to cut features you cannot yet prove people want. Ship the one flow that earns or saves money, watch real use for a few weeks, then add. Our own habit is one-week first versions with weekly demos, so you see a working screen early instead of a report.
If you are a founder with an idea rather than a business with a process, our page for MVPs for founders shows how that first version is scoped.
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Where your customers hold the app decides how many versions you pay for.
A common path for a small business is: one web app for staff, plus WhatsApp for customers. You avoid two app stores and get started sooner. Our article on WhatsApp bots for small businesses in Kenya covers the customer side in more detail.
For the feature-phone side, what USSD is explains why a menu on *123# still reaches customers that apps do not.
Payment work has two parts. The first is the developer time to connect and test. The second is the fee charged on each payment, which never stops while you trade.
The fee is easy to forget because it does not appear on the build quote. Look at a published example. Paystack lists its Kenya pricing as 1.5 percent per M-Pesa transaction and 2.9 percent on local cards, with settlement two working days after payment (Paystack Kenya pricing, checked on 3 November 2026).
Direct M-Pesa collection has its own tariff. Reporting on Safaricom's August 2026 Buy Goods change lists collections up to KES 500 as free, 0.55 percent above that, and a flat KES 200 above KES 36,363 (Tech-ish report on the Buy Goods tariff, checked on 3 November 2026). Your own agreement with Safaricom is the final word.
The two routes differ in who does the work. A direct Daraja link is more developer effort and fewer fees. An aggregator like Paystack is less effort and a higher fee. We compare them with numbers in our guide to what it costs a business to integrate M-Pesa.
If you sell in more than one country, the work grows again. Different providers cover different markets, and money settles in different currencies. One checkout for M-Pesa, MoMo and cards across East and West Africa explains how teams handle it.
For the technical side of the Safaricom link, our article M-Pesa integration guide walks through the flow, and STK Push explained shows what the customer sees on the phone.
An integration is a link between your app and someone else's system. Each one costs developer time to build and often a running fee afterwards.
Kenya Revenue Authority says that all persons engaged in business must onboard eTIMS and issue electronic tax invoices (KRA eTIMS FAQ, checked on 3 November 2026). If your app produces receipts, ask whether it must talk to eTIMS. Our guide to eTIMS integration for restaurants and shops lists the options KRA publishes.
The WhatsApp Business Platform charges per delivered business message, set by category and country. Meta says the first 1,000 delivered service messages per phone number each month are free, and that from 1 October 2026 service messages above that are charged (Meta WhatsApp pricing documentation, checked on 3 November 2026). A shop that sends order updates to thousands of customers will see this on its bill.
An SMS to confirm an order, a map to show delivery, or a link to your accounting software each add a small build job and a small recurring cost. List them. Quotes that say "integrations included" without naming them hide the biggest risk.
For the developer's view of SMS, see SMS API in Kenya.
Design covers how the app looks and how easily a tired cashier at 9 pm can use it.
A template costs less and ships sooner. It looks like other apps built on the same template. A custom design costs more and fits your brand and your workflow.
The test is simple. Hand the screen to someone who has never seen it and ask them to take an order. If they succeed in a minute, the design is good enough for a first version. Spend on branded polish after the flow works.
Ask how many rounds of design changes a quote includes. Unlimited changes sound generous and often lead to missed dates. Two clear rounds with written feedback keep both sides honest.
An app is not finished on launch day, any more than a shop is finished on opening day.
Hosting is the computer your app runs on, rented by the month. For a small business it is usually a modest line item that grows with traffic. Ask who pays the hosting bill and in whose name the account is opened. It should be your name.
A domain name renews yearly. Business email and a security certificate may be extra. These are small, but they are the things that stop a site on a Monday morning if nobody owns them.
Software ages. Phones update, a payment provider changes a rule, a library needs a security patch. Budget for a monthly retainer or a block of hours, and ask what is included: bug fixes, small changes, or only monitoring.
Many owners treat upkeep as a surprise. Plan it as part of the cost from the first quote.
The same app can be built by four kinds of team. Each has a different cost shape.
| Option | Best when | Main risk |
|---|---|---|
| Freelance developer | A small, well-defined job | One person: illness, other clients, no backup |
| In-house developer | Software is your core business and work is steady | Salary and management time while work is thin |
| Agency | A larger, fixed job with many roles | Layers of account managers, slower change |
| Studio | A product that must ship and then keep changing | Fit: you must like how they work |
WageIndicator puts the middle range for software developers in Kenya at roughly KES 61,188 to KES 187,588 a month (WageIndicator Kenya software developers, checked on 3 November 2026). That is salary only. Employer costs and equipment come on top, and so does the time to manage the person. Our companion guide hiring an in-house developer or a studio adds those up.
Freelance rates in Kenya vary with experience and with how clearly the job is described. Our own article on freelance developer rates in Kenya covers what developers say they charge. A freelancer is a good fit when the job is small and you can describe it in a page.
A studio brings designer, developer and tester under one contract, and keeps going after launch. You pay for that team on the hours or weeks you use. Whether it beats a salary depends on how steady your work is. The question list in 12 questions to ask before you hire a software studio in Africa is the one we would use if we were the buyer.
Most buyers compare totals. Compare line items instead.
Be wary of two things. A quote with no line items cannot be compared. A very low quote often drops testing or upkeep, and you pay for both later.
Fixed price versus time and materials is the other choice. A fixed price suits a tightly written scope. Time and materials suits work that will change as you learn. Neither is safer by itself. What protects you is a short cycle: if a demo each week shows progress, you can stop at any point having paid only for what you saw.
For example, imagine a restaurant in Kilimani that wants customers to order on WhatsApp, pay by M-Pesa and get an eTIMS receipt. The numbers below are made up to show the method. They are not a quote and not market data.
| Line | One-off or monthly | How you estimate it |
|---|---|---|
| WhatsApp ordering flow | One-off | Count the steps: menu, choose, confirm, pay |
| M-Pesa payment | One-off, then per sale | Developer weeks, plus a fee on each order |
| eTIMS receipt | One-off | Depends on the KRA option the till uses |
| Staff screen for the kitchen | One-off | Count screens and roles |
| Hosting and WhatsApp messages | Monthly | Orders per day times messages per order |
| Fixes and small changes | Monthly | Hours per month you expect to ask for |
For example, if the restaurant takes 40 orders a day and sends three messages per order, that is 120 messages a day. Multiply by 30 days for the monthly message count, then apply the per-message rates on the Meta pricing page. You now have a running cost to compare against the first-year build.
Notice what the table does. The build is only half of year one. A buyer who looked only at the build line would underestimate the real cost.
We are a software and AI studio in Nairobi that also trains people. We build on the African Stack: M-Pesa Daraja, Paystack, WhatsApp Business API, USSD and KRA eTIMS. Our way of working is short: a working first version in the first week where the scope allows, then weekly demos.
Some of what we have shipped is public. HackHouse is a client platform with a public site, applications, events and a ticketing system, described in the HackHouse case study. HackHouse Events takes M-Pesa and card payments and checks people in by QR code at the door.
Our own products include Hesabu (financial projections for founders), TabFlow (prepaid dining with automatic split payments to vendors), Company OS (CRM, finance and expenses with receipt capture and KRA validation) and Maoni (guest feedback on WhatsApp for hospitality). All M-Pesa payments on mctaba.com itself run through Paystack.
We do not publish studio prices, because a fair number comes from your list, not ours. The method in this guide is the one we use to turn a list into an estimate. We would sooner show you the line items than a headline figure.
This is the pillar for our studio buyer guides. Each of the others answers one question you will face.
The wider payments background lives in the African Stack explained, and software for matatu and boda boda SACCOs shows one sector in detail.
Write your one-page brief today. List who uses the app, what they do, which platforms, which payments, which integrations. That page is worth more than any first quote.
Then send it to three teams. If we are one of them, you can scope a custom build with Mctaba Labs on a scoping call. Bring the brief and we will mark up the lines that move the price most.
If our answer is that an off-the-shelf tool fits you better, we will say so. A good studio sometimes talks a client out of a build.
Booking systems, POS, dashboards and internal tools, built in Nairobi with weekly demos.
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