How Much Does a Café App Cost? What to Expect in 2026

If you've ever wondered whether your café, pub, or takeaway should have its own app, the first question is usually the same: what's it going to cost?

The honest answer is that it depends on which of two routes you take.

Option 1: a white-label app that's already made. You take a ready-made ordering app and put your own name, logo, and colours on it. The technology is already built, and kept up to date for you, so there's no big bill upfront. You pay a monthly subscription instead, from about £49 a month, and your app can be live in days.

Option 2: a fully custom app, built from scratch. You hire an agency or a developer to design and build an app just for your business. You get exactly what you ask for, but it typically costs tens of thousands to build, takes months, and has to be paid for every year after launch to keep it working.

Both give your customers an app with your name on it. The difference is whether you pay a small monthly fee for one that already exists, or a large sum to have your own made. This guide breaks down both, including the costs that don't show up on the first quote.

The Short Version

What a Custom Build Costs

Published estimates vary a lot, mostly because of where the developers are based and how many features you want.

One 2026 guide to restaurant app development puts a basic first version at about £30,000 to £53,000 at US or European rates, or £7,500 to £15,000 with an offshore team, taking two to three months (Enacton). A standard app with more features runs about £60,000 to £113,000 (US or Europe) or £15,000 to £34,000 offshore, and takes four to six months.

Other sources aimed at larger restaurant groups quote much higher. One puts production apps with loyalty and multiple locations at about £113,000 to £226,000 (Unplug Dining). Those figures are for chains, so they're not what a single café should expect, but they show how quickly the price climbs once you add features.

Two things to take from this:

• A simple custom app is still a five-figure project.
• The cheapest quotes can come with trade-offs in quality, communication, or support, so a low price isn't automatically a bargain.

The Costs After Launch

A custom app isn't finished when it goes live. Phones get new software, app stores change their rules, and bugs appear.

Maintenance. A common rule of thumb is to budget 15% to 20% of the original build cost every year for updates, security patches, and bug fixes (Enacton, Unplug Dining). Some sources put it higher, at 30% to 35% (Stormotion). On a £11,300 app, 15% to 20% is about £1,700 to £2,250 a year.

Hosting and services. The same Enacton guide suggests an extra £1,100 to £7,500 a year for hosting and other services.

App store accounts. Apple's Developer Program costs about £75 a year (Apple). Google Play charges a one-time fee of about £19 to register (Google).

What White-Label Costs

A white-label app is a ready-made ordering app that you brand with your own name, logo, and colours. You pay a subscription instead of a build fee, and the provider handles updates and store submissions.

Prices that small venues can actually see on public pricing pages today:

• Sizzle: £49 a month (Core) or £69 a month (Pro), plus a flat 30p or 20p per order. See our pricing.
• Flipdish: its mobile app is on the Professional plan, listed at £79 a month billed annually, or £99 billed monthly (Flipdish).
• Per Diem: about £75, £150, or £375 a month per location, depending on the plan, plus usage fees on the lower plans (Per Diem).

Not everything in this space is priced for small venues. One guide quotes white-label ranges of about £375 to £1,900 a month with about £3,800 to £19,000 in set-up fees for bigger brands (Unplug Dining). If a quote looks like that, you're being priced as a chain, so ask what you'd get that a cheaper platform doesn't.

The Costs People Forget

Whatever you choose, check for these:

• Per-order fees. Some platforms charge a small fee on every order. Sizzle's is a flat 30p on Core and 20p on Pro, and you can choose to pay it yourself or add it to the customer's total. Others pass usage fees to your customers by default.
• Card processing. Taking payments costs money on any platform. With Sizzle, card payments go through your Square account, so Square's usual processing fees apply.
• Hardware and set-up. Some platforms mention upfront costs for hardware or implementation, so ask before you sign.
• Your own time. A custom build needs you to brief, review, and test. A ready-made app needs a few hours to add your branding and menu.

A Three-Year Example

Let's put both side by side for a single café. These are illustrations, not quotes, but the gap is wide enough to matter.

Custom build, offshore, basic. Take the middle of the £7,500 to £15,000 range: about £11,300. Maintenance at 15% to 20% is about £1,700 to £2,250 a year. Add the low end of the hosting estimate, about £1,100 a year. Over three years that's at least about £19,800 (£11,300 plus three years at about £2,830).

Sizzle Core. £49 a month for 36 months is £1,764. Add 30p per order: at 600 orders a month that's £180 a month, or £6,480 over three years. Total: about £8,244. At that volume, Pro would work out cheaper, at about £6,804, because its monthly price is higher but its per-order fee is lower. If you add the order fee to your customers' totals, your cost is just the monthly plan.

Neither number includes card processing or your time.

A custom app can do things a ready-made one can't, such as unusual features or a completely bespoke design. If you need those, the extra cost may be worth it. If you want customers to order and pay ahead from your own branded app, a ready-made one covers that for a fraction of the price.

The Marketplace Alternative

If the numbers above put you off, you may be thinking of just listing on a delivery app. There's no build cost, but the pricing is a different shape: a percentage of every order. Uber Eats, for example, lists 30% when it delivers, plus a £650 activation fee excluding VAT (Uber Eats). A percentage grows with every sale, while a flat fee doesn't.

Try our savings calculator to see what that looks like at your volume.

You can also see how Sizzle compares with Uber Eats, Per Diem, and Flipdish.

How to Decide

• Choose a custom build if you need features no ready-made app offers, you have a budget in the tens of thousands, and someone to manage a developer for years.
• Choose a white-label app if you want a branded app live in days, a cost you can predict, and no developers to manage.
• Use a marketplace if you want to be found by people who've never heard of you, and you're happy to pay a percentage for that.

Many independent owners mix the last two: a marketplace for discovery, and their own app for regulars, where they keep the full amount.

The Bottom Line

You don't need a five-figure budget for an app of your own. For most independent cafés, a ready-made branded app costs a small fraction of a custom build.

If you use Square, Sizzle gives you your own branded iOS and Android app, with your menu synced from Square and orders sent directly to your POS. There's a free trial, no set-up fees, and you can cancel any time.