How Long Does It Take to Build an App? Our Real Timelines

Indore, 12 November 2026, "How long will it take?" is usually the second question on a discovery call, right after "can you build this?". The honest answer is that it depends on scope, and founders hate that answer. So instead of a range pulled from thin air, here is what our last three projects actually took, and why.

The short answer

Most of our app projects take between three and six months from signed proposal to handover. A focused website can be done in under three. Anything that sounds faster usually skips design sign-off or testing, and those are the two things I would never cut.

Three real projects, three timelines

• Keen as Mustard: a Flutter dating app with 100+ screens, a Node.js backend with 50+ API endpoints, a React landing page and an admin panel. Six people, six months, delivered on time.
• Lalah: a halal food discovery app of around 40 screens, plus a landing page, an admin panel and a backend. Five people, four months of active development.
• DESA Consulting: a 12-page WordPress website for a Melbourne medical centre, with HotDoc online booking. Four people, under three months.

Look at what separates them. It is not the technology. Keen and Lalah both use Flutter and Node.js. The difference is how many screens, how many products around the app, and how much needs testing before anyone outside the team sees it.

What actually decides the timeline

Number of screens

Every screen has to be designed, reviewed, built and tested on two platforms. Going from 40 screens to 100+ did not add a few weeks to Keen as Mustard. It added months, because each feature brought its own empty states, error states and edge cases.

How many products sit around the app

An app rarely ships alone. Both of our app projects also needed a landing page, an admin panel and a backend. The admin panel is the one founders forget. On Keen it handles verification, giveaways, subscriptions and moderation, and none of that builds itself.

How fast decisions come back

This one is on both sides. We ask clients to reply to questions within 24 to 48 hours. A design review that sits unanswered for a week moves the launch by a week.

Surprises halfway through

Keen as Mustard had to be renamed about four months in, when the original name could not be trademarked. New name, logo, palette and identity, in the middle of the build. The project still finished on time, and the rebrand went through without a change order.

Where the time goes

Here is roughly how a project moves, using our own app development process:

• A free discovery call with me.
• A written proposal with scope, timeline, milestones and user stories within 3 to 5 days.
• Design in Figma until you sign off every screen. No code before that.
• Development sprints with weekly updates and test builds you install on your own phone through TestFlight or Google Play internal testing.
• Structured QA. Keen as Mustard went through 546 internal testers before handover.
• Store submission, handover documentation and post-launch support.

Design and testing are the stages people want to shorten. They are also the ones that stop a project from running late. Fixing a layout in Figma takes minutes. Fixing it after it has been built twice, once for iOS and once for Android, takes days.

How to get a faster first version

If you need something in front of users sooner, cut scope, not quality. Pick the one journey that proves your idea, build that properly, and leave the rest for version two. Our startup MVP page covers how we decide what makes the first release.

A good first question to ask any agency, including us, is: which of your past projects is closest to mine, and how long did it take? If they can't name one, treat their estimate with care.

If you want a realistic timeline for your own idea, book a discovery call. You will speak to me directly, and if we are not the right fit I will tell you.