the short version
- A development quote prices the build. A marketing budget prices the store page, the film, the videos, the day, and any media you buy on top.
- Search results mix the two. This page is only the second budget, and it only uses figures we can point at.
- Ignura’s UGC batch is from £3,000. A four-week launch is from £16,000. The month after is from £6,000.
- The Apple Developer Program is 99 USD a year. That is the key to the store, not a campaign.
In this post8 sections
A development quote prices the engineers, the design of the product, and the weeks until a build exists. A marketing budget prices what a stranger sees on the day you ship, and what you keep putting in front of people after that. Search “app marketing cost 2026” and most of the pages are the first quote, with marketing as a paragraph at the end. That paragraph is the question.
This post is only the second budget. It says what each line is for, and why it costs money. Where a number is ours, it is the number on the pricing page. Where a number is someone else’s, it is linked. Ranges we have not measured are left out. The piece-by-piece Ignura menu, including lines not repeated here, is what an app launch costs.
We have not run a client’s launch. Ignura is a new studio, a team of four in London. The split below is the one we use when a founder asks what to put next to the seed round, beside the build.
Why the two budgets get mixed
A dev shop sells a build. Their “launch” is often submission: the binary, the listing fields, the button that sends it to review. That work is real, and it is not a store page anyone would stop for, a film, or a month of videos.
A marketing agency usually starts once the product is already out, and talks about campaigns. The work that has to exist on the day you ship sits in the gap: the screenshots, the preview, the film, the first videos, and a person who is awake. A launch studio and an app marketing agency is that split. Putting all of it inside the engineering quote means the second budget is whatever is left, which is how a finished app launches into an empty store page.
What sits outside the marketing budget
Building the app. We don’t build the product. You bring a working build. TestFlight is enough. Engineering, hosting, and the tools your app calls are the product’s bill.
The door to the store. The Apple Developer Program is 99 USD per membership year, or the local-currency price shown when you enrol. That fee lets you submit. It does not design a screenshot, cut a preview, or buy a single install. Founders sometimes park it in “marketing” because it is the only App Store number on an invoice. It belongs next to the build.
The store page
This is the advert that keeps running after you stop paying for anything else. Someone searches, the icon and the first frame have a second, and they install or they don’t.
The line covers the screenshots, the words beside them, and, if you make one, the preview video. Apple’s current file rules for that video are the preview specs. What to put in frame one is screenshot 1. The subtitle, keywords and description are the listing copy.
Why it costs money: a screenshot set is a decision about the first frame, a caption, and a file Apple will accept. A template export of an empty screen is cheap because it skips the decision. What published tools and studios charge, from pages we opened, is what App Store screenshot design costs. We are not pasting that table again here.
The film, and the preview
These are two files. The launch film is the 30 to 60 seconds on your site, on X, and in a pitch. The App Store preview is 15 to 30 seconds of the real app, in Apple’s frame, and it plays in front of the screenshots. Cropping the film and uploading it is how a preview ends up in the wrong part of the product page. The spec post says when.
Why a film costs what it costs: a freelancer animating a script you wrote, and a crew with a founder on camera, are different products wearing one name. Two studios that publish ranges do not land on one number. Their pages, and what moves the quote, are what a startup launch video costs. How to structure the 45 seconds, once you are making one, is the launch film structure.
A four-week Ignura launch includes the film, with the rest of the launch, from £16,000. You do not have to buy the whole month of work to care about the cut. The standalone film’s price lives on the menu post, not as a second number invented here.
The videos you can post more than once
One film is one opening. A launch needs several, because you find out which sentence stops someone by posting them. That is the UGC line: counted videos, with a brief, an edit, and the right to use them.
Ignura’s batch is 10 to 20 videos, from £3,000. Our UGC guarantee: if a video doesn’t hit 10k views within 2 weeks, you get your UGC money back. That is a promise about views on the video, not about downloads. The per-video maths, against platforms that publish a start price, is what UGC for apps costs. What the invoice should list, whoever shoots them, is what to pay for UGC.
Why the batch is its own line: a film quote does not include twenty openings, and a per-video price that leaves out the edit and the usage rights is not a finished video. Pay for the nouns.
The day
Launch day is a staffed date. Someone posts, someone replies, someone watches the release, and the Product Hunt page, if you are using one, has a maker comment written the day before. The rules for that page, including the ban on asking for upvotes and on vote rings, are the Product Hunt launch checklist. The hours are the launch-day run sheet.
Why it costs money: the assets can be finished and the day can still be a link in a channel nobody is reading. The fee, when there is one, buys a plan and a person who is awake. It does not buy a rank. What a Product Hunt agency publishes, and what you can do yourself, is that post. We don’t buy upvotes.
The whole of the above, from one team, in four weeks, is from £16,000. That is the number to use when the question is “what does the launch cost,” as distinct from “what did the app cost to build.”
Paid media is a different invoice
Production is what you made. Media is what you spend to show it. Apple Search Ads, Meta, and the rest are auctions. The amount is the amount you put in. We have not measured a cost per install, so this page does not print one. Articles that print one are describing their own campaigns. We have not audited them, and we will not repeat the ranges.
A proposal that folds “user acquisition” into a single figure, with no split between making the videos and buying the placements, has not given you a budget. Ignura does not sell a paid-ads retainer. Burn, the monthly plan, is campaigns and videos, from £6,000 a month. It is the month after the launch, or instead of a one-off if you have already shipped.
How to read a number
Put the lines you will actually staff on one page.
| Line | What the money is for | Where the figure lives |
|---|---|---|
| Store page | The first frame, the words, a file Apple accepts | Screenshot design cost |
| Preview | 15–30 seconds of the app, in Apple’s frame | Preview specs |
| Launch film | The cut for the site, X, and the pitch | Launch video cost |
| UGC | Counted videos, edited, with rights | From £3,000, and the per-video post |
| The day | A plan, and someone awake | Product Hunt checklist |
| The whole launch | Those pieces, four weeks, one team | From £16,000 |
| The month after | Videos and campaigns, ongoing | From £6,000 a month |
| Paid media | Placements you choose to buy | Your budget, not a production quote |
| Developer Program | The right to submit | 99 USD a year |
If a quote’s “launch” means “we submit the binary,” it is a build line. If it says “marketing” and lists none of the rows above, ask what the number buys. The week-by-week order for doing the work is the app launch checklist. The production calendar is the four-week plan.
If you have a build and a date, book an intro call and bring both. We’ll tell you which line is the one your budget is missing.
