31 January 2025
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The Progressive Web App (PWA) has moved beyond being just a future trend and is now considered a current necessity. The projected revenue in the application development software is expected to reach US$195.77bn in the year 2025. From regional service startups to international e-commerce giants, PWAs have become a valuable asset for businesses seeking to enhance user engagement, with lower bounce rates and lightning-fast delivery experiences across devices.
So, what’s behind this surge in popularity?
PWA connects the best of both worlds by delivering speed, offline access, and push notifications of a native app, lessening the hassle of large downloads or App Store approvals. They deliver apps that function like websites, but are visible like websites, providing end users with a seamless and uniform experience. For businesses, it acts as a cross-platform support with reduced Progressive Web App development time and wider reach, all at once.
And that leads us to the most crucial doubt: what is the development cost for a PWA in 2025?
If you’ve been studying Progressive Web App development, you’ve possibly run into extremely different estimates ranging from $10,000 for a basic MVP to $100,000+ for a complex, feature-rich platform. But the real scenario lies in that there is no one-size-fits-all answer. The budget depends on a number of variables, including the scope of your progressive web app features, the design complexity, and the region or team you choose for development.
That’s exactly why you’ll need this guide on progressive web app development.
Whether you’re a startup founder comparing alternatives, a product owner budgeting your next app, or a CTO preparing for migration from a native stack, this post will cover everything you need to know about the cost of building a Progressive Web App this year. We’ll gradually explain the key components that impact the budget, explain the Progressive Web App development practice from start to end, and even show you how to optimize your budget without compromising on quality.
So, before you jump into Progressive Web App development, or declare PWAs as too expensive, read on. This guide is mapped to deliver clarity, assurance, and a practical framework to help you make well-versed decisions.
Till now, you already understood why the development expense of a PWA matters in 2025; it’s necessary to understand what are PWA’s. After all, knowing what you’re paying for is the fundamental step toward making smart investment decisions.
So, what is a PWA?
A Progressive Web App (PWA) is a form of web application that applies contemporary web technologies to deliver an experience that performs and feels like a native mobile app, while still operating on a browser. Imagine opening a website and getting the seamless performance, offline access, and push notifications you’d expect from an installed app, without ever visiting an app store. That’s the supremacy of a PWA.
In practical terms, PWAs use manifests, service workers, and approachable design to enable significant progressive web app features such as offline performance, background syncing, and home screen installation. But from a user’s opinion, it delivers quick onboarding, cleaner interfaces, and the ability to “install” an app-like website. Now that you know what are PWA’s, let’s move on.
Although PWAs feel like a new technology, their journey began nearly a decade ago, when Google first launched the idea of PWAs in 2015, aiming to beat the restrictions traditional web apps bring, especially in terms of mobile functionality and traffic.
At first, adoption was slow, where native apps still ruled the roost, and web browsers weren’t fully compatible with the capabilities needed to support PWAs robustly. With the time being, browser support has been enhanced, progressive web apps frameworks have been developed, and businesses have started recognising the value of offering app-like experiences without the app store overhead.
Landing in 2025, they are no longer considered as an alternative, progressive web apps for businesses are often the primary choice for launching digital products.
So, what’s upgraded here?
User behavior has dramatically changed, for starters, where people now expect apps to load instantly, and work offline, without eating up too much space. PWAs fulfill all of those requirements while offering enterprises greater authority over updates, functionality, and user data.
On the technical part, support across major platforms, including iOS, which was once difficult, has been significantly enhanced. Moreover, the expansion of serverless architectures, headless commerce, and multi-platform reach has made it easy to comprehend why PWAs are now part of serious digital strategies across businesses.
With the increased rate of adoption, the curiosity about the actual Progressive Web App development cost of a PWA has also increased. Contrasting native apps, which have fairly expected pricing models based on platform and codebase, PWA costs can fluctuate depending on performance, design needs, and progressive web apps impact on business goals.
This guide helps you cut through that hassle. But before we dive into pricing models and steps, let’s first explore the diverse range of PWAs businesses are building today and why that matters when budgeting.
Now that we’ve covered what PWAs are and why they’re becoming popular this year, the next reasonable step is to discover what makes them so potent. After all, understanding the PWAs’ foundational components will help you calculate how each one contributes to the overall Progressive Web App development budget and more prominently, why they’re worth the investment.
Let’s unlock the specific benefits of PWA that make it such an appealing preference for businesses across industries.
One of PWAs’ cornerstones is their responsiveness, where they seamlessly fit into different device types and screen sizes – whether it’s a smart TV, desktop, tablet, or smartphone.
While native apps demand separate designs for iOS and Android, PWAs are designed with a single codebase that vigorously adjusts with every screen size and resolution. This not only improves the user experience but also cuts off development and maintenance costs, as you’re not developing or maintaining several versions of the same app.
One of the most treasured components of a PWA is its ability to work offline or in low-connectivity situations. Thanks to service progressive web app developers’ who are operating scripts in the background, so that PWAs can cache content, accumulate user inputs, and allow users to access key features while not being connected to the internet.
This is a pioneering feature for industries such as news, travel, or e-commerce. It not only cuts down abandonment rates but also ensures users remain engaged, regardless of their network strength or location. Of course, building in offline performance does enhance your Progressive Web App development opportunity, but the ROI in user retention often outweighs the value.
Native apps are no longer the only ones implementing push notifications. PWAs can now effectively send timely notifications to users, even when the browser is not functional. This opportunity allows direct engagement by sending notifications about new content, abandoned carts, offers, or tailored updates.
Such stable communication boosts re-engagement rates and increases frequent visits. This single feature is often worth the transition to PWA for growth teams and marketers.
PWAs are intended to behave like native apps, where performance becomes a critical factor to keep that promise. Thanks to lazy loading, caching, and portable progressive web apps frameworks, PWAs load faster, respond smoothly, and lessen friction in user journeys.
Fast-loading content is no longer just a UX benefit but directly impacts conversions, bounce rates, and search engine visibility. In a world where users expect everything right away, poor performance is the key reason to lose a lead, and PWAs solve that problem straight out.
Unlike the native apps, PWAs avoid app store submission for every update. This indicates that businesses can implement changes right away whether it’s a refreshed design, bug fixing, or feature release without seeking authorization.
From a budget perspective, this translates to less equipped overhead and more agility in managing the product. It’s especially valuable for rapidly developing startups and businesses with regular content or feature updates.
When you merge offline access and push notifications with native app-like speed and responsive design, you develop a user experience that people want to use repeatedly. PWAs often result in higher retention rates than conventional web apps, and in many instances, outperform native apps in engagement metrics.
Users can add the PWA to their home screen to enjoy a hassle-free experience by interacting with it like a native app. These fine but powerful enhancements create considerable business value.
Contrasting with native apps, PWAs can be indexable by search engines, i.e., your PWA can appear in search engine results (just like a website), making it far more accessible than an app embedded in an app store.
This is huge for businesses depending on organic traffic, such as SaaS tools, content publishers, or eCommerce platforms. You’re benefiting from the best of both worlds: the visibility of a website along with the performance of a native app.
Now that we’ve discovered the features that give PWAs their edge, let’s dive into the different types of PWAs businesses are developing today, because the kind of app you are planning to develop plays a huge role in shaping your overall Progressive Web App development budget.
Ready to dig in? Let’s go.
We’ve already discovered that the power of Progressive Web Apps lies in their adaptability, speed, and functionality. But how you execute a PWA, and what features you prioritise, will heavily impact the development budget. That’s why it’s essential to comprehend the types of PWAs being built in the real world today.
From e-commerce to domestic tools, businesses across industries are shifting to PWAs to reach modern user expectations. Let’s walk around some of the most widespread (and successful) use cases.
Every second is valuable for online retailers. A setback in loading can directly result in lost sales. That’s why eCommerce platforms were among the initial adopters of PWAs.
With features including push notifications for abandoned carts, offline browsing, quick-loading product pages, and home screen access, PWA-driven eCommerce sites can challenge native apps in both functionality and user engagement, without needing users to download anything.
This strategy has already made Brands like Flipkart, Alibaba, and Lenskart attain increased session time and higher conversion rates. If you’re in retail or D2C, you must consider this PWA model.
Latest SaaS applications, particularly those navigated through multiple devices, benefit through a PWA architecture as it provides automatic updates, regular cross-device usage, and offline support for significant components.
Whether it’s a collaboration tool, CRM, project tracker, or finance dashboard, PWAs enable users to access tools anytime, anywhere. And because everything operates in the browser, there’s no need to develop different Android, iOS, or desktop versions.
This cuts down the Progressive Web App development time, speeding up iterations and lessening the total cost of developing a PWA, ownership, perfect for scaling SaaS platforms.
For content-driven websites and publishers, speed and accessibility are the whole thing, and PWAs allow users to load articles rapidly, even in low-connectivity areas, and enable offline reading, push notifications for breaking news, and seamless scrolling experiences.
Businesses such as The Washington Post and Forbes have embraced PWAs for delivering a more responsive reading experience while maintaining their SEO rankings.
If content is your key, then PWA ensures that your stories are not only discovered but also read.
Whether it’s booking a hotel room, a train ride, or a movie ticket, users expect real-time responsiveness with continuous service. PWAs align with those expectations by sending confirmations via push, storing cached data, and supporting offline ticket access.
With a PWA, customers can avoid app installation only for a quick booking, which makes the conversions faster and the funnel shorter.
Ride-hailing, home services, food delivery, these are typical examples of on-demand apps that benefit from a PWA standpoint. In many regions, users are unwilling to install heavy applications for occasional or one-time use.
A PWA delivers a fast, mobile-friendly experience with geo-location access, real-time updates, and push notifications, all without app store friction. It’s a successful approach to offer users a native-level experience who value speed and convenience.
Not every PWA is customer-facing. Many businesses are developing internal tools as PWAs to make workflows seamless, lessen IT dependency, and make apps instantly navigable on any device.
Whether it’s a reporting tool for the remote workforce or a dashboard for warehouse employees, PWAs offer safety, adaptability, and rapid deployment, without burdening your infrastructure.
Now that you have a distinct scenario of the types of PWAs you can develop, it’s time to get into the real matters, what impacts the Progressive Web App development cost? That’s where we’re heading next.
By now, it’s clear that Progressive Web Apps aren’t one-size-fits-all. Depending on your business type, feature needs, and target audience, the progressive web app development cost can significantly vary. So, before we can discuss numbers, we need to understand what exactly impacts the budget.
Let’s break down the significant factors that control the PWA development cost in 2025, so you can get a practical picture and budget more precisely.
This is the major driver of the budget so far. A simple eCommerce catalogue with push notifications and offline operations will cost considerably less than a real-time, fully integrated PWA with custom logic, dashboards, and role-based access.
The more features you include, such as smart search, user logins, filters, real-time chat, analytics, and integrations, the more development time it will take. It’s not just about performance, but also how those features cooperate with each other.
Here’s a quick evaluation to give you a rough idea:
| PWA Type | Key Features | Estimated Budget | Timeline |
|---|---|---|---|
| Basic | Motionless content, offline cache, mobile responsiveness, necessary push notifications | Ranging between $8,000 to $15,000 | 3-6 weeks |
| Medium | Dynamic content, UI animations, payment integration, login system | Ranging between $15,000 to $35,000 | 6-12 weeks |
| Advanced | Tailored features, real-time data sync, complex user flows, scalable backend | Ranging between $35,000 to $100,000+ | 3 to 6 months+ |
Note: These estimates fluctuate depending on the region and team structure, which we’ll get into shortly.
Design can be the reason behind the failure or success of a digital product. If you’re aiming for a sophisticated, insightful, on-brand user experience, you’ll require skilled designers and potentially multiple iterations of prototyping and testing.
The more tailored your UI, the higher the design cost. To save time, some teams choose existing UI kits or content libraries while others build every element from the basics. The latter requires more time and capital.
Also, don’t miss out on convenience. Designing for convenience compliance (WCAG, for example) may include more careful planning but adds long-term worth and usability.
If your PWA demands to “communicate” with other systems such as ERPs, CRMs, payment gateways ( Razorpay, Stripe, etc.), shipping APIs, or inventory management tools, then integration becomes a major budget concern.
Custom API integrations are often hard to understand, execute, and test. The more your app relies on third-party services, the more time your development team will need to build a progressive web app up, verify, and ensure seamless performance.
Also, keep in mind that not all APIs are free, which can add to your ongoing operational progressive web app development cost.
Offline performance is one of the noteworthy features of PWAs, which is not a simple plug-and-play. Depending on how much content or performance you want users to avail offline, the possibility of your service worker logic will be modified.
For instance:
More advanced offline logic leads to more coding, more testing, and higher complication, therefore, more capital.
Push notifications are a useful approach for engagement, but setting them up demands a bit of backend research, especially if you want segmented, tailored notifications depending on user behaviour.
If you’re using third-party services such as Firebase Cloud Messaging, the budget can be minimal. However, custom notification systems (with delivery tracking, analytics, scheduling, etc.) can maximize both development time and infrastructure needs.
Also, note that iOS push support for PWAs is comparatively new and demands further attention to implementation.
Hosting a PWA is no longer restricted to getting a server, but is about ensuring adaptability, speed, and security.
You’ll require:
Using cloud services such as Google Cloud, AWS, or Vercel adds competence but also demands experienced DevOps support.
Security, to be specific, can’t be compromised, especially if you’re handling user data or payments. Developing a secure infrastructure might require additional tools, audits, or compliance budgets.
Here’s where the budget varies significantly. A freelancer may charge $10,000 for a job that a high-end agency might demand at $40,000. The difference lies in team potential, skill level, and offered support.
Traditional PWA development teams involve:
You can opt for a small team for an MVP or a full-stack squad for enterprise-level development. More professional teams (especially those skilled with PWA expertise) tend to demand higher charges, but often deliver enhanced, enduring value.
Where your development team is located plays a significant role in your collective expenses. Here’s a broad idea of hourly rates by region in 2025:
| Region | Hourly Charges (USD) |
|---|---|
| North America | Ranging between $80 to $150 |
| Western Europe | Ranging between $60 to $120 |
| Eastern Europe | Ranging between $35 to $70 |
| India/ Southeast Asia | Ranging between $20 to $50 |
| Latin America | Ranging between $30 to $60 |
Outsourcing to regions such as India or Eastern Europe is a popular approach to balance excellence with budget. Just ensure you evaluate the team carefully and match communication and expectations.
Planning your PWA to go live in six weeks? Be prepared to pay extra.
Tighter deadlines demand a bigger workforce or more dedicated working hours. Projects under tight deadlines often demand priority scheduling, equivalent tasking, and round-the-clock QA, all of which are included in the final settlement.
On the contrary, if you have a flexible deadline and can schedule your development (starting with an MVP), you can manage progressive web app development cost significantly.
Now that you understand the key factors influencing PWA development budget, let’s discuss the minds behind the product, your development team. Who you appoint, where they’re located, and how you plan the project team can have a huge impact on your overall budget and duration.
Let’s break it down.
A complete PWA team usually includes five major brains. Depending on the project size and complexity, you may need one person for each role or a small group for each.
They bring your PWA to life in the browser, where this person manages the user interface, responsiveness, animations, and execution of service workers for caching and offline performance.
Major tech expertise: CSS, JavaScript, including React, Angular, Vue, HTML, and PWA frameworks.
These minds are responsible for developing and handling the database, server, APIs, and business logic. If your PWA demands verification, real-time updates, user roles, or integrations, this is your go-to specialist.
Major tech expertise: Python, Node.js, PHP, Firebase, REST/GraphQL APIs.
This role ensures the PWA looks attractive and functions seamlessly. A skilled designer will balance aesthetics with features, ensuring your app is insightful, on-brand, and scalable across devices.
Major tech expertise: Wireframes, design systems, user flows, interactive prototypes.
Quality assurance is non-negotiable, and a QA engineer studies every factor, across devices, network conditions, and screen sizes, to ensure a seamless user experience is provided and prevent bugs from disturbing productivity.
Major tech expertise: Functional testing, regression testing, cross-browser testing, bug tracking.
The PM keeps everything on track by bridging communication between investors and developers, managing deadlines, and ensuring deliverables match with business goals.
Major tech expertise: Agile methodology, risk management, sprint planning, investor reporting.
Rates vary significantly depending on location. Here’s a wide-ranging estimation of what you can expect to pay per hour in 2025:
| Role | US/UK | Eastern Europe | India/Southeast Asia |
|---|---|---|---|
| Frontend Developer | $80 to $130 | $40 to $70 | $20 to $50 |
| Backend Developer | $90 to $140 | $45 to $75 | $25 to $55 |
| UI/UX Designer | $70 to $120 | $35 to $60 | $20 to $45 |
| QA Engineer | $60 to $100 | $30 to $50 | $15 to $35 |
| Project Manager | $100 to $150 | $50 to $80 | $25 to $60 |
Note: These are standard rates. Professional skills, urgent projects, or niche frameworks may demand higher rates.
How you develop your workforce also impacts budget, authority, and speed.
If you’re developing a temporary PWA (e.g., for a campaign or product launch), outsourcing or hiring a freelance team might be better for your budget. But if your app will evolve with frequent updates and scale, consider developing an in-house or hybrid team for more authority.
In the following segment, we’ll take this discussion even deeper by gradually breaking down the entire development process and the typical budget for each step. This will give you a transparent picture of where your budget is really going.
Now that we’ve covered everything on your team and how much they might cost, it’s time to discuss the next big matter: Where do you invest all the capital during PWA development?
Understanding the PWA development stages and what each one naturally involves, will help you strategize your budget more effectively. Regardless of what you’re developing (a simple MVP or a complex platform), the majority of the PWA projects have a practically reliable life cycle. The breakdown of each stage and the predictable budget are as follows:
Expected Cost: Ranging between $1000 $5000
Duration: 7 to 14 days
This is the starting point of everything. The discovery phase is entirely related to defining goals, conducting competitor analysis, understanding user expectations, and build a progressive web app practical roadmap. It may also involve prioritisation, early wireframes, and choosing the tech stack.
While it may be tempting to pass through this phase, ignoring this often results in project creep, fuzzy scopes, and costly rework in the future. A good foundation at this point will keep you out of budget blowouts in the future.
Expected Cost: Ranging between $3000 $10,000
Duration: 14 to 28 days
At this phase, your thought attains visual life, where the UI/UX designers make the interactive prototypes, full-fledged wireframes, and high-fidelity mockups of each screen and flow. They also plan on accessibility, mobile responsiveness, and micro-interactions.
When you have many user-facing features in your PWA, such as dashboards, product pages, forms, or animations, design will take longer and become more speculative.
Moreover, it’s important to remember that design is no longer associated with its appearance, but directly influences conversion, usability, and client satisfaction. A refined, intuitive interface can cut down bounce rates and boost engagement, which is especially promising for e-commerce and SaaS applications.
Expected Cost: Ranging between $10,000 $60,000
Duration: 6 to 16 weeks (based on complexity)
This is the most resource-intensive phase. Developers are now responsible for your designs and will work on a fully functional PWA.
This includes building a UI, such as service workers for offline support, catching logic, routing, and reactivity. A common framework is Angular, Vue, or React.
Significant tasks:
This includes tasks like server logic, user verification, API integrations, database architecture, and admin dashboards. PWA-based systems use serverless infrastructure or headless CMS platforms to cut down time and budget.
Significant tasks:
In brief:
Expected Cost: Ranging between $2000 $8000
Duration: one to three weeks
Quality assurance is obligatory, especially in the case of PWAs, which have to run seamlessly across various devices, browsers, and network conditions.
The testing phase commonly involves:
More complex apps may also demand automated testing strategies such as Cypress or Selenium to ensure consistency with every future update.
Expected Cost: ranging between $500 $2500
Duration: one to three days
Once your PWA has passed QA testing, you must prepare for deployment.
Deployment commonly involves:
This phase is relatively short, but requires accuracy. A non-testing deployment will lead to a buggy deployment, slow loading, downtime, or even broken features. Many businesses also invest in DevOps automation (CI/CD pipelines) to ensure seamless deployment of updates.
Expected Cost: between $500 $3000 per month, depending on demand
Now your PWA is live, but the work isn’t finished.
Post-launch maintenance involves:
Maintenance expenses fluctuate depending on your product’s complexity and whether you have in-house experts or depend on a development partner. You can cut down the budget here by using monitoring tools (like Sentry or LogRocket), automating backups, and scheduling updates quarterly instead of monthly.
So, what’s the entire budget of a PWA?
Let’s estimate it depending on a mid-range PWA:
| Development Stage | Estimated Budget |
|---|---|
| Discovery & Roadmap | Ranging between $1,000 to $5,000 |
| Design & Prototyping | Ranging between $3,000 to $10,000 |
| FE + BE Development | Ranging between $20,000 to $50,000 |
| Testing & QA | Ranging between $2,000 to $8,000 |
| Deployment | Ranging between $500 to $2,500 |
| Annual Maintenance | Ranging between $6,000 to $36,000 |
Annual estimation: $32,500 – $111,500+
In the following segment, we’ll compare these budgets to those of building native and hybrid apps, so you can understand where PWAs stand in terms of worth and enduring ROI.
Let’s continue.
Now that we’ve gone through what includes PWA development, it’s helpful to compare it with its closest contenders, native apps and hybrid apps. Let’s understand diff in PWA and native apps. Each has its benefits, but if you’re looking at the bigger picture of development, scalability, and maintenance, PWAs often lead, especially in 2025’s multi-device era.
| Aspect | PWA | Native App | Hybrid App |
|---|---|---|---|
| Development Period | 6 to 12 weeks | 12 to 24 weeks (per platform) | 8 to 16 weeks |
| Maintenance | Single codebase with easy update | Platform-specific updates with more efforts | Shared codebase but still demands native tweaks |
| Platform Reach | Web, iOS, Android, Desktop – all in one | Limited platform access (especially for Android/iOS) | Cross-platform but relies on wrapper support |
| Initial Development Cost | $10K – $60K | $40K – $150K+ (for iOS + Android individually) | $20K to $80K |
| Cost Efficiency over time | High (single codebase with instant updates) | Low (multiple platforms with App Store fees) | Medium |
| Enduring ROI | Strong (better reach with seamless updates) | Good but expensive to scale | Moderate depending on tooling and complexity |
Here’s a parallel breakdown:
How to Cut Down progressive web app development cost Without Compromising Quality
If the numbers from the above discussion made you pause, you’re not alone. PWA development can feel expensive initially, but the good news is that there are plenty of smart strategies to optimize your budget without compromising on quality or functionality.
Here are five proven strategies that can help:
Instead of developing every feature altogether, start with a Minimum Viable Product (MVP). Highlight the foundational components your users need, and quickly validate your concept. This will allow you to gather actual user feedback before investing in more complex or expensive development work.
You don’t need to start all over again since free, reliable tools are abundant on the internet. Using open-source PWA frameworks such as Ionic, Workbox, or React with PWA plugins can save you a lot of development time and budget, without compromising the quality, progressive web app development cost, or scalability of the project.
A skillful, qualified team can save you thousands by working proficiently and avoiding pricey mistakes. Hiring professionals with a clear portfolio of PWA work, with clear pricing, and strong communication skills is always a good start. A lesser budget doesn’t always indicate better presentation, consider both affordability and dependability.
Whether it’s Vue, React, or any other framework you apply, accessing reusable and flexible components means you’re not modifying the system with every innovative component. This also results in faster maintenance at a cheaper progressive web app cost.
Agile enables you to develop in sprints, evaluate results, and make adjustments where necessary. This iterative approach guarantees you’re always working on the highest-priority components and lessens the risk of wasteful development.
Even with a lean roadmap, streamlined process, and the perfect tech team, unexpected expenses can creep up and increase your budget. These aren’t always included in initial planning, but they’re very real and can impact your total progressive web app cost of ownership considerably over time.
Here are some of the most widespread hidden expenses in PWA development and how to get ready for them.
The majority of the contemporary PWAs rely on external APIs in all aspects, including payments, chat, geolocation, maps, and analytics. They feature convenience and, in most cases, acceleration of development, but include usage-based fees or monthly subscriptions.
Common instances are:
Budget: $3,000 – $10,000 or more (annually), depending on usage.
Tip: Opt for scalable APIs and closely monitor usage to stay away from bill shock.
Most enterprises underestimate the cost of developing a PWA, maintenance after launching. However, from bug fixes and functionality improvements to small feature updates and compatibility patches, post-launch support plays its part in keeping your app efficient and competitive.
Budget: Usually 15–20% of your primary cost to develop PWA.
So, if you spent $40,000 on your PWA, budget another $6,000–$8,000 for yearly maintenance.
Tip: Lock in a maintenance contract with your development team if possible, it’s usually lower-cost than pay-as-you-go.
You no longer have to invest in a server space or a domain to host your PWA. You’ll need to consider:
Although the majority of cloud services have a pay-as-you-go budget, the price can quickly escalate if your app grows fast or maintains high traffic.
Budget: $100 – $1,000+, depending on the traffic and services you applied.
One of the benefits of PWA is that they sidestep conventional app stores. However, if you opt to add your PWA on the Microsoft Store or Google Play Store for more exposure, you’ll need to have a budget for listing fees, maintenance submissions, and compliance requirements.
Estimated One-Time Cost:
Note: Apple’s App Store doesn’t present support for PWAs in the same way, listing there isn’t widespread.
PWAs are designed to work in contemporary browsers, but not everyone has the latest tech. Making your application function elegantly even on older versions of Android or desktop browsers may involve additional effort from fallbacks to polyfills to accessibility modifications.
Budget: $2,000 – $5,000 (one-time), depending on the range of devices and browsers it runs on.
Tip: Study your target audience’s device and browser mix before making a heavy investment in backward compatibility.
Progressive Web Apps no longer represent just a trendy concept, they’ve become a cornerstone of modern digital strategy, and for good reason. In 2025, businesses are embracing PWAs for their ability to deliver native app-like functionality with the added scalability, speed, and accessibility of the web. They’re faster to deploy, easier to maintain, and offer a seamless experience across devices, all without the friction of app store downloads.
But as this guide has shown, estimating the true cost of a PWA isn’t about quick guesses. It requires a clear understanding of what you’re building, who you’re building it for, and how it will grow. From defining progressive web app features and crafting an intuitive design to assembling the right team and choosing the right infrastructure, every decision along the way impacts your timeline, budget, and success.
At Dev Story, we specialise in building scalable, performance-driven PWAs that not only look good, but also work hard for your business. Whether you’re starting from scratch or looking to improve an existing platform, we help you align your product vision with real-world development planning.
Ready to estimate your PWA? Speak to our PWA professionals at Dev Story for a customized cost to develop PWA and a future-ready roadmap tailored to your goals.
