Cost
What it costs to run, before you buy.
Our fee is separate from vendor bills. Every number here is an estimate from published prices on 2026-11-04, and the Anthropic row is a model, not a measurement.
Read this first. No real run has yet been billed to an API key, so the Anthropic figures below come from an assumptions model (low confidence, order of magnitude). We will replace them with measured numbers after an instrumented run. Until then: set a monthly spend limit in Anthropic's console. A per-run Claude dollar cap is part of the v1.0 build, but your own Anthropic limit stays the real ceiling.
One-time build cost per app
| Line | Prototype (Ship stage off; low / typical / high) | Ship to testers (low / typical / high) |
|---|---|---|
| Anthropic, the build | $44 / $133 / $369 | $45 / $135 / $375 |
| Idea chat and review (API key) | $1 / $3 / $5 | $1 / $3 / $5 |
| GitHub Actions minutes | $0 / $0–4 / $4 | $0 / $0–4 / $4 |
| EAS builds | $0 | $0 / $2–6 / $12–19 |
| Supabase | $0 / $0–10 / $10 | $0 / $0–10 / $10 |
| Resend, Cloudflare | $0 / $0 / $0–5 | $0 / $0 / $0–5 |
| Total | about $45 / $136–150 / $390 | about $46 / $140–155 / $400–420 |
Rule of thumb until measured: about $100–200 per app, plausible band $45–$400, dominated by Anthropic. Twilio SMS is off by default and adds roughly $26 in registration fees if you turn it on.
Fixed costs
| Item | Cost | When |
|---|---|---|
| Apple Developer Program | $99 | per year (third-party figure) |
| Google Play Console | $25 | once (third-party figure) |
| Domain (both presets) | about $10–15 | per year |
| Supabase Pro | $25 base | per month, when you need a 2nd project or outgrow Free |
Year-one floor to ship one app to both stores with Supabase Pro and everything else free: about $436 before Anthropic tokens. Prototype only: just the domain, about $10–15 a year, on your own Cloudflare account.
Running one live app, per month
| Setup | Estimate |
|---|---|
| Prototype on free tiers | about $0–2, plus the domain (about $10–15 a year) |
| Shipped, first app | about $30–55 (Supabase Pro $25 plus AI usage) |
| Each additional app | about +$10–30 |
Updating a live app by re-running the factory costs a fraction of a build; our estimate is $10–60 in tokens, unmeasured.
Traps to know about
- Supabase Free allows 2 active projects and pauses a project after a week idle.
- Resend Free caps at 100 emails a day, which sign-in codes can hit early.
- Twilio SMS registration (10DLC) can take weeks and can be rejected. SMS is off by default.
- If you ever see a bill that surprises you, the cause will be in your vendor dashboards, because every account is yours.