Are your prices fixed?

Yes. We scope the work and agree the price before we start.

Do the prices include GST?

No. Prices are plus GST where it applies.

Do you work with founders outside New Zealand?

Yes. We are a New Zealand studio working with founders here and overseas, and we quote in New Zealand dollars.

How much does it cost to build an app in New Zealand?Our 2026 prices, and what moves them

By Drian Naude, founder of Voidforge · Updated 2 November 2026

At Voidforge, as an indicative guide, a prototype real people can try usually costs NZ$15,000 to NZ$30,000. A first product with accounts and payments usually costs NZ$80,000 to NZ$200,000. A full platform with several kinds of users and integrations usually starts at around NZ$250,000. Where your product lands depends on what it needs, so we agree a fixed price once the work is scoped. All prices are in New Zealand dollars, plus GST where it applies.

These are our own prices, from work we have scoped and built for founders and businesses in New Zealand and overseas. Other studios price differently. If a quote sits well outside these bands, ask what is driving it, and check it against the list further down.

Indicative app development prices by band, in New Zealand dollars
	Prototype	First product	Full platform
Indicative price (+ GST where it applies)	NZ$15,000 to NZ$30,000	NZ$80,000 to NZ$200,000	From NZ$250,000
What it does	The main job, well enough to test with real people	Sign-up, payments, an admin side, the emails and receipts	Several kinds of users, more than one platform, partner systems
Good for	Finding out whether people want it	Your first paying customers	A business that runs on the product
Our example	Bakspace, Kindware	Peppr	Lume

Products in the same band can sit at very different points in it, depending on how many kinds of people use it, how it handles money, what it connects to, where it runs and whose data it holds. The list below explains each one.

What do you get for each price?

Prototype. You want to know whether people will use it before you spend real money. A prototype does the main job well enough to put in front of the people you hope will pay, so you can watch what they do with it.

First product. People sign up, pay you and come back. That needs accounts, payments, an admin side for you, and the unglamorous parts that make it a business: password resets, receipts, emails that arrive. Those parts take most of the budget.

Full platform. Several kinds of people use it, such as buyers, sellers and your own staff. It runs on more than one platform, talks to partners' systems, and often has a launch date that cannot move. The early decisions cost the most to undo, so at this size we plan before we build.

If you are deciding what the first version should prove, our MVP development page covers how we scope it.

What drives the cost of an app?

How many kinds of people use it. A customer, a staff member and an admin each see a different app. Every extra kind of user adds screens, permissions and testing.
Money. A single payment is quick to add. Subscriptions, refunds, invoices with tax and payouts to other people take longer, and they have to be right.
Other systems. Each connection to Xero, a booking system or a partner is its own piece of work. Some systems hand over their data easily and some fight you.
Web, iOS or Android. A web app is the cheapest place to start. iOS and Android add app store review and testing on real phones. If your customers are happy in a browser, start there.
Design. Building to a design you already have costs less than designing from scratch. Lume came to us with brand and screens from Daylight, and we built to them.
Whose data it holds. Health details, children, money and anything covered by privacy law where your customers live (the Privacy Act 2020 here, GDPR in Europe) need privacy planned from the first week. Retrofitting it means reopening screens that were finished.

Four of our projects, by price band

We don't publish what clients paid. We can say which band each project sits in.

Prototype band: Bakspace and Kindware. Bakspace is our own writing app for macOS, with one focused job, sold for US$49 once. Kindware is a community-funded web app: people chip in $5 to vote on what gets built next, and the winner ships free to everyone. Both are live.

First product band: Peppr. A Slack and Teams app that reshapes the same message for each person who reads it. It works inside Slack, Teams, Google Calendar and Outlook, and it came with the pilot programme and enterprise paperwork a customer needs to say yes.

Full platform band: Lume. A new digital format for albums, with a store and apps on iOS, Android and the web, payments, rights partners and monitoring. We were Lume's fractional CTO and engineering team, and it launched on its fixed date, 17 July 2026, with paying customers.

How much does an app cost to run after launch?

An app keeps costing money once it is live: hosting, the app stores, email and payment fees, and someone to fix it when a phone update breaks something. Put a monthly amount in the budget from the first day, and ask whoever builds it for their estimate in writing.