How to build an app for free

The three pieces

Building. This piece is free almost everywhere now, here included: describe the app, generate the screens, fix them, test in the browser, no card.

Publishing on the web. Also free in most cases, on an address the platform provides. The app opens from a link, works on a phone, and installs to the home screen as an icon. For a menu, a catalogue, a portfolio or a form, that piece is already the whole product.

Publishing to the stores. This is where free ends, and not because of the platform: US$ 25 once with Google and US$ 99 a year with Apple, charged by them, on your account and in your name. Nobody pays that for you, and anyone promising otherwise is publishing under someone else's name, which is a bigger problem than the price.

What costs without showing up

• your own domain. Without it the address carries the platform's name. It runs to a few tens of dollars a year, and it is the first thing a client notices;
• branding in the footer. The standard price of a free plan on almost every builder;
• the usage ceiling. Free usually caps generation, storage or visits. The cap is not a trap; what turns it into one is finding out on campaign day;
• your hours. They never appear on an invoice and they are the project's biggest cost.

Honest free versus free that locks you in

The difference that matters is not how much the free plan gives you. It is what happens when you want to leave.

If the platform exports your app's code, the free plan is a start: worst case, you take the project with you. If it does not, every week invested raises the cost of changing your mind, and the real price of "free" only shows up the day you need to grow.

It is the same check that applies to the app as a whole, and it takes two minutes: look for the export option before you begin, not after.

The zero-cost path that works

1. build and test with no card;
2. publish on the web, on the platform's address;
3. send the link to the people who will actually use it;
4. buy the domain when the app gets shown to a client;
5. pay for a developer account only when the store is genuinely needed, and it is needed far less often than it seems. The criteria are in native app, PWA or website.

The summary

• building and publishing on the web: free, and it covers most cases;
• stores: never free, because the fee belongs to Google and Apple;
• domain, footer branding and usage caps are the invisible price of a free plan;
• what separates honest free from locked-in free is being able to export the code;
• pay in this order: domain, then store, and only if the store is missed.