How long does it take to build an app?
A focused first version of a business app typically runs six to twelve weeks including app-store review; sprawling scopes run to quarters. With AI leverage the coding is no longer the long pole: deciding what to build, integrating your systems, and store review are.
The longer answer
In practice.
The real timeline
A couple of weeks of scoping and design, several weeks of build with working
software visible weekly, then integration with your real systems, then Apple and
Google review, which runs days when prepared for and weeks when not.
What blows timelines out
Scope that grows mid-build, waiting on access to systems the app must talk to,
and decision-makers who surface in week eight. All three are process problems; a
written scope and one empowered owner prevent them.
What speed looks like now
Specifying and building in the same pair of hands, showing working software weekly, is faster than the old team model precisely because nothing is lost between the person who understood and the person who typed. See
mobile apps for the method.
Same rabbit hole