How Much Does It Cost to Publish a Game on the App Store and Google Play?

Publishing a game costs 99 dollars per year on the Apple App Store and a one time 25 dollars on Google Play. That is the whole store fee. Everything else you read about publishing costs is something other than the store.

Those two numbers surprise people in both directions. Some expect it to be free. Others expect thousands. The truth is that getting a game listed is cheap. Getting it noticed is not.

What the store fees actually cover

The Apple Developer Program membership is 99 dollars a year and it covers unlimited apps, TestFlight for beta testing, and access to app analytics. If you stop paying, your games come off the store.

Google Play asks for 25 dollars once, ever. There is no renewal. That is the lowest barrier of the two by a wide margin.

Both stores then take a cut of what you earn. The standard rate is 30 percent, dropping to 15 percent for most small developers who earn under one million dollars a year. If you are just starting, assume 15 percent.

The costs nobody warns you about

The store fee is the smallest line item in a real launch. Here is what actually shows up:

A company entity. Apple will list your personal name as the seller unless you publish under a registered company with a D-U-N-S number. Most studios want the company name on the listing. Registration cost depends entirely on where you are.

Store assets. Screenshots, an icon, a preview video, and a description. You need these in multiple sizes. If you are not making them yourself, budget for a designer.

A privacy policy. Both stores now reject apps without one, and both ask you to declare exactly what data you collect. If your game has ads or analytics, you are collecting data.

Age ratings and compliance. Free to fill in, but getting them wrong gets you rejected and costs you a week.

The real number

For a solo developer publishing a finished game, expect somewhere between 150 and 400 dollars to get from finished build to live listing across both stores in the first year.

For a studio launching a commercial title, the store fees stop mattering entirely. The budget goes to production and user acquisition, and 124 dollars of store fees disappears into the rounding.

What to do about it

Register the developer accounts early. Apple's account verification can take days, and for company accounts it sometimes takes longer. It is a miserable feeling to have a finished game and no account to ship it from.

If money is tight, start with Google Play. Twenty five dollars once, faster review, and you can learn the whole submission process before you commit to Apple's yearly fee.