How long does it take to build an app? Eleven of ours, measured
Published 23 October 2026. The store dates below can be checked by anyone; the start dates are ours.
Short answer: for the eleven apps we have shipped to the App Store, the time from the first commit in the app's repository to the first public release ranged from 15 days to 352 days, with a median of 50 days. 7 of the eleven took 60 days or less. The long ones were not long because the app was big; they were long because we stopped and worked on something else. The short ones reused code and components written for the apps before them.
That is a different answer from the "3 to 9 months" you will see on most pages that answer this question, so it is worth saying exactly what was measured and what was not.
What the numbers are
Every app in the table is published on the App Store by Royal Nation LLC, the company behind Krown Digital. For each one:
- First commit is the date of the first commit in that app's git repository. It is the earliest point we can put a date on. It is not public, so you are taking our word for it; we have not rounded or adjusted any of them.
- First App Store release is the
releaseDatethat Apple's public lookup service returns for the app, looked up on 23 October 2026. You can check it yourself: openhttps://itunes.apple.com/lookup?id=1846033811&entity=softwarein a browser and search for the app's name, or open the listing linked in the table and look at the version history. - Days is simply the second date minus the first.
| App | First commit | First App Store release | Days |
|---|---|---|---|
| Proof90 | 2026-09-08 | 2026-09-23 | 15 |
| Kinship Guard | 2026-09-03 | 2026-09-23 | 20 |
| FerroLady | 2026-09-08 | 2026-10-01 | 23 |
| EyeJolt | 2026-07-06 | 2026-08-02 | 27 |
| Long Exhale | 2026-08-20 | 2026-09-16 | 27 |
| ProveAwake | 2026-08-05 | 2026-09-24 | 50 |
| Bible Live Quiz | 2026-03-28 | 2026-05-22 | 55 |
| QuickPoll | 2025-10-22 | 2025-12-26 | 65 |
| Anchored | 2025-12-23 | 2026-07-27 | 216 |
| BulkBuddy | 2025-10-20 | 2026-05-28 | 220 |
| Kingdom Bible Quiz & Trivia | 2025-04-26 | 2026-04-13 | 352 |
Google Play releases are not in the table because Google does not publish a first-release date in a form a stranger can check without an account.
What the numbers are not
They are not effort. Nobody worked on any of these apps every day between the two dates. Kingdom Bible Quiz, the slowest at 352 days, sat untouched for months at a time while other things shipped; its commit history shows the gaps. If you read the table as "a quiz app takes a year", you have read it wrong. Read it as "this is how long it took, including everything that got in the way".
They are not a promise. A number measured on our own apps, built the way we build, says nothing about a custom project with a client, a brief, approvals and a scope that changes. If someone quotes you a timeline, ask them for a table like this one from their own work, with dates you can check.
They are not the whole job. Each first release was followed by between a handful and dozens of updates; the current version of every app in the table was released in October 2026. The first release is when the app became available, not when it was finished.
Why the short ones were short
Four things made the fastest builds fast, and none of them is a secret.
- The hard parts already existed. Sign-in, payments, notifications, analytics, crash reporting, store listing assets, privacy policy pages: by the fifth app these were copied from the fourth and adjusted, not written. FerroLady, Proof90 and Kinship Guard, all under a month, started from that base.
- The scope was fixed before the first commit. Each of the fast apps did one thing. The slow ones changed shape while being built.
- One person decided. There was no approval round, no stakeholder review and no design handoff, because the person writing the code was the person deciding what it should do. A client project cannot work this way, and that is the single biggest reason agency timelines are longer, and legitimately so.
- Store review was treated as part of the build. The listing, screenshots, privacy labels and review notes were prepared alongside the code, so submission did not add weeks at the end.
How to use this if you are getting an app built
- Ask for measured dates, not estimates. Anyone who has shipped apps has repository dates and store dates; ask for both for their last three releases.
- Separate "time to first release" from "time to finished". The first is measurable. The second never arrives; it is a series of updates.
- Expect a custom build to take longer than the fast end of our table, and ask why if it is quoted at the slow end. The slow end here is pauses, not work.
- Count the review step. An App Store or Google Play review is days at best and can add a round trip if the listing is incomplete.
Where this fits with what we sell
Krown Digital licenses already-built apps, configured for your business, which is why delivery there is measured in days rather than the weeks above; the app exists before you enquire. The process is on the how it works page. For a custom build, the build slot page publishes the price and the process, and whether a slot is currently open. Everything else we can show you is on the proof page, along with an honest list of what we cannot show yet.