The two fees everyone knows
Google Play: a one-time $25 registration fee for your developer account. Pay it once; it covers unlimited apps under that account. Apple: $99 per membership year for the Apple Developer Program. It renews annually. Those are the store-side facts as of 2026, straight from Google's and Apple's own pages.
Neither fee is per-app. You can publish many apps under one account on both stores.
The costs guides usually skip
A Mac or a service to build the iOS app (iOS builds have historically required Apple tooling). An Apple developer account is required to sign and submit an ipa. No tool bypasses it. If you need app icons, screenshots, or a privacy policy written, that is time or money too.
The biggest hidden cost is the rebuild cycle: an app that needs a new build every time its content changes, or one where a rejection forces changes, costs more in time than in money. That is where a builder that produces a real, stable artifact earns its keep, or not.
What a builder changes (and what it doesn't)
A builder like Tapbound removes the developer-cost part: the build pipeline, the signing setup for Android, the file production. What it does not remove is the $25, the $99 per year, and the review. Those are store requirements that exist no matter how the app was made.
Tapbound's pricing is a paid plan for both platforms and rebuilds, with push, ads, and analytics as one-time-fee add-ons. The store fees go to Google and Apple, not through us, and your accounts are yours.