Marketing
July 4, 2025
We delve into the detailed pricing plans, integration complexities, and ongoing maintenance fees associated with building universal apps using Expo. Talk to one of our Expo experts at MetaCTO to effectively integrate it into your product.
Chris Fitkin
Founding Partner
In the world of mobile app development, efficiency and reach are paramount. Business leaders and product managers constantly seek tools that can accelerate development cycles without sacrificing quality or user experience. This is where Expo has emerged as a game-changing platform. It enables development teams to build high-quality, universal applications for Android, iOS, and the web from a single codebase. While the promise of “write once, run anywhere” is compelling, understanding the true cost associated with leveraging this technology is crucial for effective project planning and budgeting.
This comprehensive guide will demystify the costs of using Expo. We will go beyond the sticker price of subscription plans to explore every facet of financial investment, including the nuanced usage-based fees, the complexities of integration, the cost of hiring skilled developers, and the long-term maintenance expenses you can expect. By the end, you will have a clear, holistic view of what it takes to build, launch, and scale a successful application with Expo.
Before diving into the financials, it’s important to clarify what Expo is. While sometimes mistaken for a programming language, Expo is an open-source platform built on top of React Native. It provides a suite of tools, services, and libraries that simplify the development of universal apps. At its core, Expo allows developers to write an application using JavaScript and React, and then deploy it as a native app on Android and iOS, as well as a progressive web app (PWA) on the web, all from a single, unified codebase.
The primary advantage is a dramatic increase in development speed. Instead of maintaining separate teams and codebases for each platform, a single team can build and iterate on one. The Expo SDK provides access to a wide range of device capabilities like the camera, file system, and push notifications, abstracting away much of the underlying native code complexity. A developer can create an app with a sophisticated layout, such as a two-screen bottom tabs interface using Expo Router, and integrate native system UI elements for tasks like selecting an image from the media library, all while working within the familiar React ecosystem.
However, this power and convenience come with a learning curve and a set of architectural considerations. Successfully building a seamless experience across three distinct platforms requires careful planning, especially when handling platform-specific differences and integrating third-party libraries. This is the landscape in which understanding the full cost becomes essential.
The direct cost of using Expo is structured around a freemium model with several paid tiers designed to scale with your application’s needs. The pricing is a combination of a fixed monthly subscription fee and variable, usage-based pricing for services like builds, updates, and hosting. Let’s break down the plans and the associated costs.
Expo offers four main plans, each catering to a different stage of a product’s lifecycle, from individual hobbyists to large-scale enterprise operations.
| Feature | Free | Starter | Production | Enterprise |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Monthly Price | Free | $19/month | $99/month | $1999/month |
| Additional Usage | N/A | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Builds | 30/month (max 15 iOS) | $30 build credit | $100 build credit | $1000 build credit |
| Build Concurrency | 1 | 1 | 2 | 5 |
| Updates (MAUs) | 1,000 | 3,000 | 50,000 | 1,000,000 |
| Update Bandwidth | 100 GiB | 100 GiB | 1 TiB | 10 TiB |
| Update Storage | 20 GiB | 20 GiB | 1 TiB | 10 TiB |
As you can see, the Free plan is quite generous, making it an excellent choice for personal projects, learning, and prototyping. It allows for a limited number of builds and updates, which is perfect for getting an app off the ground.
The Starter plan, at $19/month plus usage, is aimed at small teams and early-stage startups. It introduces build credits and a higher MAU limit for updates, providing the necessary resources to launch an app and begin acquiring users.
The Production plan costs $99/month plus usage and is designed for established applications with a growing user base. It offers significantly more build credit, a much larger MAU allowance, increased build concurrency to speed up CI/CD pipelines, and priority support.
Finally, the Enterprise plan at $1999/month is for large organizations that require extensive resources, the highest level of support, and predictable scaling.
The phrase ”+ additional usage” is where the bulk of the cost variability lies. It’s crucial to understand these metrics to forecast your monthly expenses accurately.
After you exhaust the monthly builds on the Free plan or the included credits on a paid plan, you are charged per build. The cost depends on the operating system and the size of the “worker” (the virtual machine performing the build).
| Worker Type | Price per Build |
|---|---|
| Android medium | $1 |
| Android large | $2 |
| iOS medium | $2 |
| iOS large | $4 |
Larger workers provide more CPU and memory, which can significantly speed up build times for complex applications. Additionally, on the Starter, Production, and Enterprise plans, you can purchase additional build concurrency for $50/concurrency per month, allowing you to run multiple builds simultaneously.
For automated workflows, Expo offers Continuous Integration (CI) minutes. You can run update jobs, which push new JavaScript bundles to your users, and custom jobs for other CI/CD tasks. The Free plan includes 100 minutes of update jobs per month. On paid plans, this usage is more flexible.
The cost per minute varies by the CI worker’s OS and specifications:
| CI Worker Type | Price per Minute |
|---|---|
| Linux medium | $0.018 |
| Linux medium (nested virtualization) | $0.020 |
| Linux large | $0.035 |
| Linux large (nested virtualization) | $0.040 |
| macOS medium | $0.075 |
| macOS large | $0.150 |
Furthermore, if you use Maestro for end-to-end testing, each test job incurs a $0.05 base fee plus the cost of the CI minutes it consumes.
One of the most powerful features of Expo is “Updates,” which allows you to push over-the-air (OTA) updates to your app without going through the app store review process. This is ideal for shipping bug fixes and new JavaScript-based features quickly. The plans include a certain number of Monthly Active Users (MAUs) who can receive these updates. If you exceed this number, usage-based pricing applies.
Starter and Production Plan MAU Pricing:
| MAU Tier | Price per MAU |
|---|---|
| Next 197k (Starter) / 150k (Production) | $0.005 |
| Next 300k | $0.00375 |
| Next 500k | $0.0034 |
| Next 1M | $0.003 |
Enterprise Plan MAU Pricing:
| MAU Tier | Price per MAU |
|---|---|
| Next 1M | $0.003 |
| Next 1M | $0.0024 |
| Next 3M | $0.0022 |
| Next 4M | $0.0016 |
Beyond builds and users, there are costs associated with the infrastructure that supports your app.
Note: All prices shown are in USD and do not include any applicable sales tax. All plans and usage are subject to Expo’s Acceptable Use policy.
The process of building an app with Expo involves more than just writing code. It requires a thoughtful approach to project setup, architecture, and configuration to harness the platform’s full potential. The journey begins with creating a new Expo app, often using a template with TypeScript enabled for enhanced code quality and maintainability.
From there, development involves several key stages:
<Modal> and <FlatList> to create interactive and dynamic interfaces.The complexity lies not in any single one of these steps, but in orchestrating them all within a single codebase. A poorly architected Expo app can become difficult to maintain, with platform-specific code tangled throughout the project, leading to bugs and slow development. This is why having an experienced team is not just a luxury, but a necessity for building a robust and scalable product.
The cost of the Expo platform itself is only one part of the total investment. The largest expense is typically the human capital required to design, build, and maintain the application. Given that there is a high demand for skilled Expo developers, finding and retaining the right talent is a significant challenge.
There are several avenues for sourcing individual Expo developers. You can explore specialized tech communities like GitHub, Stack Overflow, and the official Expo forums. Freelance websites are another popular option, where pre-screened developers often bid on projects.
For a more streamlined process, platforms like Lemon.io have emerged. They offer to connect companies with vetted Expo developers, often within 24-48 hours. These platforms handle the tedious tasks of hiring—vetting for soft and hard skills, managing contracts, payments, and reporting—and often provide a no-risk trial period to ensure the developer is a good fit for your team. This can be a fast and cost-effective way to find a contractor for a startup.
While hiring individual freelancers can work for well-defined, smaller-scale tasks, building a complete, market-ready application often requires a more holistic approach. This is where partnering with a specialized mobile app development agency like us at MetaCTO provides a distinct advantage.
Integrating Expo effectively is hard. The challenge of handling platform differences, managing a complex single codebase, and ensuring optimal performance requires more than just coding skills. It requires architectural vision, strategic planning, and a battle-tested development process. When you hire an individual, you get their specific skill set. When you partner with us, you get an entire, cohesive team.
With over 20 years of app development experience and more than 120 successful projects under our belt, we bring a level of expertise that de-risks your project. We provide:
Instead of spending weeks or months sourcing, vetting, and onboarding individual developers, you can engage a dedicated team that is ready to start delivering value from day one. We handle the complexities of integration so you can focus on your business.
Launching your app is not the end of the journey; it’s the beginning. Ongoing maintenance is a critical and recurring cost that must be factored into your budget. With Expo, these costs are primarily driven by your app’s growth and usage.
These variable costs mean that your monthly Expo bill will fluctuate. A successful marketing campaign that doubles your user base will also increase your MAU and bandwidth costs. A period of rapid feature development will increase your build and CI minute consumption. Proactive monitoring and forecasting are essential for managing these expenses effectively.
Expo offers a powerful and efficient path to building universal apps for iOS, Android, and the web. Its pricing model provides a low-cost entry point with the flexibility to scale as your application succeeds. However, the total cost of ownership extends far beyond the monthly subscription fee. It encompasses a complex web of usage-based costs for builds, updates, and infrastructure, as well as the significant investment in the talent required to navigate the intricacies of cross-platform development.
We’ve explored the detailed breakdown of Expo’s pricing plans, from the free tier to the enterprise level. We’ve delved into the technical work involved in integrating Expo, highlighting the challenge of creating a seamless experience across different platforms. We’ve also examined the costs and benefits of hiring talent, from individual freelancers to a dedicated agency partner.
Building a successful mobile application is a major undertaking. By partnering with an experienced team, you can mitigate risks, accelerate your timeline, and ensure you’re building a high-quality, scalable product that delights users. At MetaCTO, we are experts in leveraging the Expo platform to turn innovative ideas into market-leading apps.
If you’re ready to integrate Expo into your product and want to do it effectively, we’re here to help. Talk with an Expo expert at MetaCTO today and let’s discuss how we can bring your vision to life.
Last updated: 04 July 2025
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