How to hire an app developer in the UK: what to check before you sign (2026)

The short version

• Decide who you’re hiring. A freelancer, an agency, your own employee, or a firm abroad. Any of them can build a good app. What changes is who’s accountable, and what you need in writing.
• Publish under your own accounts. On the App Store, Apple shows the account’s organisation as the seller. Your developer can work inside your Apple and Google accounts with a role, without owning them.
• Get the copyright in writing. Under UK law, a freelancer or an agency owns the code they write unless they assign it to you, and an assignment has to be in writing and signed. Paying for the work doesn’t do it on its own. Your own employee’s work is yours by default.
• Your customers’ data needs a contract. If the developer will handle personal data for you, UK GDPR Article 28 says what the contract must cover.
• IR35 if it’s one person through their own company. Who decides whether the rules apply depends on the size of your business.
• Check the company at Companies House. It’s free, and takes a couple of minutes.
• Cost depends on the app. Ask for a quote broken into parts, and ask what a change costs once work has started.

Which kind of app developer should you hire?

There are four usual routes. None is the right answer for everyone, and the checks later in this post apply to all of them.

The copyright column comes from the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, below. It’s the default. A contract can change it, which is the point of the next three sections.

Publish the app under your own Apple and Google accounts

This is the one that’s hardest to fix later. An app on the App Store or Google Play lives inside a developer account, and whoever holds that account has the relationship with Apple or Google.

Apple is explicit about who that person is. Its enrolment page says: "As the person enrolling your organization in the Apple Developer Program, you’ll be the Account Holder and must have the legal authority to bind your organization to legal agreements." It also says whose name customers see: "Your organization’s name will be displayed as the seller name of your apps on the App Store." If your developer publishes the app from their own account, their name is on it.

You don’t have to hand over your account to let someone build in it. Apple’s App Store Connect roles include a Developer, which "Manages development and delivery of an app", and an App Manager, which "Manages all aspects of an app, such as pricing, App Store information, and app development and delivery." The Account Holder stays with you: "This user is responsible for entering into legal agreements with Apple."

Google Play works the same way. Google’s Play Console help describes three levels: the account owner, admins and users. The account owner "Is the only person who can have a linked payments profile to sell paid apps". An invited admin or user "Doesn't need to pay the $25 registration fee", so your developer doesn’t need to pay for a developer account of their own to work on yours.

Apple has one more reason. Its App Review Guidelines (last updated 16 October 2026) say, at 4.2.6: "Apps created from a commercialized template or app generation service will be rejected unless they are submitted directly by the provider of the app’s content." If your developer builds from a template, the app has to go out from your account anyway.

If your app is already in a developer’s account, it can be moved. Apple says "You can transfer your app while keeping it available for download on the App Store", but both sides have to act: "Your membership Account Holder initiates the app transfer" and "The receiving Account Holder accepts the app transfer." On Google Play, after a transfer, "your apps’ users, download statistics, ratings and reviews, content ratings and store listing information are all transferred to your new account." Both depend on the other side agreeing, so put it in the contract at the start.

Setting up your own accounts takes some time and paperwork, because both stores ask an organisation for a D-U-N-S number. Our post on the Apple developer account price in the UK, and what Google Play charges covers the fees and the paperwork for both.

Who owns the code and the design?

Paying for an app doesn’t make you the owner of its copyright. The Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 treats software as writing: a "literary work" includes "a computer program". Section 11 then says who owns it first: "The author of a work is the first owner of any copyright in it, subject to the following provisions."

The main exception is employment. Where a work is "made by an employee in the course of his employment, his employer is the first owner of any copyright in the work subject to any agreement to the contrary." So code written by your own employee, as part of their job, is yours by default.

A freelancer or an agency isn’t your employee. Unless the copyright is passed to you, it stays with them, and section 90 says how it has to be passed: "An assignment of copyright is not effective unless it is in writing signed by or on behalf of the assignor." So ask for the assignment in the contract itself, covering:

• the app’s source code, for both iPhone and Android, and the back end if they build one;
• the designs, icons and store images;
• when ownership passes, for example when each stage is paid for;
• a list of anything they don’t own and so can’t assign, such as their own reusable tools or open-source code, and the terms you get to use it on.

Ask, too, where the code will be kept. A code repository in an account you control means you can see it from the first week, and you can take it to someone else if you part ways.

We’re not lawyers. This is what the Act says. If the app matters to your business, have a solicitor read the contract before you sign it.

Your customers’ data: the developer as a processor

If your developer will run the back end, or see real customer details while building or testing the app, they are handling personal data for you. UK GDPR calls them a processor. Article 28 says you, as the controller, "shall use only processors providing sufficient guarantees to implement appropriate technical and organisational measures". It also requires a contract: "Processing by a processor shall be governed by a contract or other legal act". The contract has to say, among other things, that the processor "processes the personal data only on documented instructions from the controller".

Two points in Article 28 matter most when you hire a developer:

• Subcontractors. "The processor shall not engage another processor without prior specific or general written authorisation of the controller." Ask which hosting, email, analytics and other services the app will use.
• The end of the job. At your choice, the processor "deletes or returns all the personal data to the controller after the end of the provision of services". Put that in the contract, so it’s clear what happens if you change developer.

Ask where your customers’ data will be stored, and who can reach it. If the answer is a country outside the UK, there are further rules on sending personal data abroad, which this post doesn’t cover.

IR35, if you hire one person through their own company

IR35 applies when someone works for you through their own company (usually a limited company), but would have counted as your employee if they’d worked for you directly. HMRC’s guidance puts the rules like this: they "make sure that a worker (sometimes known as a contractor) pays broadly the same Income Tax and National Insurance as an employee would."

Who decides depends on the size of your business. HMRC says: "In most cases, the client will be responsible for determining the employment status of the worker. However, if a worker provides services to a small client outside the public sector, the worker’s intermediary is responsible for deciding the worker’s employment status and if the rules apply."

• Small business: the developer’s own company decides.
• Medium or large business, or the public sector: you decide, and you give the developer a status determination statement with your reasons. HMRC’s check employment status for tax tool helps.
• Every contract counts separately: "The off-payroll working rules apply on a contract-by-contract basis."

HMRC’s guidance for clients sets out the size test. IR35 is about one person working through their own company. Hiring an agency that employs its own developers is a different arrangement.

Check the company at Companies House

Before you sign, look the company up. GOV.UK says: "You can get some details about a company for free, including:" "company information, for example registered address and date of incorporation", "current and resigned officers" and "insolvency information". On the Companies House service itself, a company’s page shows when its last accounts were made up to and when the next ones are due.

What to look at:

• The name and number. The company named on the contract should be the one you looked up. A trading name and a company name can differ.
• How long it has existed, from the date of incorporation.
• The officers. Who the directors are, and how many have come and gone.
• The dates. If the next accounts or confirmation statement are past their due date, ask why.
• Insolvency. Companies House shows insolvency information, if there is any.

There’s one more free feature worth using if you go ahead: "You can also set up free email alerts to tell you when a company updates its details (for example, a change of director or address)."

A firm abroad won’t be on Companies House unless it has a UK company. Ask which company you’d be contracting with, and where it’s registered.

What to ask before you sign

These are the questions that cover everything above. A good developer will have answers ready.

• Who will actually build it? Will any of the work be passed to someone else?
• Whose Apple and Google accounts will it be published under?
• Will the contract assign us the copyright in the code and the designs, in writing? When?
• Where will the code be kept, and when can we see it?
• Which outside services will the app use, and what will they cost us to run?
• Where will our customers’ data be stored, and who else will handle it?
• How will we see progress? Will we be using the real app on our own phones while it’s built, or signing off documents and screenshots?
• What does a change cost once we’ve started?
• What happens after launch: fixes, and updates for new versions of iOS and Android?
• If we part ways, what do we get, and how?

How much does it cost to hire an app developer?

It depends on the app. We don’t give figures here, because any figure without your app behind it is a guess. What makes an app bigger or smaller is:

• how many screens and features it has;
• how much it has to connect to, such as payments, bookings or your own systems;
• whether it needs a back end of its own;
• how many rounds of changes you want before it goes live;
• support after launch.

How the quote is put together matters as much as the total. There are three common shapes:

• A fixed price for a fixed specification. Clear up front. But anything you change your mind about once you’ve used the app becomes a change request, at extra cost.
• Time and materials. You pay for the hours or days worked. Flexible, but the total is open.
• A price in parts. The first build, then each round of changes, then the work to launch it. You see what each step costs before you agree to it.

Whichever shape you’re offered, ask what a change costs once work has started. Apple and Google also charge their own developer fees, paid by whoever holds the account.

Red flags

• They want to publish the app from their own account, and keep it there.
• There’s no written copyright assignment, or it only appears if you ask.
• The company on the contract isn’t on Companies House, or isn’t the one on their website.
• Their accounts or confirmation statement are overdue.
• They can’t tell you who will do the work.
• You won’t get to use the app yourself until near the end.
• The quote is one number, with no breakdown and nothing about changes.

What the guides on page one get wrong

We read two of the UK hiring guides that came up when we searched this question, on 24 October 2026. Both are written by app agencies with offices in several countries. One gives its costs in US dollars ("$15,000 on a simple app"). The other gives pounds, with dollars alongside. Both cover hourly rates, skills and interviews.

Neither mentions Apple’s or Google’s developer accounts, so neither tells you whose name your app will be published under. Neither mentions Companies House. Those are two of the cheapest checks a UK buyer can make.

How we do it, and our interest in this post

We build apps for UK businesses, so we’re one of the firms you might hire, and it suits us for buyers to ask these questions. Here’s where we stand on the ones above, so you can hold us to them. Your app is published in your name, on your own App Store and Google Play accounts, and we can look after them for you. From the first version it’s the real app, on your own phone, with realistic stand-ins for anything that isn’t connected yet, and you tell us what to change. And the quote comes in parts, before anything starts. How we build apps.

What argues the other way, and what we couldn’t check

• Their account can be quicker to start with. Setting up your own Apple and Google organisation accounts needs a D-U-N-S number and Apple’s checks. For a quick first test, publishing from the developer’s account can make sense. If you do it, write the transfer into the contract.
• A fixed price suits a small, well-defined app. If you know exactly what you want and it won’t change, a fixed price is simple.
• A freelancer can be the right hire. The checks are the same.
• The IR35 size test. HMRC’s guidance for clients gives turnover and balance-sheet figures for the size test, but that page was last updated on 30 August 2024. We couldn’t confirm from it whether those are still the figures that apply, so we’ve left them out. Check with HMRC or your accountant.
• Firms abroad. We’ve only checked UK law. Who owns the copyright under a contract governed by another country’s law is a question for a lawyer there.
• Not legal advice. This post sets out what the legislation and Apple’s and Google’s own pages say. It isn’t advice on your contract.

Sources, and what we checked

• Apple: Apple Developer Program enrollment, App Store Connect role permissions, Overview of app transfer and the App Review Guidelines (last updated 16 October 2026), guideline 4.2.6.
• Google: Play Console Help, Add developer account users and manage permissions, Transfer apps to a different developer account and Choose a developer account type (UK English pages).
• legislation.gov.uk: Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, section 3, section 11 and section 90; UK GDPR Article 28. Read as the statutory text (the XML version of each page), not a summary.
• GOV.UK: Understanding off-payroll working (IR35) (updated 26 February 2026), Off-payroll working rules for clients (updated 30 August 2024), Get information about a company, and a company page on the Companies House service, for its layout.
• The two page-one guides, read on 24 October 2026. We haven’t named them; the point is what they leave out.
• All of the pages above were read on 24 October 2026, and again on 26 October 2026, the morning we published. Nothing we quote had changed.
• Every quotation above was tested automatically against the text of its source before publication.