A restaurant app costs between $12,000 and $50,000, and unlike most app categories, there is a clear financial argument for building one: the commission you pay to delivery aggregators.
At 25–30% per order, a restaurant doing 3,000 delivery orders a month at an average of 70 SAR pays roughly 55,000 SAR monthly in commission. An app that moves even a fifth of those orders direct pays for itself in months, not years.
That is the honest case. The equally honest complication is that aggregators bring you customers your app never will, and most restaurants that build an app discover that the hard part is not the build — it is convincing anyone to use it.
Cost table — 2026
| App type | Cost | What it includes | Timeline |
|---|---|---|---|
| Menu and branding only | $6,000 – $12,000 | Menu, locations, hours, call to order | 4 – 8 weeks |
| Ordering app | $12,000 – $28,000 | Cart, payment, pickup and delivery, order status | 2 – 4 months |
| Ordering with loyalty | $20,000 – $38,000 | Points, rewards, offers, segmented push | 3 – 5 months |
| Multi-branch chain | $35,000 – $50,000 | Per-branch menus and stock, branch routing, central reporting | 4 – 7 months |
For how app pricing is built up in general, see our mobile app development cost guide.
Note on the first row. A menu-only app is rarely worth building. Nobody installs an app to read a menu they could see on your website. If that is your budget, spend it on a fast mobile site and a Google Business Profile instead.
What drives the cost
Menu structure
Menus look simple and are not. A burger with a choice of patty, three add-ons priced individually, a required side, and an optional upgrade is a configuration problem, not a list item.
Add branch-specific availability, time-based menus (breakfast until 11am), and items that sell out mid-service, and menu management becomes one of the larger pieces of work. Budget $3,000 to $8,000 for a menu system that your staff can actually update without calling the developer.
That last point matters more than it sounds. If changing a price requires a support ticket, prices stop being updated, and the app starts lying to customers.
POS integration
This is the difference between an app that works and an app that creates chaos in the kitchen.
Without POS integration, an app order arrives as a notification that someone must re-key into the till. During a rush, that step gets skipped or mistyped. With integration, the order lands in the kitchen queue like any other.
Foodics, Marn, and Square are common in the Gulf and expose APIs. Budget $4,000 to $12,000. If your POS has no API — some older systems do not — this becomes the deciding constraint on the whole project, and it is worth resolving before you commission anything else.
Delivery: yours or theirs?
Three options, with very different costs:
- Pickup only. Cheapest, and a reasonable first version. No driver logistics at all.
- Your own drivers. Requires driver assignment, live tracking, and a driver app. Adds $8,000 to $20,000 and an operational burden most single-location restaurants underestimate.
- Third-party fulfilment. Aggregators and logistics providers offer delivery-as-a-service — you keep the customer relationship and the menu, they move the food. Cheaper to build, and a middle path worth pricing before committing to your own fleet.
For the full logistics picture, our delivery app cost guide covers the driver side in depth.
Loyalty done properly
Loyalty is the reason a restaurant app survives past the first month.
A points system is simple to build and easy to ignore. What actually changes behaviour is targeted: a free coffee to someone who came three times last month and has not returned this month, or a Tuesday offer to customers who only ever visit on weekends. That needs order history, segmentation, and scheduled campaigns.
Budget $6,000 to $14,000, and treat it as the feature that determines whether the app keeps earning after launch.
The commission math
This is the calculation worth running before anything else.
Your current cost: 3,000 monthly delivery orders × 70 SAR average × 27% commission = 56,700 SAR per month
A realistic app scenario: Restaurants that promote an app well typically move 15–25% of repeat delivery customers to direct ordering within a year. Take 20%:
- 600 orders monthly move to your app
- Commission saved: 600 × 70 × 27% = 11,340 SAR per month
- Your own costs on those orders: payment processing (~2.5%) plus delivery, if you fulfil it
If you deliver yourself at roughly 12 SAR per order, the net saving is around 11,340 − 1,050 − 7,200 = 3,090 SAR monthly. If you use third-party fulfilment at a flat fee, the arithmetic changes and is often better.
A $22,000 app is roughly 82,000 SAR. At 3,090 SAR monthly, payback is over two years — but that ignores the part that usually matters more: direct customers order more often, because you can reach them. Push notifications to your own customer list are free; aggregator visibility is not.
Run this with your own numbers. If you do fewer than 1,000 delivery orders a month, the honest answer is usually that an app is premature.
The problem nobody mentions
Building the app is the easy half. Getting customers to install it is the hard half, and it is where most restaurant apps quietly fail.
Your customers already have an aggregator app that holds every restaurant in the city, their saved address, and their card details. Yours holds one restaurant. That is a real disadvantage, and it is not solved by a better interface.
What does work:
- A concrete install incentive at the point of sale — a discount on the first app order, printed on the receipt and mentioned by staff
- Loyalty that only exists in the app — points that cannot be earned on the aggregator
- QR codes on tables and packaging, where the customer is already thinking about your food
- Prices genuinely lower than the aggregator, which you can afford because you are not paying 27%
Budget for this. An app with no promotion plan is $22,000 that produces nothing, and the promotion is not a marketing afterthought — it is the part that makes the build worth doing.
Ongoing costs
| Item | Annual |
|---|---|
| Maintenance | 15 – 20% of build |
| POS integration upkeep | $600 – $2,400 |
| Payment processing | 2 – 3% of volume |
| Push notification service | $0 – $1,200 |
| Hosting | $600 – $2,400 |
| Menu and photo updates | Staff time |
Payment processing at 2.5% is far below aggregator commission at 27%, which is the entire point — but it is not zero, and it belongs in the comparison when you calculate savings.
Read also
- How Much Does an App Cost? — the pillar guide
- Delivery App Development Cost — driver logistics and dispatch
- How Much Does an E-Commerce App Cost? — ordering apps compared
- Payment Gateways in the Gulf — Mada, Apple Pay, instalments
- Mobile App or Responsive Website? — the cheaper alternative
- MVP or Full Product? — scoping a first release
Frequently asked questions
How much does a restaurant ordering app cost?
An ordering app with cart, payment, and order tracking costs $12,000 to $28,000. Adding loyalty brings it to $20,000 to $38,000. A multi-branch chain app with per-branch menus runs $35,000 to $50,000.
Is a restaurant app worth it compared to aggregator commission?
It depends on volume. Above roughly 1,000 delivery orders a month, the commission you save can justify the build within one to two years. Below that, promotion costs usually exceed the saving, and a fast mobile ordering page is the better spend.
Do I need to integrate with my POS?
Effectively yes, if you take orders through the app. Without it, staff re-key every order into the till during service, which produces mistakes exactly when the kitchen is busiest. Confirm your POS has an API before committing to the project.
Should I offer delivery or pickup only?
Pickup only is a legitimate first version and removes the hardest operational problem. Add delivery once ordering works — either with your own drivers or a third-party fulfilment provider, which is usually cheaper than building driver logistics yourself.
How do I get customers to install it?
Give them a reason the aggregator cannot match: app-only loyalty, lower prices, and a first-order discount promoted at the point of sale. Plan and budget this before you build — an app nobody installs saves no commission at all.
Can I keep using aggregators as well?
Yes, and most restaurants should. Aggregators bring new customers; your app retains the ones you already have at a much lower cost. Use the aggregator for discovery and the app for repeat orders.
How long does it take to build?
Two to four months for an ordering app, four to seven for a multi-branch chain. POS integration and menu configuration take most of the time; the ordering screens are the fastest part.
Conclusion
A restaurant app costs $12,000 to $50,000, and it is one of the few app categories where the return can be calculated directly from a bill you already pay every month. Above about 1,000 delivery orders monthly, the commission arithmetic usually works.
But the build is the smaller half of the project. Decide how you will get customers to install it — the incentive, the loyalty they cannot get elsewhere, the prices you can afford because you are not paying commission — before you approve a quote. Restaurants that plan that part get their money back. Restaurants that assume customers will switch on their own do not.