Progressive web app development that turns the site you already have into the app your customers install.
PWA development services with the two numbers this market hides: $4,900 fixed to retrofit your existing site into an installable, offline-capable app, or from $9,900 to build one new. No store account, no review queue, no 15–30% between you and your customer — and no phone field between you and a written quote.
"Is the PWA still a thing?" Google's own suggestion box asks it. Here's the dated answer.
Three of the four searches that lead to this page surface that doubt — and not one agency answers it. Fair enough: the honest answer is a list of receipts from the three companies that control your customers' screens.
Platforms don't keep shipping features for dead technology. What actually died is the excuse to pay app-agency prices for a portal, a booking flow, or a field tool.
Apple's WebKit team ships real push notifications and icon badges for Home Screen web apps — "we are adding support for Web Push to Home Screen web apps," iOS 16.4, their words.
macOS Sonoma: "you can use Safari to save any webpage as a web app" — a Dock icon with notification badges, per Apple's own support pages.
The Web Almanac's measurement of the actual web: service workers now run on 1 in 5 websites — roughly ten times the 2022 share. Barely 3.5% finish the job into a complete installable app. Finishing the job is the $4,900 line above.
Microsoft's Store docs, updated last month: PWAs list in the Microsoft Store with "no code changes required" — and updates flow to users straight "from your web server." No re-submission. Their wording, not ours.
Apple currently publishes a user guide literally titled "Turn a website into an app in Safari on iPhone." When the platform writes your pitch, the debate is over.
Every ranking page claims "app store independence." Zero of nine turn it into dollars. Here it is in dollars.
The famous numbers — with the years the agencies leave off.
and a 200% higher conversion rate after its PWA investment — with visit frequency up 310%.
PWA versus their plain web — with conversion 55% higher and sessions 161% longer.
The PWA weighs 99.84% less than the iOS app it mirrors. The order-ahead flow, at the weight of three photos.
ALSO ON THE RECORD: TWITTER LITE (2017) — +75% TWEETS SENT AT UNDER 3% OF THE NATIVE APP'S STORAGE; UBER'S WEB APP (2017) — A 50KB CORE BUILT FOR 2G. YES, THE YEARS ARE PRINTED. AGENCIES QUOTE THESE STATS UNDATED; WE'D RATHER YOU TRUST THE REST OF THIS PAGE.
Three honest disqualifiers — the section none of the nine ranking agencies has.
If your app lives on deep hardware — NFC taps, Bluetooth devices, serious camera pipelines, AR — you want native, and our mobile desk will say so in the quote. If the store is your discovery channel — consumers browsing for you by category — the store's reach is worth its tax; same desk. And if your users must have it work with zero connectivity for days, know the fine print: even Google's own help page says "some may not work completely without an internet connection." We design offline scopes honestly — what's cached, what queues, what waits for signal — and put it in writing before you pay.
The questions under the search box.
Including the ones Google's own "People also ask" raises and no agency page answers.
P-01.What does PWA development actually cost?
Here: $4,900 fixed to retrofit the site you have, $9,900–$32,000 for a new build — printed at the top, not buried in an FAQ. The ranking agencies answer the same question with "$10,000–$100,000," "$5,000–$100,000," or "$15,000–$150,000 or more… connect with experts," and the US cost guides run $30,000–$120,000. A range that wide isn't a price; it's an invitation to a sales call.
P-02.Is the PWA still a thing in 2026?
The receipts section above is the long answer. The short one: Apple shipped web push and badges to iPhones, ships a guide called "Turn a website into an app," and macOS installs them to the Dock; Microsoft lists them in its Store with "no code changes required"; and the measured web says 1 in 5 sites now run a service worker — ten times the 2022 share. The skepticism is older than the evidence.
P-03.PWA or React Native — which should we build?
Where's the front door? If customers arrive through your website, a PWA turns that traffic into installs with one tap and no store detour. If the store listing itself matters — discovery, credibility in a consumer category, deep device features — React Native or native earns its bigger budget. This desk builds all of it, so the answer in your quote follows your case, not our staffing.
P-04.Does it really work on iPhone?
Yes — and this answer used to be hedged, which is why the doubt survives. Since iOS 16.4 (2023), a web app added to the Home Screen gets real push notifications and icon badges, in Apple's own words from the WebKit team. It runs full screen without browser chrome, and Apple documents the flow in its own iPhone user guide. What we still design around honestly: install is a two-tap share-sheet flow on iOS rather than a one-tap prompt — so the retrofit includes an on-page "install" walkthrough that does the guiding.
P-05.Can you convert the site we already have?
That's the lead offer — $4,900, three to five weeks, and your stack stays untouched: we add the service worker, the manifest, the offline scope, push, and the install prompt to what already exists. Every ranking agency lists "PWA migration" in its services; none of them will tell you what it costs before a call. Now you know why the number is at the top of this page.
P-06.Who keeps it running?
Forty-five days of fixes at $0, then your choice: $190 a month flat — monitoring, browser-release fixes, small changes, cancel anytime — or the handoff docs and any developer you like. The cost guides report $500–$1,000 a month as normal for PWA maintenance; a well-built one on boring rails simply doesn't cost that to keep alive.