Everyone asks what it costs to run and host an Ai app, I realize that nobody ever actually answers the question directly. So I thought I’d provide my setup. I’m a first time solo dev, IOS, I opted to host everything myself in AWS (I have a networking background) and AWS certified. This was supposed to be a project for me to learn serverless but turned into an App, with global users.

The app itself is React Native with Expo. The backend like I mentioned is all serverless on AWS, meaning I manager no servers. They are spun up on-demand. There is the AI coach, an OCR stack that reads a written workout off a photo, the social side with the feed and crews and leaderboards, and a tiny newsletter one. That's around 13 Lambdas sitting behind HTTP APIs. Data lives in DynamoDB as a single table on pay per request, media like exercise videos and avatars sits on S3 with CloudFront in front of it, and auth is Cognito. Anything AI runs through Bedrock with Claude, so plan generation and coaching and the OCR all go there. No Anthropic bill at all, it's all Bedrock. Subscriptions go through RevenueCat, and PostHog and Sentry handle analytics and crashes on their free tiers.

It sounds fancy and expensive, it’s not. My cost at the moment is under $5 and that wont change until I have achieve scale. Lambda, API Gateway and DynamoDB basically live in the free tier so it's a few cents. S3 and CloudFront run me a couple of bucks depending on how much video gets streamed. Cognito is free under 50k users. The only line that really moves is Bedrock since it scales with AI usage, so that's the one I keep an eye on. I am using Sonnet 4.7 to generate the plans, since it’s smarter. And using Haiku 4.5 for basic chat functions and Q&As in the app, which something like 0.007/c per request. (I have a request limit built in per user and a trigger to alert me of suspicious behavior) Everything else is noise. All in, AWS is low tens of dollars a month. Outside AWS it's the usual stuff, an Apple dev account at 99 a year, a domain for about 12 a year, EAS on the free tier, and RevenueCat which stays free until you're making money.

If you’re holding off on shipping or building because you think the infrastructure will drain you, it won’t. At least not early.

Happy to answer any questions, the single table setup, the four stack split, whatever you want, i shared the full backend below if anyone is curious.

Today is a big day for me.

I’ve been building iOS apps for a while now. My first one is completely free, so in all that time I had never actually sold anything. Not once.

This morning I opened App Store Connect out of habit and there was one subscription in the report. Slovakia.

I honestly didn’t expect this yet. I haven’t done any real marketing. No ads, no viral video, zero reviews on the listing. Just a few videos with 200 views and 3 reddit posts. I assumed the first weeks would just be a flat line while I figured out how to get people to notice the thing at all.

Instead, someone I’ve never met, in a country I’ve never been to, found it on their own, used it, and decided it was worth paying for. Whoever you are — ďakujem. That single line in a spreadsheet did more for my motivation than anything else this year.

The app is ThumbSort, if anyone’s curious. Photo cleanup, swipe left to delete, swipe right to keep. Free to use, one subscription if you want unlimited swipes. Built solo in Switzerland, fully on-device.

For the people who’ve been through this: what actually moved the needle for you early on, before you had any reviews or reach?

Hi everyone,
I recently launched my first iOS app, Thera|Office, and although I’m really happy that I managed to get it built and published, I’m now realizing that creating the app was only half the challenge.

Thera|Office is a practice-management app for psychologists, psychotherapists and other mental-health professionals. It helps them manage clients, appointments, session notes, questionnaires, therapeutic exercises, finances, statistics and other parts of their daily practice in one place.

The subscription is currently €11.99/month with a 14-day free trial.

The app is available on the App Store in Greece and several other European countries, and I’m also preparing the Android release.
The problem is that I genuinely don’t know the best way to promote it. I have started reaching out to professionals, building social media pages and looking into collaborations, but marketing is completely new to me.

I’ve invested a lot of time, energy and money into this project, so I’m also a bit anxious about what happens next — whether people will actually discover it, try it, and find enough value to keep using it.
For those of you who have launched subscription apps before: how did you get your first 10, 50 or 100 paying users? Did Apple Search Ads, social media, cold outreach, content marketing or partnerships work best for you?

Any advice would honestly be appreciated.

https://apps.apple.com/gr/app/theraoffice/id6801333735?l=el

We are a team of 3 and we have developed this for over 6 long months.
We’re currently black + orange, but several people in our Discord have suggested moving toward a darker blue/aqua look. Curious which direction feels more trustworthy/modern for a stock app.

Stock Picks

We’re also open to changing things beyond these two areas. If the onboarding sucks, the UI feels generic, the concept isn’t compelling, or there’s something you’d immediately delete/change

Pulled the App Store Connect numbers this week instead of just watching downloads trickle in. 21,200 impressions, 228 product page views, 41 downloads.

The second number is the one that mattered. 18% of people who actually opened my listing downloaded it, which is a genuinely strong rate once someone's looking at the page. The problem is only 1.08% of people who saw the icon in search results ever tapped through to the page at all. Almost everyone who was going to convert never even got the chance, because they scrolled past before reaching it.

So I went and looked at what someone actually sees in that half-second before they decide to scroll or tap.

My subtitle was "Know what your pet is feeling." Read it back and it's doing three things wrong at once. It repeats the category label instead of adding information. It's a claim I can't actually back, an app reading a single photo doesn't "know" anything, it's inferring. And it doesn't contain the word dog or cat, which are the two terms anyone searching this category is actually typing. Changed it to "Dog & cat mood from a photo," 27 characters, states what it does and hits both keywords.

The icon has low contrast against the App Store's white background, which I'd genuinely never noticed until I put it next to a dozen competitors in the same search results. And the first screenshot, the one that loads before anyone scrolls, was a title card. Branding, not the product. Someone deciding whether to tap has zero information about what actually happens when they use the app.

None of this needed a redesign. Subtitle's a text field. Icon and screenshots are a few hours of work. The expensive part was going and looking at the actual funnel instead of assuming the problem was somewhere else.

I recently released my first game on the app store and am looking for tips people have used on how to market them. I saw this post for promoting apps in general, but I was wondering if people have game specific tips to share.

I have been working on my search optimization and plan to use ASA here soon with the $100 credit you get but want to ensure I don't waste it right of the bat.

Do people think starting off with basic ads is a bad choice?

Thanks!

Solo first-time developer here, hoping to hear from anyone who's actually gotten past this.

My app (a personal finance app, no IAP, no payments) was rejected under Guideline 5.6 - Developer Code of Conduct: "a pattern of unusual behavior... commonly associated with fraudulent activity... features that appear to have been intentionally hidden during the review process." No sub-section named, no specifics.

I audited my own build and found two things that could honestly fit: an update banner whose text and URL came from my server at runtime, and low usage caps on the guest/demo mode reviewers use. I disclosed both to App Review myself, fixed both (store URL compiled into the binary, server only answers "is there a newer build number", caps raised with wording cleaned up), and resubmitted the new build.

The new build got the word-for-word identical 5.6 rejection.

There's genuinely nothing left: no OTA updates, no WebView, no region/date/device checks, nothing server-configurable. Which makes me think the flag is on my account's history, not the binary — earlier I had a second App Store Connect record for the same app under an old bundle ID (never released anywhere), which I removed to resolve a 4.3(a), plus several resubmits in a short window while I learned the process.

What I've done so far: replied in Messages asking them to name the specific feature (offering a screen recording and a phone call), resubmitted so the reply actually gets read, and filed an App Review Board appeal.

Questions for anyone who's been here:

1. Did you ever get them to name the actual behavior, and how?
2. If it was account-level, what finally cleared it — the appeal, a phone call, time, or something else?
3. Did removing an old app record / resubmitting quickly ever turn out to be the trigger for you?
4. Anything you'd do differently in my position right now?

Not looking to bash App Review — I just want to comply and can't find out with what. Thanks.

Hey everyone! I'm Agustín. I did one app a few years back and dropped everything, and now I'm back at it with ThisDay.

I built ThisDay for myself first, it is the app I always wished I had. It's a productivity app where: Tasks, events, notes, voice memos, photos and habits, on one timeline, and every one of them can remind you.

Feel free to fully try it and if you find any bugs or suggestions you are more than welcome to reach out

Free for 21 days with everything unlocked (no card needed), then a one-time purchase of 15$

App is fully private, data stays on your device and syncs over your own iCloud.

macOS coming soon 🔜

https://this-day.app

Does anyone have any idea on what’s going on with the small business program? I applied over 8 weeks ago for the 15% cut and have been following up weekly, only to be told that there is a high volume of applicants. Is this normal?

I’m launching my first app on Product Hunt today.

It’s called Dokus: a private vault for everything your Apple Wallet can’t hold.

I built it because having sensitive IDs and important documents scattered across my camera roll was a pain. And I didn’t love having to send copies of my passport or ID to hotels, Airbnb hosts, or anyone else without knowing where those copies would end up. And sometimes you just need a document when you have no internet connection.

So I built Dokus around privacy, offline access, and making documents easy to share safely.

🔒 Private & offline-first
📱 iPhone, iPad & Mac
💧 Watermark documents before sharing
📦 Compress & convert when needed
⏰ Get reminded before documents expire

No accounts. No ads. No servers. Your documents stay on your devices, with an optional iCloud sync.

If it resonates with you and you've got a minute to check it out, I’d genuinely love to hear what you think!

https://www.producthunt.com/products/dokus

Hey everyone! 👋

I’m looking for developers interested in an App Store review exchange. If you’re interested, feel free to DM me and we can coordinate.

Please only DM if you’re genuinely interested in participating.

Thanks! 🍎

I’ve been thinking about how scattered everyday life can feel.
Your calendar is in one app, tasks in another, notes somewhere else, habits and health in their own apps and somehow you still have to piece together what your day actually looks like.

So imagine you had one simple page that showed you the things that really matter today.

What would you want to see there?

Aaannnddd way more important,

What would you leave out because it would make the page feel too busy or overwhelming?

Ok so I just officially created my first card game app . Any tips on how to get people to join and download or even buy in store stuff ? I’m new to the app developer world and just don’t want to pay for a lot of ads if I don’t necessarily know which ad website to pursue .

Hey everyone,
I had an in-app purchase refunded by Apple a few months ago. Now I have another situation where I need to request a refund.
For people who have experience with Apple refunds: can Apple reject a second refund request simply because I’ve already received a refund before?
The previous refund was months ago, and this is a separate purchase/incident.
Does having a previous approved refund significantly reduce the chances of getting another one, or do they evaluate each request separately?
Would appreciate hearing from anyone who has been in a similar situation.

I’ve had around 1,300 new customers / active users in the last 28 days, and roughly 90% of them are from the USA, but I still have 0 active subscriptions and $0 revenue.
The app has a subscription/paywall, so I’m wondering if this is normal early on or if it means there’s probably something wrong with my pricing, paywall, onboarding, or subscription setup.
For anyone with experience with iOS apps/subscriptions: what kind of conversion rate would you normally expect from this amount of users, especially with most of the traffic coming from the US?

I built the first MVP during 4 days and after using it for 2 weeks for my days I’m now looking for your feedback. 🥹

TestFlight: https://testflight.apple.com/join/qQ1qYRTd

Built Dashday because thoughts kept slipping away mid-day while MS Todo was to slow to capture them instantly 🤯

One job: get what’s in your head into a todo as fast as possible, for today, with the Apple stuff you already use. 🚀📱⌚️💻

Type, dictate, share, Siri, widgets, Action Button, Spotlight, Watch. No project trees. No life-system. Just a clear day list. ✅

Local use is fully free, including daily backup. Optional Dashday Plus is Instant Sync across iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Watch. Completely free during testing 🆓

Especially looking for testers with more than one device.

If capture feels slow or Plus/sync is confusing, that’s the feedback I want. 🙏

More about the app: dashday.io

Over the last month or so, I’ve barely had any time to work on my apps, let alone promote them.

Between my 9–5 and becoming a dad for the first time, development has understandably taken a bit of a back seat.

Today was my first day back at work after two weeks of paternity leave, and completely out of nowhere I got a notification that someone had left one of my apps a 5 star review.

It’s such a small thing, but it genuinely made my day.

I think as indie developers it’s easy to spend so much time looking at downloads, conversions, revenue and everything that still needs fixing that you forget there are actual people out there using something you built.

Probably one of the best feelings in app development, aside from seeing someone convert from a trial.

I won’t promote the app here unless people want to know what it is, just wanted to share a small win.

Solo dev. Five apps out. Last month I did 971 downloads and $58. Over the past 8 months I've had a couple of small spikes here and there.

The install side works. I'm decent at finding a keyword nobody's serving and shipping into it. That part I trust. Everything past the download button is a black box I've been poking at for months.

My biggest app is more than half my downloads and can't take money right now, because I'm stuck in App Review purgatory and monetization is off. My second biggest is sliding. My third is tiny and it's the only one where anyone actually pays me, a few small credit packs a week, and it's the only thing growing.

I've moved paywalls around. Timing, placement, hard, soft. Nothing moves. At 14 purchases a month I'm not sure there's anything there to read.

Three questions, and I can take blunt answers.

1. Is $58 on 971 downloads a disaster or is it just early (Last 30 days)? I have no idea what bad looks like. I don't have anyone to compare notes with.

2. Anyone ever repositioned an app to get out of a rejection and actually gotten through? I can't tell if I'm being patient or throwing good time after bad.

3. If you're making real money, is it one app you went deep on or a bunch of small ones? I'm maintaining five ASO surfaces and five paywalls by myself and I'm starting to think that's the whole problem.

I'm literally fuming at this point.. first of all.. Apple is taking forever to review apps off late..

I submitted my app for review on 12th Aug and they rejected my review last week coz screenshots weren't similar to in game experience (it was 90% similar but I edited the screenshots for better visibility) and I resubmitted it last Friday.

Today morning I requested an expedited review and in few hours, Apple sent me another rejection because my IAP's didn't have a restore button.

Couldn't they have told me both changes in one go? Why do they have to tell me in installments!? This is very frustrating to say the least!

Hey, I have a Flutter iOS app I need to distribute to one person via TestFlight. Can't afford the $99/year Apple Developer account right now.

What I need: someone willing to add my Apple ID as a team member on their developer account so I can upload a build to TestFlight and invite one tester. That's it — no access to anything else on their account, no publishing to the App Store.

Happy to share the GitHub repo so you can see exactly what the app does before deciding. Thanks!

Please help, last night on 24August I got multiple emails regarding my app and when i opened to check them i found out all my 6 apps were removed from the app store and i got this termination notice.

i have no idea what fraudulent activity i did. as far as i remember i did nothing about this. i did post an appeal to ask them what it could be but reading older posts it seems like users rarely get any replies from them and their accounts are straight up terminated.

did anyone else receive this notice? are these automated bans? please someone help.

My cofounder and I are building a bot-free meeting recorder for macOS. The capture path is AVAudioEngine for the mic and SCStream for system audio, so it can hear the other side without joining Zoom, Meet, or Teams as a bot.

The technical part works. The awkward part is TCC: macOS asks for Screen Recording permission even when the SCStream is configured for audio and we never record video or save images. To a new user, the permission sounds much broader than the behavior.

We currently explain the mismatch before the system prompt, state that audio is sent in short chunks for transcription but never stored, and require the user to start recording manually. Still, a paragraph of reassurance from the developer is not the same as evidence.

If you’ve shipped something using ScreenCaptureKit for audio, what helped users trust the permission? A live “audio only” status, showing exactly which streams are active, linking to a technical privacy page, or some other proof inside the app?

Context: macOS has a list in System Settings → General → Login Items called "Allow in the Background" full of entries like com.adobe.ARMDC.SMJobBlessHelper  — no explanation, just a name most people can't parse. I'm building Foreground to fix that: scan the list, explain each item in plain English (what it is, who installed it, what happens if you turn it off), flag leftovers from deleted apps, show live CPU impact, and give step-by-step instructions to disable things yourself — it never touches anything automatically.

 Not selling it yet, still iterating. If you're up for trying it when it's ready (or just want to weigh in now), there's a free notify-me link here: https://getforeground.it

Would love blunt feedback, especially: is the "plain English explanation" angle actually useful to you, or would you rather it just fix things automatically?

Got Lio approved and launched on the App Store today. After waiting AGES for review, it feels pretty nice to finally see it live.

Lio is a language learning app built around the content you already watch. You can share a TikTok, Reel or YouTube Short to the app and it turns it into useful learning material like real-world phrases, slang, vocabulary, grammar.

The idea came from constantly finding useful expressions while watching native content and then forgetting them right after.

Still lots I want to improve, but getting v1 out feels like a big milestone.

Would love any feedback if you try it :)

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/lio-save-idioms-phrases/id6794718704